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12ft.io has been banned by Vercel

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Re: 12ft.io has been banned by Vercel

#31

Post by echelon »

ajkjk wrote: post #10

The top reply is from Vercel: > Hey Thomas. Your paywall-bypassing site broke our ToS and created hundreds of hours of support time spent on all the outreach from the impacted businesses. > Our support team reached out to you on Oct 14th to let you know this was unsustainable and to try to work with you. The poster immediately misunderstood them and thought the hundreds of hours were for talking to him . But they als…

A couple of platform providers have burned me so bad that I will absolutely move my business and tell others about my bad experiences.

In 2008, GoDaddy let an associate transfer StrategyWiki.org and a bunch of other domains out of my account while I was on a college trip with no internet. I'd spent half a decade building up these projects, and they were stolen away without my knowledge. GoDaddy offered no recourse or apology. The guy that performed the heist was 15 years my senior and from a family of lawyers, which he absolutely threatened me with if I tried to fight him. Even though GoDaddy ownership has changed, I do not like them to this day.

Over the past few years, I maintained a personal Netlify account for hosting a bunch of personal websites. When I started building my startup on Netlify, they moved my personal websites out of their free tier (despite them being in a different account) and into a paid plan. They started charging my card (which I wasn't aware of), and when I changed my billing info they deleted my websites entirely. There was no option to restore them, and their support was incredibly rude. They kept telling me what I had to do to undo their mistake without offering to do it themselves.

Netlify is horrible. Rude and unhelpful.

I was just about to move over to Vercel, but if they're no better than Netlify, I may as well stay put.

Re: 12ft.io has been banned by Vercel

#32

Post by echelon »

cldellow wrote: post #11
the_mitsuhiko wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I absolute believe that Vercel does not like to host it and they have the freedom to restrict the service. But I _am_ curious which term of the TOS it violated.

Vercel's terms are at https://vercel.com/legal/terms . A handful of possible violations from section 6, Acceptable Use: - The Services may only be used for lawful purposes. - You shall not attempt to undermine the security or integrity of computing systems or networks of Vercel, its partners, or any other person, and must not attempt to gain unauthorized access. - You may not use the services or Vercel's infrastructu…

> - The final decision of whether an account is in violation of any of these acceptable use terms is at the sole discretion of Vercel.

Seems like it's not safe to host on Vercel, then. They're giving themselves absolute control with zero recourse.

Looks like you're opted into arbitration too. Classic hostile, anti-consumer behavior.

Don't they know who they exist to serve?

Re: 12ft.io has been banned by Vercel

#33

Post by randombits0 »

the_mitsuhiko wrote: post #21
cldellow wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Vercel's terms are at https://vercel.com/legal/terms . A handful of possible violations from section 6, Acceptable Use: - The Services may only be used for lawful purposes. - You shall not attempt to undermine the security or integrity of computing systems or networks of Vercel, its partners, or any other person, and must not attempt to gain unauthorized access. - You may not use the services or Vercel's infrastructu…

> You may not use the services or Vercel's infrastructure for proxying, scraping I think that's pretty clear cut then.

Since the service alters the data before delivery, a strong argument can be made that it’s not a proxy per se. Say I did something similar with the goal of assisting vision-impaired users. That’s not just a proxy.

It’s the weekend. He’ll talk to them on Monday.

Re: 12ft.io has been banned by Vercel

#34

Post by yegle »

cldellow wrote: post #25
the_mitsuhiko wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You may not use the services or Vercel's infrastructure for proxying, scraping I think that's pretty clear cut then.

Looking at archive.org, I think this was only added in their most recent May 1, 2023 TOS update. He might be the reason it now exists in the TOS. :)

I just realized that archive.org might also in violation of Vercel's ToS given its ability to bypass paywall.

Re: 12ft.io has been banned by Vercel

#35

Post by amadeuspagel »

asadm wrote: post #16
amadeuspagel wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Keep your domains at one company. Your DNS with another. Hosting, a third. This just means that there are three companies that can shut you down.

But not completely, at the same time

Yes, completely. If you lack any of these things you are shut down completely

Re: 12ft.io has been banned by Vercel

#36

Post by jauntywundrkind »

Mandatum wrote: post #9

Sounds like it’s resolved. Author just got angry after getting back from holiday, and seeing their access to every site they own is cut. Which is reasonable given it seems Vercel doesn’t have site level granularity of restricting access. Which is worrisome. What other level of granularity are they missing? Do I need to worry about security and access controls?

Can you link to any resolution? All I can see on X/Twitter is the one submitted post.

Re: 12ft.io has been banned by Vercel

#37

Post by benatkin »

dang wrote: post #27
benatkin wrote: post #15

[flagged]

> I think HN should [...] stop hyperbolic ones from hitting the front page How could we do that?

The best thing I can think of is flagging, which would just mean that if you agree with me, when other posts like this come up, leaving a comment suggesting that it goes against HN's guidelines, which it does IMO by not being interesting. This might result in it still hitting the front page but spending less time there, which would probably be better than going outside of how HN currently works, since HN already strikes a good balance with its curation.

Re: 12ft.io has been banned by Vercel

#38

Post by stuckkeys »

I was wondering where I had heard of that domain name. Then it finally clicked. First time I am hearing about vercel. What would constitute as breach of TOS? Is it because he is providing it as a service (free/paid not sure exactly)? I also thought it was based on cached content!? Also, did he not have any backups elsewhere? I could never solely rely on the cloud services. They can change their TOS anytime and screw you over.

Re: 12ft.io has been banned by Vercel

#39

Post by SahAssar »

yegle wrote: post #34
cldellow wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looking at archive.org, I think this was only added in their most recent May 1, 2023 TOS update. He might be the reason it now exists in the TOS. :)

I just realized that archive.org might also in violation of Vercel's ToS given its ability to bypass paywall.

Why would they care? They are not hosted on Vercel.

Re: 12ft.io has been banned by Vercel

#40

Post by benatkin »

onion2k wrote: post #2

It's understandable to ban the site given it does break Vercel's terms, but the allegation that Vercel hasn't let the owner transfer the domain away is a serious concern. Removing a customer is always hard but you have to do it in a way that ends in a clean break between your business and the customer. Keeping a domain fails to achieve that in a big way.

I'd be OK with them taking up to 30 days to do this, but I too expect that they let the owner transfer their domain away. I am not currently concerned, because I think they will let the owner transfer it away probably in less than a week if the owner has a constructive dialogue with them.
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