Google doesn’t recognize pseudonyms?

Some of you know me as ‘acflory’, others know me as ‘Meeks’, some even know me as Andrea Flory, but all of you recognize that all three names belong to me. Apparently the AI doing the ‘support’ for Google Play does not.

To recap, in this post, I talked about how hard it was to setup an account with Google Play. From there, I discovered that you have to publish an ebook on Google Play before you can create an auto-narrated audio book of that ebook. And that is the point at which things really went down hill. First, my account was put on hold while a ‘preliminary review’ was carried out. I eventually discovered this could take up to seven days. After waiting patiently – hah – I received an email telling me my account had been ‘disapproved’. WTF?

After much digging I finally worked out that Google Play didn’t think I was who I said I was. So I sent off another email asking what kind of proof I need to satisfy the review. I received a canned response so I figured the one thing that would conclusively prove that I am both Andrea Flory and acflory would be my Thorpe-Bowker account. This is the Australian branch of Bowker and the place from which I’ve always bought my ISBNs. For those new to publishing:

‘An ISBN is essentially a product identifier used by publishers, booksellers, libraries, internet retailers and other supply chain participants for ordering, listing, sales records and stock control purposes. The ISBN identifies the registrant as well as the specific title, edition and format.’ https://www.isbn-international.org/content/what-isbn/10

Please note this bit: ‘The ISBN identifies the registrant as well as the specific title, edition and format.’

This is a screenshot of my email and the attachment I sent to Google Play:

And this is a full screen shot of that attachment:

If you click on the image, you will get a much bigger picture. On that picture can see my full name twice at the top right of the screen. Under the Title column you can see ‘Miira’ along with the ISBN I bought for it from Bowker. Short of giving Google Play my Bowker password, there is no other way I can think of to get them to recognize my ownership of ‘Miira’. Yet despite this, a few hours after I sent off my Bowker proof, I received this email from Google Play:

Apparently, I am still not recognized as both Andrea Flory and acflory. This would be funny if it weren’t so infuriating.

In hindsight, I suspect that what happened was that the review was conducted by an AI/algorithm. It parsed the text in my email but could not decipher the text in the screenshot I sent. A human would have seen that screenshot as a picture of text…and read the text. The AI/algorithm saw only an ‘image’. Therefore there was no proof. Therefore my request was denied. -facepalm-

The question is: how could I have provided any sort of proof when everything is digital? And that question leads to another: why are these reviews not carried out by humans?

To be honest, I’m almost relieved that my account has been deactivated; my only reason for creating it in the first place was to experiment with Google Play’s auto-narrated audio book offering. Experiencing this absolute nonsense has confirmed two things for me: Google is crap, and its AI is literally, stupid.

I’d love to know what all you self-published authors out there think of this ridiculous situation.

cheers,
Meeks aka Andrea Flory aka acflory

p.s. apparently WordPress is messing with things again because I can only add a few tags before it simply deletes whatever I type. I’m just a wee bit…annoyed.