Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Tinder just permabanned me or the problem with big tech

paulefou.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

461–470 of 684 posts

Re: Tinder just permabanned me or the problem with big tech

#461

Post by wolverine876 »

SllX wrote: post #451
wolverine876 wrote: post #439

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do governments prevent monopolies? That's been generally done and supported for over a century.

Well not granting monopolies is a start, but governments grant monopolies all the time in the form of patents, copyright and trademarks. Proving a monopoly exists or are forming could be another way to do so, but so far they have recently made lackluster arguments in Courts of Law on that front. If you then prove a monopoly, can you also then prove that it’s activities are harmful to the people in the marketplace by…

> not granting monopolies is a start

Monopolies are generally not granted, except in exceptional circumstances. The US government didn't grant Microsoft a monopoly in PC operating systems.

> Proving a monopoly exists or are forming could be another way to do so, but so far they have recently made lackluster arguments in Courts of Law on that front.

What are you referring to?

Re: Tinder just permabanned me or the problem with big tech

#463

Post by TheSpiceIsLife »

shadowgovt wrote: post #354
mysecretaccount wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As long as ${some number} is large enough it will not impact "small ISP" at all.

That's the thing about being an Internet startup... You never know when you're going to explode and suddenly jump from a ten-thousand-user service to a milliion-user service. So supporting this would require a company to take all manner of new precautions that companies currently don't (circuit-breaker on the new account creation system? But then your growth stalls and your potential customers go to a competitor inst…

Grace period - A grace period is a period immediately after the deadline for an obligation during which a late fee, or other action that would have been taken as a result of failing to meet the deadline, is waived provided that the obligation is satisfied during the grace period. In other words, it is a length of time during which rules or penalties are waived or deferred. Grace periods can range from a number of minutes to a number of days or longer, and can apply in situations including arrival at a job, paying a bill, or meeting a government or legal requirement.

In law, a grace period is a time period during which a particular rule exceptionally does not apply, or only partially applies.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grace_period

Re: Tinder just permabanned me or the problem with big tech

#464

Post by SkeuomorphicBee »

TameAntelope wrote: post #334
giantg2 wrote: post #19

This is basically the paradigm of any monopolistic or near monopolistic system. You can screw over a small minority without provoking a real response so long as you are appeasing or distracting the majority. Big tech, traditional companies, and even government.

I know it's popular to rail against tech companies, but I don't think there's a world in which we are entitled to access to Tinder or any other company's services. Tinder does not hold anything even remotely resembling a monopoly (no, Match does not own every dating app, just many of them) on the dating app space, we need to stop throwing that word around so casually. You're diluting the concept by trying to apply it…

"or any other company's services" is a bit to wide, the obvious biggest counter example to this would be utilities, everyone is somewhat entitled to access to their power company's services. But going outside utilities, what if I live on an island that is serviced by a single ferry company, shouldn't I be entitled to paying service?

And on the meaning of monopoly, I believe it is fair to describe the "network affect" as a monopoly. The historical example of the US rail comes to mind, the market had several rail companies at the time, but each had monopoly over certain routes, if you wanted to go from place A to place B you maybe only had one choice. The fact that other rail lines existed to places you didn't want to go doesn't mean that it wasn't a monopoly. The same way, those tech companies may have monopoly over the route from person A to person B.

Re: Tinder just permabanned me or the problem with big tech

#465

Post by dqpb »

Well, well, well. Let's recap some popular HN opinions that have surfaced lately:

What Problem Blockchains Solve

mrjin: centralized organizations are there for reasons, and block chain resolved none of them

The Web3 Fraud

endisneigh: In fact in the history of the internet I cannot find a single example of any technology working better in a decentralized fashion compared to centralized for the end user

The Handwavy Technobabble Nothingburger

Stephen Diehl: Any application that could be done on a blockchain could be better done on a centralized database. Except crime.

Re: Tinder just permabanned me or the problem with big tech

#466

Post by john_moscow »

hinkley wrote: post #296
hvdijk wrote: post #30

From Tinder's ToS: > Tinder may terminate your account at any time without notice if it believes that you have violated this Agreement. Upon such termination, you will not be entitled to any refund for purchases. > For residents of the Republic of Korea, except in the case [...], we will without delay notify you of the reason for taking the relevant step. They openly say in advance that they'll ban users who they thi…

if [Tinder] *believes* that you have violated this Agreement Belief and 'thinking' are funny things. They imply human judgement was involved in the process. Instead what most people seem to be complaining about are the egregious use of heuristics to do large scale account maintenance without retaining staff (humans) to make judgements on the particulars of each case. Until AIs win person-hood, there is no 'thinking'…

"believes" is just legalese for "we won't show any proof and won't accept any appeal".

Re: Tinder just permabanned me or the problem with big tech

#468

Post by samhw »

selfhoster11 wrote: post #409
lolinder wrote: post #397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What would it mean to break up Tinder? How do you partition a company that only has one product?

Partition it geographically. If they want to compete in certain cities/regions/countries where the user base exceeds a certain number, they must spin off subsidiaries for that area. I can't imagine people looking for a date on the other end of the country outside of very specific circumstances.

> they must spin off subsidiaries

Eh? Subsidiaries aren't usually what people mean when they speak of breaking up companies. Subsidiaries are aligned with the parent company in terms of incentives, so it doesn't really change the landscape at all, besides worsening the user experience if you require the subsidiary to maintain its own isolated silo of users and data.

Re: Tinder just permabanned me or the problem with big tech

#469

Post by klyrs »

unabridged wrote: post #441
siliconc0w wrote: post #323

IMO, if your market share is bigger than ${some number}, you shouldn't be able to deny service without a documented reason, it should have some sort of time-to-live (i.e 1 year), and there should be an appeals process. In a functioning marketplace, companies would be naturally incentivized to care about customers but that stops working in uncompetitive industries (which currently describes most of the economy).

Instead of regulation, I'd like to see the government offer a free service. A digital commons. In this case the public library version of Tinder, with strict rules of who can be banned and where everyone is treated equally.

You want the government to be that involved in pair-selection in the population??? I am disturbed. Eugenics aside: you know that a direct result of this is that border services, local police, etc will have access to a database of dick pics, don't you?

Re: Tinder just permabanned me or the problem with big tech

#470

Post by gnopgnip »

smsm42 wrote: post #284
015a wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Take their money and run" is one of those standard operating practices in big tech that I think obviously needs legislation to curb. Once you start looking, you see it everywhere; whether its movies on iTunes, books on Kindle, or costumes in Fortnite. If you break their ToS, they're allowed to cancel your account, without recourse, and take away all the content you purchased. Its especially egregious in gaming, wher…

What you don't seem to realize here is that various app stores, etc almost never sell you any content. They sell you a temporary revokable right to access content. It's like a movie theater ticket, with an added bonus of ushers being paranoid assholes that could kick you out any moment without a reason. You don't own the movie, you can just watch it, if you're lucky. If you think that service isn't worth the price -…

It doesn't matter if you receive a license and not ownership of a physical good or copyright, it still comes down to contract law. If the company you are buying the license from revokes it, and doesn't uphold their side of the contract you can sue them for breach of contract. A contract term that says they can revoke the license at any time for no reason, without refund is unconscionable and unenforceable. Basically they need to show a judge that you acted maliciously or otherwise violated the contract, or they need to provide a refund.
Post reply on HN