Comment by shawabawa3
1 month ago
> If you decide you don't want a relationship with either of those companies you will be extremely disadvantaged.
Even more worrying is the inverse of this - if Google and/or Apple decide for whatever reason they don't want a relationship with you (aka they ban you for no reason) - you are completely screwed
Even if they ban you for a reason, you're screwed. Granted, the ban may have been warranted, but you're essentially put into a societal prison with no due process or recourse.
That is a great analogy. There are countries where a police can throw you into a lifetime jail with zero option for justice unless you are a famous person from a well known western country.
Those countries are North Korea, Iran, Russia, Google and Apple.
Well the US can do it with CBP/ICE, but not for life. I was placed in a jail without being arrested or being accused of a crime and they were very clear at all times I was not even arrested, nor did a federal criminal history search show any record of arrest. No access to lawyer either.
US Citizen. Contacted lawyers, all informed me they'd given up trying to sue for these things because it's hopeless.
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First of all - add Israel. If you're a Gazan than this goes without saying, but even if you're a citizen, then - the General Security Service can and does people into custody without a warrant; often does not publicly disclose or admit said custody; and has "secret" detention facilities to hold such people (example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camp_1391)
I also wonder about the US: What about the secret imprisonment mechanisms it set up after the 2001 attacks on the twin towers (9/11)? Were those ever dis-established?
The US has done just that to Abrego Garcia, and is now giving him the choice between confessing to a crime that he hasn't been convicted of (and likely didn't commit) and deportation to a country he has never been in.
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Very true. They are effectively a new type of non-territorial state with absolutely no separation of powers or rule of law or principle of proportionality.
What makes this difficult though is that they are under constant attack from highly organised and automated criminal operations that create and exploit accounts en masse.
Any solution to the tyrannical state of affairs we are subjected to (even more so as developers) needs to balance better protections for real people (including as you say for people who have committed some transgressions) with fighting organised crime.
It's also used by the actual territorial state to project power through corporations, by influencing them to project their policies. I'm reminded of the story of the guy that had his google account shut down for "CSAM" because they took explicit medical pictures of their child at the directions of physicians, that were only privately shared solely for the purpose of aiding diagnosis. Apparently google works with the government to create these systems to scan your cloud images in the background.
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Yes, I am feeling like technology is being used as a authoritarian trap.
Always has been... pertinent example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust
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Let's hope people remember this and don't cheer the precedent when it's set against "undesirable" like it was with Alex Jones.
It always starts like that.
Can you explain a bit more? As far as I was aware, Alex Jones was found guilty by a court of law.
I didn't really follow his case or anything about him though. Did he get banned from Google/Apple for no reason?
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"Alex Jones"
Lol.
This happens already in dating apps. https://www.vice.com/en/article/banned-from-dating-apps/
Date didn't go as well as the other person was hoping? They can report you to the app, some tired and overworked support person in an emerging market bans you, they keep whatever cash you already spent on bonus likes and your multi-month subscription, no refunds.
And you can never sign up from the same Google/Apple account, the same phone, and with the same face, because of course now you have to verify your biometric information with some of these apps (Bumble is introducing submitting your id or taking verification photos).
Or their AI misfires and deems you as having said something inappropriate, again, off you go. You have no recourse, hope you know someone who works at that company who can flip the bit in their database.
Want to know the reason why they banned you? Sorry, that's sensitive information, you will never know, only that you "violated the terms of service". Which one? Sorry, we can't tell you, goodbye.
Oh, now 60% of society meets through datings apps? Too bad, you don't get to anymore, shouldn't have violated our terms of service. Oh, and most of these apps are run by the same company, so you get banned on one, you likely get banned from all on them at once. Have fun.
I was insta shadowbanned on Tinder after I went through the registration on my network which exits via VPN and blocks spyware domains via adguard.
I think this is the thing we need to change most. These big companies effectively have as much power as courts to break your life, but no transparency, oversight, appeals process or even a clear process in some cases. They can destroy a person or a small business without even noticing.
And just think, how people could stop using so many of their services. Say, not use GMail mailboxes and go for other providers. It's like most of us are actively putting ourselves in their prisons every day.
> Even more worrying
This is untrue.
It's a case of A leads to B and B requires A.
The most common antidote to anti-consumer behavior like this, is for the established parties to pull a dumb stunt and for competitor to eat their lunch.
If you can't bank without Google or Apple, all competition is dead on arrival.
If we have to politik the deplatforming rules of companies because they've taken complete control of the gates, we're doing the wrong politiking at the wrong place.
The only solution I see is some decentralized way of governing. And even if this gains mass support, I still forsee some centralized way of how rules are enforced that can also cut off your relationship as well. Efficiency v.s privacy tradeoff I guess.
from an incredibly trivial perspective I was thinking about this recently when I discovered all games operate as saas products now, if for whatever reason you're banned then you can no longer play the product you purchased, what happened to third party mplayer servers?
Not all games. The options are ridiculously more diverse there than for smartphone OSes or even for social media.
I have to unlock my apple id on a daily basis "To continue to use facetime"
It's esentially boolean social scoring, just think about it.
Say, if you're blacklisted by a fascist government, for example. Tim Cook's pledge of loyalty was disturbing on many levels.