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Ask HN: How do you fight unjust bans from online platforms?

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Re: Ask HN: How do you fight unjust bans from online platforms?

#21

Post by lovvtide »

You make the data layer deeper than the platform.

Platforms should be clients, not silos. Effective moderation is super necessary. And building a community is really hard. You need a level playing field for platforms to actually figure out and compete on the basis of how well they can solve these problems instead of figuring out how to maintain their status as gatekeepers. The fediverse is a step in this direction but (currently) it's still too siloed and fragile, since server admins can delete all your data on a whim, effectively resetting whatever equity you have built around your social profile.

You should check out a blogging platform called Satellite. The goal is to start building a universal, interoperable data layer that other apps can fork or built on top of by signing all the data and publicly releasing an archive/snapshot of the total network state every 28 days.

Satellite -> https://satellite.earth

Discloser: I'm the developer

Re: Ask HN: How do you fight unjust bans from online platforms?

#22

Post by edent »

Private businesses are under no obligation to do business with you. We live in a capitalist society where you are free to choose one of their many competitors.

If, however, you find yourself excluded from a monopoly provider, there are a few strategies you can use.

Argue with them. You might get lucky and find a customer support agent who is sympathetic (or apathetic).

GDPR them. Send a Subject Access Request and ask for information they hold about you. They should also give you the opportunity to appeal against any automated decisions.

Go to their regulator. Most companies are regulated by another institution.

Sue them. If you think your exclusion is illegal (if they've banned you for being disabled, for example) then you may be able to to take them to court.

Speak to your local democratic representative. Explain to them what problems this ban is causing. A letter from an MP usually receives a bit more attention than an email from a suspended customer.

Finally, go to their competitor. If they have no competitor, speak to whoever regulates monopolies in your area.

Re: Ask HN: How do you fight unjust bans from online platforms?

#23

Post by autotune »

seydor wrote: post #16

Demand regulation. It is astounding that e.g. paypal is not subject to the requirements that banks have

It's even more astounding consumers treat it like a bank, and even more that they use it in the first place over any number of alternatives available right now.

Re: Ask HN: How do you fight unjust bans from online platforms?

#24

Post by simfree »

anonym29 wrote: post #14

The tricks are mostly proactive / strategic rather than reactive. • Don't rely on platforms you have no control over in the first place. PayPal can close your PayPal account, but nobody can close your self-custody Bitcoin wallet. Self-ownership comes with some risks, but it negates some others. The solution is to use both (and others), which brings us to our next point - • If you must use some platforms you have no c…

To add to this, using hidden points of escalation are one of the few ways you have for appealing bans or restrictions from platforms that you can't avoid.

Stripe

- Comment on one of the Stripe founders threads with your issue, email them too

- Make a well written HN post about your Stripe issue at the right time of day and share it with your friends

Google

- Have Googlers you know file an internal ticket on your behalf

- LinkedIn search Google employees and email them (first & last name @google.com iirc). Poke enough employees with a positively written ask for help and they might file a ticket

- If your domain gets flagged by Google Safe Browsing, remove all outdated DNS entries and drop all traffic from Google's ASN on remaining servers, then have them rescan your domain in Google Search Console Tools.

Note that Google silently proxies any users that click through the Safe Browsing warning in Chrome, so blocking their ASN will break this workaround for Chrome users

Re: Ask HN: How do you fight unjust bans from online platforms?

#26

Post by vasco »

I've been banned from adsense recently, affecting 4 websites that have been live for ~10 years because presumably someone incorrectly thinks I'm incentivising hacking when none of the websites are even tangentially related to this.

Appeal denied within 2 weeks, most likely automated, no ability to recourse anywhere. And with the near monopoly on ads google has, I'm either out of pocket on server costs from now on, or have to go to a lower quality network that may distribute malware and get further impacted by Google SEO. My answer so far has been to try to not think about it, because there's no recourse unless you have friends at Google, which I don't.

Re: Ask HN: How do you fight unjust bans from online platforms?

#28

Post by midoridensha »

neilv wrote: post #11

All the examples are US companies. One way to look at the problem is US companies disregarding principles of US government/society: due process, transparency, accountability.

>One way to look at the problem is US companies disregarding principles of US government/society: due process, transparency, accountability.

It's all just symptoms of the decline of US society.

Re: Ask HN: How do you fight unjust bans from online platforms?

#29

Post by tempestn »

Keep trying to find a real thinking person to talk to. Eventually you may get someone who will actually look into the issue. It often takes multiple attempts, and usually you'll have to dig for that contact info. For example I once lost access to a company facebook page. There was no official way to recover it or contact a human, but I created a Facebook ads account, and was able to get support there to look into it and get the page recovered.

Re: Ask HN: How do you fight unjust bans from online platforms?

#30

Post by rsstack »

neilv wrote: post #11

All the examples are US companies. One way to look at the problem is US companies disregarding principles of US government/society: due process, transparency, accountability.

> All the examples are US companies. One way to look at the problem is US companies disregarding

Another is that there aren't many European companies that are internationally dominant. Customers and partners get banned from Booking.com (a Dutch company), so there's that.

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