Google questions family’s X-rated Gemini account-ban story: It doesn’t work that way

Losing access to an account is one of the worst things many of us fear happening to us online, and when it’s a Google account with so much of your digital life tied to it, that impact is going to be all the more severe. We just shared with you the story about how some poor choices by one family member reportedly led to the whole household having their Google accounts banned, but now Google is pointing out a few potential holes in their story.

Just to catch you up, yesterday an anonymous Reddit account posted to the site’s UK Legal Advice sub, asking for help about getting their Google accounts back. According to the poster, their 14-year-old son attempted a sexual encounter with Gemini, sharing pictures of himself via the tablet he used for access. They say Google banned the son’s account soon after, and subsequently banned the parents’ and siblings’ accounts as well, all having been associated with that tablet.

Before publishing, we reached out to Google for comment, and while we hadn’t received a response at the time, Google has now contacted Android Authority to fill us in a little on the bigger picture here — and it turns out there are more than a few reasons we may want to question this tale.

First, let’s start with the big one: According to Google, the situation described by that Reddit poster simply isn’t how account bans work. If one account violates Google’s TOS, that particular account may be eligible for a ban, but the ban doesn’t “stick” to the hardware, and just because other people logged in on the same device wouldn’t mean they automatically get banned, too.

What about child accounts? If you’re a parent and do something to get your own account banned, then yes: Your ban would trickle down and also impact your kids’ accounts. But critically, Google tells us, that doesn’t work the other way. Actions taken on a child account that result in a ban won’t “flow uphill” and impact the parent account.

Still, Google was worried about how this report looked and has been crawling through its logs, trying to spot any recent pattern in the UK where all the accounts in a home were banned like described here. And so far: It hasn’t found anything like this.

The company also points out that Gemini Live doesn’t really work with camera uploads in a way that makes a lot of sense given how this story was presented. None of this is outright proof of fabrication, but the more we hear, the less any of this smells right. And while the initial post was made on March 31, we all know what day today is. Hopefully we’re able to get some kind of resolution either way here soon, because this is just too weird a story to forget about.