Comment by _qulr
5 years ago
It's painfully clear at this point that we need a consumer "bill of rights" to protect us from these giant tech companies. At the very least, companies must be legally required to present you in writing with the so-called violation of terms they're accusing you of, evidence of the violation, and a phone # or other immediate contact so that you can dispute the accusations. It's insane that these basic legal rights don't even exist.
You could of course sue Google, but that's an extremely expensive and time-consuming option, rarely worth it for a mere consumer. Going to court certainly won't make your suspended account become unsuspended any quicker.
You know it’s funny that lots of the basic functions of business with consumers (eg, ability to return items) were set and codified in the US as the Uniform Commercial Code [0] that was established in 1952. Before then it was wild and variable.
What’s really interesting is that it seems like of hacker-like in how it was implemented. It was published as a guide and then states passed laws to implement.
Reminds me of a de facto standard that is then implemented by vendors.
I suppose we could start up some form of Uniform Consumer Commercial Code (UC3) that set up practices that are good that could then be passed by states.
I shudder to think through all the arguments about how it would specify some “don’t be evil on social cause X” that it almost smarts my conspiracy brain that the “corporations” started this trend to bikeshed/scissor statement society so they can’t make meaningful economic and commercial policy.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uniform_Commercial_Code
The problem with this sort of thing is that because it's interstate commerce, states usually do not have standing to regulate effectively.
The Federal government struggles to implement new regulatory authority because of political challenges. Various groups of stakeholders will declare any such regulation an infringement on free speech (ie. "The constitution gives me the right to sell fake penis pills to fund my radical political agenda!"), biased against marginalized minority or cultural groups ("My marginalized constituency of blind, alcoholic yak herders have a religious prohibition against reading contracts"), or a unfair mandate restraint of trade ("The Chamber of Meme Commerce believes that this rule will cost 10,000,000 jobs in the meme industry and kill puppies."), etc.
This was addressed in the UCC and is pretty simple actually as each state implements laws to saw who has jurisdiction and how to handle.
It also bypasses the federal government in that the code is established by some big council and implemented in (most) states.
That’s why when I live in Missouri and buy something from a vendor in New York, they still have to accept returns, issue refunds, provide for basic warranties, etc. and if I have problems I can easily get remediation in state courts.
There’s 50+ years of where this works ok. Not perfect and lots of room for improvement. But better than the current shitshow that exists like this article describes. If we had the minimum level of legal structure, it would be so helpful.
Because of UCC, if I give away a product for free, I have to support it through its commercial life. So if I hand out knives, for free, and they explode after 20 years, I must still support it. Even if they come with a form that users have to click that says “I will not sue PrependCo if these free knives explode.”
Google’s free (and even non-free) services are causing harm to people and aren’t being supported.
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If it was sold to a resident in some state online currently that resident can sue in the local courts. The business is considered to operate in all states.
The alternative is all suits under ~$75k(?) don't get heard because they don't meet the requirements for federal court, which obviously can't be right.
I suspect that the major tech providers are so pervasive that the impacts of account-locking span all party lines.
> Various groups of stakeholders will declare any such regulation an infringement on free speech (ie. "The constitution gives me the right to sell fake penis pills to fund my radical political agenda!")
This is just an awful example. There is not a free speech right to pay for your own speech by committing crimes, and nobody claims or would claim that there is. Similarly, you don't see the argument made that vendors enjoy the constitutional right to sell fake pills. What spammers want to do, and what anti-spammers want to stop them from doing, is to advertise real pills, and yes, there are extensive free speech implications there.
The original reason for free speech was to allow people of different creeds to work together against government.
The Bill of Rights is establishing as a baseline the policies that were found to reduce tribal conflicts in the European empires — having a strong central identity as a state (eg “American Destiny”), but allowing individual tribes under the state a great deal of freedom in religious practices. As a secondary purpose, it tamped down the worst state abuses.
The anti-religious messaging, the anti-conservative messaging, etc undermine this and are bringing back sectarian strife inside the state.
The EU recently proposed The Digital Services Act, which is a DCMA like legislation (with both copyright infringement and other illegal content like CP as targets).
Part of that draft law pretty clearly states that companies must have a proper appeal process for banned accounts. This would apply to "decisions taken by the online platform on the ground that the information provided by the recipients is illegal content or incompatible with its terms and conditions", which in practice covers basically all bans except for Age restriction or non-payment based bans.
They must provide details of what part of the Terms of Service they claim you violated: "where the decision is based on the alleged incompatibility of the information with the terms and conditions of the provider, a reference to the contractual ground relied on and explanations as to why the information is considered to be incompatible with that ground".
If the internal appeals process fails, the consumer can take the company to online binding arbitration (with the consumer's choice of accredited arbitrators certified by the member state). The company always pays its own costs in the process, and must reimburse the user's costs if the company loses.
> which in practice covers basically all bans except for Age restriction or non-payment based bans.
Google avoid this EU restriction by suspending accounts/app indefinitely instead of banning them.
You can see a Google employee explaining this here : https://github.com/moneytoo/Player/issues/37#issuecomment-76...
Claiming that "an indefinite suspension" is just a type of temporary suspension and different from a ban will have you laughed out of any actual court.
Agreed. We generally allow companies to refuse service for nearly any reason, and in most cases this is a good policy. However, there are exceptions to that rule. One extreme are utilities which as both monopolies and essential services are required to do business with nearly any paying customer, and have strict rules processes about shutting of service for lack of payment. Residential rentals are another example. They don't hold a monopoly, but are an essential service, and as such they can generally choose who to do business with (although not quite as freely as your average business), but have strict legal processes they have to follow regarding evictions.
I think there are online business who are essential enough that some consumer protections are applicable. Very few reach the level of monopoly that utilities have in my mind, and even those it isn't clear to me that they are "natural" monopoly like utilities, and as such other antitrust approaches may be more beneficial.
However, I think there are a number of competitive, yet essential services online that deserve a legal protections regarding service termination. Identity providers absolutely fall in that category IMO - it is unacceptable for example for Facebook to lock your account in a manner that prevents you from not only using their services but every other third-party service which you authenticate using "Logon with Facebook". I think email is another that rises to this level. At a minimum email providers should be required to forward mail for a fixed period of time after choosing to stop doing business with a customer.
I think there also needs to be a law that, once you have accepted responsibility for storing someone else's data, that you can't delete it "on a whim" without offering some minimum retention period ok your data. As an example: a storage facility is allowed to stop doing business with me, but they legally can't just destroy all my stuff on a moment's notice... we have laws for minimum retention periods.
Also if you violate the storage facilities rules and they cancel the lease, they can't turn off the electricity at your house just because they happen to have the same parent company.
The Kafka solution to this will be our terms of service prohibit single spacing after periods and you are in violation. Therefore we can terminate your account at any time of our choosing.
Alternately we could prohibit posting in any language other than Latin and Klingon, or using the letter e, or accessing our services using any unapproved operating system (and our only approved OS is windows 3.11 with winsock drivers).
Anyway the point is now the company can ban you for any reason at all. Being the wrong religion, voting for the wrong candidate, being the wrong race, etc.
Not just "can", but "will". And given how effectively these companies are using their size and power (and m-word) to crush the competition, it's long past time for some anti-trust action.
> It's painfully clear at this point that we need a consumer "bill of rights" to protect us from these giant tech companies
I get where you're going, but I think far more costly to them and advantageous for us is to simply show them that they are unnecessary.
If we can drop them so easily, they can't pull stuff like this anymore. It is possible to drop Google and Facebook.
They do this stuff because people _need_ them and they know that people won't just drop them en mass.
> It is possible to drop Google and Facebook.
Its also possible to live without electricity and running water. This disproportionate power model doesn't work there because some people implemented regulations on them. I am beginning to suspect we need similar laws for this.
If you are equating a world without Facebook to a world without running water, you need to spend a week camping, where you leave your phone at home.
You'll very quickly discover why they are not at all alike.
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Yes, but Google and Facebook are not public utilities, nor should they be.
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What's stopping the next Google from doing the same? Providing poor justification for bans and removal from platforms is by no means limited to the big companies - it's endemic throughout tech - we just hear about Google and Facebook more because they're higher visibility and are considered more essential.
Antitrust regulation.
Seriously, the only reason Google is unaccountable is its scale. Otherwise "Google but with customer support" would be an obvious market opportunity. And the only reason losing your Google account is so impactful is that it controls everything from access to apps on your phone to your email to your calendar to being able to chat with friends. It's theoretically possible to vote with your wallet against Google, but far harder than against, say, Chick-fil-A, which means no boycott gets further than an HN comment.
No startup can compete with Google for those services because Google can artificially offer them for free, and for very high quality, because it's all funded by their advertising business. (Not to mention that a startup would have to "do things that don't scale" and offer real customer support... which also costs money.)
It's not a fair market at that point - you can't say Google is surviving because they offer the best value to customers, simply because the value is so disconnected from the service being offered. And in the other direction, potential customers like me who mostly avoid Google are still "paying" for it in that we're still seeing (and being tracked by) Google ads.
Every incentive mechanism behind the underlying assumptions of a market-based economy - that companies that provide more value are more likely to succeed in the market - is completely broken when you allow trusts like Alphabet to exist.
Dropping Google / Facebook is not just signing up with another service. You could self host your own email and just quit Facebook entirely.
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The OP is about a personal Google account, with access to mail, etc. at stake, but it's also about a developer who was going to create content for their platform. Granted, Stadia is not exactly a make-or-break gatekeeper for publishing games, but that same dev account could well be used for Google Play Store, which controls about half of the mobile market. We've certainly seen plenty of those stories here -- app developer gets locked out, only recovers account / gets app un-banned by making enough noise to get attention.
IOW, it's "possible" for you or me to drop Google or Facebook, but for some lines of business, you're basically stuck working with them.
> drop them en mass
The libertarian in me wants to believe that reputation is enough to make business act in the interests of the consumers and that personal responsibility would prevent customers from acting in their best interests: but we all know this is not true.
And, I know enough to know that any public policy that essentially says “Everything will be fine if everyone just does [X]” is bad policy, regardless of what ‘X’ is.
> The libertarian in me wants to believe that reputation is enough to make business act in the interests of the consumers and that personal responsibility would prevent customers from acting in their best interests: but we all know this is not true.
And that's also why monopolies and giant corporations can and will always form in the current economic system. Crony capitalism is not a bug, it's a feature.
Oh yeah, far more easy than the government taking regulatory action is coordinating a massive consumer choice boycott.
Sometimes, it is so abundantly clear to me that this site is full of former teenage libertarians who grew up and still haven't shed all of those ideals.
If all of the latest Facebook news can get my family to start questioning their usage/dependency on Facebook—I think it's fairly possible.
There have been a number of really great projects coming through HN and other sites recently that are aimed at solving some problem that people on Facebook have: photo sharing, event planning, etc.
Discoverability is really the only problem left.
You are on a site called hacker news. “Former teenage libertarian” is practically in the name.
You're not seeing the other side of the coin - the huge amount of spam and abuse that such systems correctly identify and remove. If every abuser requests those explanations (which they will) there will be far more spam going around the Internet.
Just think about the army of "Facebook content moderators" who were a popular topic on HN recently due to the concerns over their mental health.
(I am offering no solutions here, for I know none)
I think this is a convenient narrative for an abusive pattern of behavior by Google. The company is infamous for having non-existent customer service. It's not a matter of their AI having too many false positives, it's that when there is a false positive you have literally no recourse even if you're a well known business partner.
Are we really going to believe that Google, one of the highest grossing companies in the world, doesn't have the money to provide even basic level customer service? If it were really a matter of not being able to afford it, certainly they could offer it for a fee. No, they're stubbornly refusing to address the issues, relying on this lie, and using their market dominance to avoid having to answer for it.
Technically they do offer customer service if you pay them with their Google One product. I have phone numbers and human access very quickly, because I pay for it.
Although obviously if they banned me, I wouldn't have access to my direct support line anymore.
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> If every abuser requests those explanations (which they will)
It's not a request, it's a requirement. If your account is suspended, you deserve an explanation. You should get one without having to request it.
I'm not saying that companies shouldn't be able to suspend accounts temporarily. I'm simply saying that there needs to be a way to get your account unsuspended if you're innocent. The way it "works" now is that innocent consumers are without any recourse whatsoever.
I heard on a podcast recently that a trading system needs to keep logs of why a particular trade was executed for several years just in case the authority wants it. So it isn't too much effort to build a similar report or log of behaviour to explain why someone was banned.
Obviously this will also help the spammers who will use this information to get around the filters.
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For the record, they don't give away these explanations because such explanation would hint the spammer to what they should _not_ do next time, to avoid getting caught. Same as with anticheat software.
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I think we give up on that when we agree to the rule
Google has the right to suspend, remove your account without prior notice
I'm sure there should be a clause like that in their TOS
This is an age old problem in the criminal justice system. A solved problem.
After a lot of trials with various approaches, we settled on letting some criminals go free over convicting someone on weak evidence. Second we decided that trials should be open and evidence viewable by default.
Finally you generally have the option to give some security to stay out of jail during trial.
Closing a google account is a punishment worse than many criminal convictions. And will only get more important as we progress to an all digital existence.
> Just think about the army of "Facebook content moderators" who were a popular topic on HN recently due to the concerns over their mental health.
Hire them directly instead of via labor farms, pay them an actual living wage, give them full health benefits, and hire enough of them to prevent overload.
> the huge amount of spam and abuse that such systems correctly identify and remove.
Maybe allowing single service providers to capture several billions of users is the problem here.
Ding Ding Ding!!!
Perhaps the process should cost $100 or $500, so that actual spammers can’t use it
Maybe they really just need to offer a paid account option with real support, since that has much better incentives
Yes, refundable if the company ban proved in the wrong. Sounds like a great solution IMO
No need in charges. Strong person identification via Passport or Bank. Limit those request per identified person or throttle them.
There is a paid option: for $6/month you can use gmail with your own domain name. It's targeted at businesses but you can use it as an individual.
https://workspace.google.com/pricing.html
It includes support, but I'm not sure if that helps in cases where google thinks you have abused the service. I just use it because I like having my own domain, and so that I don't lose access to my email if google locks me out. The idea is that I can update my domain's MTX records and use another email service.
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But surely it’s possible to use methods other than what currently seems to be the first and only solution: “your account has been banned, bye”.
For example, if an automated system thinks an account is sending spam, enforcing a (very low) outgoing email rate limit would be a much more reasonable first step.
So just start charging for service, and keep a non-refundable deposit for spam/abuse.
Let every abuser requests those explanations, if the decision doesn't change, the money is still kept, which funds that service.
no if the AI can be used to automate the banning it can be used to provide the electronic news email of the rule violated.
Well their main argument against it is that if you don't tell scammers which rule exactly they are breaking they can't improve until the app is approved. But of course that hits normal customers too. It's the equivalent of arresting random people on the street and not telling them why - surely, innocent people will just get their lawyer to free them.
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So what is the proper Blackstone's ratio for you in these situation?
Is 1000 innocents ok to punish as long as 1 spam message is stopped?
> It's painfully clear at this point that we need a consumer "bill of rights" to protect us from these giant tech companies.
It isn't the only solution to this problem. Not using their products is another one. However, in some sectors (e.g. smartphones) it is next to impossible to not use their products, especially because they are build on centralized schemes. But regulating those things is probably harder than a consumer rights bill. But the downside is probably, that a consumer rights bill would not just affect the few large corporations, but many smaller ones too.
>You could of course sue Google
Unless you've waived that right when you agreed to the Terms of Service.
> Unless you've waived that right when you agreed to the Terms of Service.
Which would be meaningless in the EU (I think. Possibly just Germany) as you can’t waive that right.
It's the same in France and I think most of EU as the highest french court ruled that forced arbitration was against EU law.
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I'm not a lawyer, but my understanding is that U.S. courts have found that suing is a right that can't be waived by contract. Certainly an agreement to enter arbitration can be introduced as evidence against you in a a lawsuit, but any decent lawyer should be able to prevent an arbitration agreement from getting your lawsuit thrown out.
You are 99.5% wrong. See Federal Arbitration Act and ATT v Concepcion.
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That's not an accurate description of current consumer arbitration precedent in the US.
Its not fair when you have to get attention on twitter before getting issues like this resolved. Some of us don't use twitter for one thing
This is in part what the GDPR mandates - that companies provide reasoning for how an automatic process works and also that there is a means to dispute that (Section 4 / Article 22) https://www.varonis.com/blog/gdpr-requirements-list-in-plain...
But then ... https://twitter.com/Cleroth/status/1348036873885806596
I think we’re in a post consumer lawsuit era. Almost every terms of service on earth requires arbitration, or else absolves the vendor of any liability whatsoever
Arbitration isn't so bad. It still costs the company every time they have to deal with a case. Mass/automated arbitration claims can turn the tables, and lawsuits can be filled to challenge the neutrality of arbitrators.
> It's painfully clear at this point that we need a consumer "bill of rights" to protect us from these giant tech companies.
Nope. That gives players like Google a platform to negotiate from now and in the future, and it won't curb abuses long term. These abuses are a symptom of economic concentration and a lack of competitive markets. The only resolution guaranteed to work is to break up these companies down to smaller parts until they no longer act like quasi-governments.
> The only resolution guaranteed to work is to break up these companies down to smaller parts until they no longer act like quasi-governments.
Why not both?
A consumer bill of rights and breaking up Google are not mutually exclusive. Consumer protection laws protect consumers from all companies big and small, present and future. Breaking up Google won't do anything about the "next Google".
It's a bit strange to think that antitrust is a long-term solution when the successful antitrust case against Microsoft didn't prevent Google, Facebook, and Apple from arising.
It's a bit strange to think a nebulous "consumer bill of rights" is going to protect you when the actual Bill of Rights is routinely violated. We have utility designations for instances where it makes sense, and even then you see customer abuses. Forcing companies to focus on competition and survival is the best way to make sure they treat their customers well. Abuses pop up when customers don't have the choice to take their business elsewhere.
> Breaking up Google won't do anything about the "next Google".
The same regulator that has the power to break them up also has the power to prevent the next Google. Good pricing regulations have the power to prevent the next Google. These are solved problems, we just don't enforce the laws on the books or modernize them appropriately.
> It's a bit strange to think that antitrust is a long-term solution when the successful antitrust case against Microsoft didn't prevent Google, Facebook, and Apple from arising.
That's probably because it wasn't successful in the classical sense. Geroge Bush won the 2000 election and settled the case before it went to judgment. If it had, and Microsoft had been forced to break up, we may not be in the current situation.
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>It's painfully clear at this point that we need a consumer "bill of rights"...
Maybe? But I worry that politicians will use that as a tool. Look what DeSantis is trying down here in Florida. He wants to fine "Big Tech" for banning politicians during an election. Personally, I'm tired of the lies and provocations and hate speech of some politicians and I don't think any company should be compelled to share those messages.
So those evil politicians will do what? Force corporations to indiscriminately ban arbitrary people without possibility of appeal? Oh, wait a minute...
> It's painfully clear at this point that we need a consumer "bill of rights" to protect us from these giant tech companies.
Google is a private company who offers free internet services in exchange for your privacy being violated. They have no customer service because you are not a customer as customers pay. You have no rights on their platform because again, you are not a paying customer. And you agreed to their terms of service when you signed up. They don't owe you anything at that pont.
So stop expecting "paying customer" treatment from a shady adware dealer who gives you "free" "integrated platform" stuff to get you hooked. That's an old drug dealer tactic anyway.
Want to be treated like a person? You have to pay for that. Otherwise stop whining about the tyranny of "free" platforms such as google, twitter, facebook, etc.
The only thing the government should do is fund PSA's to warn people of the rights and privacy hazards of free internet platforms.
> Want to be treated like a person? You have to pay for that.
Andrew Spinks, the author of the linked tweet, was a business partner of Google's. That didn't save him.
Partner is not a customer. They don't care about any human on their platform because their platform is not designed to care about humans, only exploit them.
> The only thing the government should do is fund PSA's ...
Should governments allow caller ID spoofing, spam bordering on harassment, or lazy oligopolies to be negligent?
Governments should do whatever we agree they should. Both governments and companies serve the humans.
To be fair, even as a paying customer, you don't get much more "customer service".
The same also applies for Google Play Store where without a doubt you paid at least once and continue for every in-app purchase.