Comment by Terr_

9 days ago

The problem is the creepy big-data-advert-ocracy might propagate that scarlet-letter in ways that are unfair an unpredictable.

So a throwaway account for reading Reddit (even as it decays) might lead to an totally unrelated account you do care about getting unfairly suspended, or the MonopolyCloudFlareBot "helping" your bank starts rejecting your IP/browser-fingerprint, etc.

This would worry me less if we had laws that make it easy to demand accountability and fixes, but we don't. (Not much in the US, and in the EU efficacy is still questionable.)

6 comments

Terr_

Reply
inigyou  9 days ago

Go to your bank branch and say I can't access my bank account.

  • Terr_  9 days ago

    We should be careful to distinguish between "everything goes back to normal" versus "they you move your money to some other bank."

    Anywho, you're right that the final example is more-likely to be resolved, thanks to a formal customer relationship backed up by decades of law plus physical locations... but what about Reddit, Facebook, Amazon, Google, etc. where they sometimes don't even have any remotely responsive support system or nearby physical branch?

    Basically I'm saying we have some Kafkaesque stuff out there, it isn't sensible or fair, and if someone wants to tweak the nose of the beast they should at least consider the range of what could go wrong.

  • dns_snek  9 days ago

    That doesn't mean that it will actually be resolved. And do you really want to be doing that with everyone you ever do business with for the rest of your life?