Comment by OptionX
1 day ago
Google is the worst offender, but a lot of companies are increasingly hiding themselves behind a wall of automated systems to completely neuter users ability to challenge any decision unilaterally taken by the them. The LLM-age has worsen the situation but it started well before it.
At some point it may be necessary to add the requirement for large companies to have a both human contact point and perhaps a requirement for specifics on account terminations and the like, or at least a way to request them, to the letter of the law.
It’s a strategy. Ask RyanAir. They systematically shut down any way to communicate with them, except lawsuits. Tried their chatbot, hotline, email, letter, fax, small claims court (I’m not joking they don’t even care about that). Unless you turn up with a court order and confiscate a plane, they simply won’t give a fuck, and I’m sure it’s a tactic to deter 99% of their problems before they start
These companies have correctly figured out that customers will still give them money, even if they provide no customer support, are actively hostile to their customers, and only respond to lawsuits. Such a weird timeline we are on! People willingly do business with companies who are actively against them.
> People willingly do business with companies who are actively against them.
Sometimes it's because they don't have a choice.
Case in point, since we're already talking about them: Ryanair. I'd cheerfully never fly with them again after, several years ago, they denied my wife and I boarding to a plane despite the fact the screens round about were still saying final call. Not just us either: about half a dozen other people missed that flight because the screens in the main terminal only updated with the departure gate a few minutes before final call and we happened to be quite a long way away when that happened. I've never had anything like it happen at any airport before or since.
Be that as it may: we can't practically avoid using Ryanair. My wife is from another country and Ryanair is one of only two airlines that fly there from the UK at all and the only airline that flies there from the nearest international airport (roughly half an hour away as opposed to 2+ hours away).
So we fly Ryanair even though neither of us want to: there simply isn't another practical or sensible choice.
Sometimes you don't get a choice, which is even more frustrating.
We got an admittedly very good deal to switch cell carriers. Part of that deal was receiving a debit card with my phone's trade in value loaded. That card turned out to be digital. I put it on my phone without thinking too much of it. However, given my lack of experience with Apple Pay, I didn't realize that I now didn't have access to my own card number. When I try to use the debit card, I am asked for a PIN that I've never been given an option to set up. When I call the card provider, the automated system demands a card number. Which I don't have.
Granted, it was my ignorance as a user that is responsible for some of this but it's pretty clear that the lack of access and support is intentional.
> People willingly do business with companies who are actively against them.
The banking industry has been hostile toward poor people for ages. When I was in my early 20s, an employee at a bank let me open a savings account without meeting the minimum balance for an instant penalty.
Of course, I'd get that shit reversed on that person's dereliction of duty to warn me when we were discussing how much I'd allocate to it if it happened today, but I was young and dumb and didn't know how to stand up for myself at the time. This was early 2000s, so hardly a recent change.
No.
These companies have correctly figured out that it's much cheaper to buy out governments so they won't actually punish them for all the regulations they break or institute new such regulations.
That's the weird timeline we're on. Governments willingly ignoring large scale violations by large corporations who actively harm their voters they're supposed to represent.
Ryanair admittedly wins on price and regulatory setup in EU provides guarantees that planes are safe.
Yes, Ryanair stole 100 euro from me once, but if next flight is 50 to 250 euro cheaper than competition...
I did some big projects motivated entirely by spite (project was overall helpful, but I would not do this if someone would be less nasty). But I still would use Ryanair.
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British Airways is the same. After they wrongfully didn't let me board my flight I had to escalate to the Dutch aviation authority (ILT, they sided in my favor within 3 days of me sending my letter in, that's how blatantly in the right I was) in order to get them to stop ignoring my emails, and even with the letter from ILT I still had to escalate to CEDR and they still took forever to compensate me what I was owed after legally being bound to do so. Along the way they tried every scummy tactic that exists, including sending me an email to close my CEDR case and they pinky promise they'll compensate me if I do that (which should be HIGHLY illegal but apparently isn't). They even went over the legally enforced time limits! They had 2 months after CEDR made their ruling in my favor to pay me back, and I STILL had to hound them after 2 and a half months to get my fucking money!
If I wasn't as idiotically stubborn as I am, I would've given up a month into the 8 month ordeal it eventually turned into. I guarantee you the vast majority of people wouldn't bother escalating to their CAA, or contact the relevant courts or authorities, which is what these scummy tactics are designed for. They would've been ignored like I did, then they would've given up because what's even the point?
The fact that we're allowing companies to get away with bullshit like this is ludicrous to me
> The fact that we're allowing companies to get away with bullshit like this is ludicrous to me
Hope you're not voting for any parties that don't explicitly run on a platform of stopping companies getting away with bullshit.
I'm pretty sure the Netherlands does have at least one such party, as other European countries I'm more familiar with do, no matter how small they might be.
>The fact that we're allowing companies to get away with bullshit like this is ludicrous to me.
If they decide to not reply it becomes much more resource consuming to go down the legal road.
I had this with DoorDash, even if you call they just say some specialised team needs to look at it and they'll email you back, surprise, they never do.
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> small claims court (I’m not joking they don’t even care about that)
If they don't show up, doesn't that mean you win by default? (And then you can indeed send a bailiff to seize a plane...)
Depending on the jurisdiction, getting a judgement alone doesn't allow you to have a bailiff enforce it.
1 reply →
Yes, you can win in small claims if the other party doesn't show. I suspect a plane might exceed the "small claims" limit though!
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Oh it does but just because you win doesn’t mean they start caring. A bailiff won’t really get involved for 500 euro compensation. A debt collection agency might. They want a cut of your compensation to deal with RyanAir because they know how annoying they are. Like, sure, you can start a 10 month project over 500 euros and maybe it’ll be fruitful eventually. But who does that? It’s insane. Answer your emails for fuck sake
The fact that this has become acceptable is the real problem.
You don't want to harm the economy, do you?
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Same with Amazon Japan. It blocked my account with no way to contact them, never used again.
Funny you should say that. I'm not a big Instagram user, but have had an account for years. The company I work for has just started an Instagram campaign, and asked anyone who wanted to, to check out their campaign and give it a like. I did so, and a minute later received this email:
"Your Instagram account has been suspended. This is because your account, or activity on it, doesn't follow our Community Standards on account integrity.
If you think that we made a mistake, you have until 8 March 2027 to appeal."
I've now uploaded my drivers licence, a photo of my passport and still apparently that's not good enough for them.
My latest rejection says I have only one more chance. No idea what the transgression was, but apparently there is no recourse.
I guess it's a good thing I don't really give a crap about Instagram in the first place, isn't it.
> I guess it's a good thing I don't really give a crap about Instagram in the first place, isn't it.
If you were willing to upload your driver's license and passport for a mere chance at getting back an account you don't give a crap about I'd hate to see what you'd do for one you do care about! Facebook demanded my driver's license at one point out of the blue. I simply abandoned the account, I was already pretty over them at that point anyway. About a year later it let me log in just fine and had forgotten all about how badly it had needed a scan of my license for security. In fact I didn't even remember the password, it just auto logged in from an email link.
You kind of confirm what I suspected though, that they'll just keep asking for more stuff leaving you more exposed and they're under no obligation to actually give you the account back no matter what you do.
I don't use discord but IIRC I read that if your account was banned they were asking for a mobile number to get it back. Instead of getting it back if you complied they just added the mobile number to their ban list so you couldn't make a new account with it.
> I've now uploaded my drivers licence, a photo of my passport and still apparently that's not good enough for them.
That's not a good practice to begin with. Your insta account doesn't matter but your privacy and government-issued documents do matter.
Meta knows you work for them, and sees it as boosting or gaming the algo.
There are a gazillion accounts that do this constantly, and all of them appeal.
> I've now uploaded my drivers licence, a photo of my passport and still apparently that's not good enough for them.
After the recent news about >150 million drivers' license photos being stolen from an ID verification service, I'd be very hesitant to do this for anything I didn't absolutely need. ID theft is a lot easier when someone has a photo of your sensitive documents.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49561320
> uploaded my drivers licence, a photo of my passport
Sounds like its working as designed. This is why you never cross streams between work and personal life.
My wife lost her Facebook account because Facebook autolinked it to someone else's Instagram (not hers), then shut that one down for abuse.
No appeal process.
Luckily she didn't use Facebook much.
The sad thing is if you go through that final step you'll probably receive a permanent ban.
But if you go on Swapd right now and pay a Meta employee $500 while it's still in appealable state you'll get your account unlocked in an hour.
Make it make sense.
I opened a Google Workspace account for my solo business to have an email address at my domain, got suspended a month later, had no way of contacting support since they require login and I was the only user, filed an appeal, got no response after a month, eventually contacted their Twitter support account and had access restored, but through this all they charged me for the subscription three times while I was locked out and before I could cancel. I contacted their support after I was restored and they said they wouldn’t refund me because the Workspace account wasn’t suspended just my individual user (even though they acknowledged I was the only user). I had receipts and screenshots of everything including confirmation from Google’s own UI that I was suspended for that entire period, but I just have to let Google steal $100 from me now because what else am I going to do?
Also their explanation for the lockout was that I failed the verification step too many times, which I don’t recall failing even once.
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> At some point it may be necessary to add the requirement for large companies to have a both human contact point and perhaps a requirement for specifics on account terminations and the like, or at least a way to request them, to the letter of the law.
This is already implemented, under the EU's Digital Services Act, you can appeal and get specifics about account terminations - see https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/policies/dsa-out-co...
Per https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49625933 - is it actually enforced?
Making the decision is easy, dealing with the consequences is not.
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WTF? Please don't fantasize about building concentration camps or use vile terms of derision on HN. The guidelines make it clear we're trying for something better here, and we have to ban accounts that do this repeatedly. No matter how upset you are at GitHub, you owe this community better if you want to participate here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html