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Innocent? No company that uses a double Irish tax structuring scheme to avoid paying billions has any right to cast guilt on consumers who legally purchase phon

by xiaoma 10y ago

Innocent? No company that uses a double Irish tax structuring scheme to avoid paying billions has any right to cast guilt on consumers who legally purchase phones and take advantage of minor arbitrage opportunities. If you truly feel that wiping those people's personal communications records and blocking their email is a reasoned response then I sincerely hope you are never in a position of power.

rifung 10y ago
> No company that uses a double Irish tax structuring scheme to avoid paying billions has any right to cast guilt on consumers who legally purchase phones and take advantage of minor arbitrage opportunities. What guilt is being cast here exactly? The company used automated tools to disable accounts that were found to breach their ToS, likely the majority of which were bots. I mean it's one thing to complain if these people were false positives, but they actually weren't. What happened to these people sucks. I get that. But you make it sound as if someone at Google specifically targeted these people's accounts on purpose, when it's significantly more likely that they were just trying to disable bot accounts for scalpers and didn't realize some people were using their real accounts to help scalpers. Do you think they are stupid enough to not realize how bad the backlash from this would be?
- xiaoma 10y ago
  >"The company used automated tools to disable accounts that were found to breach their ToS, likely the majority of which were bots." In the US, there's a concept called right of first sale that protects people's ability to resell what they buy to others. Sales contracts preventing resale have lost many times in courts. From my perspective Google trying to prevent "scalping", as you put it, is already overreach, regardless of what verbiage they might have shoved in their TOS or the massive legal resources they can deploy to get their way. Furthermore deactivating someone's gmail without even letting them export their data is profoundly destructive on the victim's lives.
kllrnohj 10y ago
> Innocent? No company that uses a double Irish tax structuring scheme to avoid paying billions has any right to cast guilt on consumers who legally purchase phones and take advantage of minor arbitrage opportunities. That has no bearing on the issue at hand. Just because entity A is guilty of X doesn't magically make entity B innocent of Y.
- xiaoma 10y ago
  If powerful entity A is guilty of X on a massive scale and then punishes weaker entity B for engaging in X on a small scale it makes A even more contemptible. For your reference: A = Google X = Arbitrage B = Users who bought and resold Pixels. Y = X / 10^9
londons_explore 10y ago
Wiping is an overstatement here. They disabled the accounts with a message inviting them to appeal. Humans reviewed the appeals, and then re-enabled the accounts.

by xiaoma 10y ago

rifung 10y ago

> No company that uses a double Irish tax structuring scheme to avoid paying billions has any right to cast guilt on consumers who legally purchase phones and take advantage of minor arbitrage opportunities. What guilt is being cast here exactly? The company used automated tools to disable accounts that were found to breach their ToS, likely the majority of which were bots. I mean it's one thing to complain if these people were false positives, but they actually weren't. What happened to these people sucks. I get that. But you make it sound as if someone at Google specifically targeted these people's accounts on purpose, when it's significantly more likely that they were just trying to disable bot accounts for scalpers and didn't realize some people were using their real accounts to help scalpers. Do you think they are stupid enough to not realize how bad the backlash from this would be?

xiaoma 10y ago
>"The company used automated tools to disable accounts that were found to breach their ToS, likely the majority of which were bots." In the US, there's a concept called right of first sale that protects people's ability to resell what they buy to others. Sales contracts preventing resale have lost many times in courts. From my perspective Google trying to prevent "scalping", as you put it, is already overreach, regardless of what verbiage they might have shoved in their TOS or the massive legal resources they can deploy to get their way. Furthermore deactivating someone's gmail without even letting them export their data is profoundly destructive on the victim's lives.

kllrnohj 10y ago

> Innocent? No company that uses a double Irish tax structuring scheme to avoid paying billions has any right to cast guilt on consumers who legally purchase phones and take advantage of minor arbitrage opportunities. That has no bearing on the issue at hand. Just because entity A is guilty of X doesn't magically make entity B innocent of Y.

xiaoma 10y ago
If powerful entity A is guilty of X on a massive scale and then punishes weaker entity B for engaging in X on a small scale it makes A even more contemptible. For your reference: A = Google X = Arbitrage B = Users who bought and resold Pixels. Y = X / 10^9

londons_explore 10y ago

Wiping is an overstatement here. They disabled the accounts with a message inviting them to appeal. Humans reviewed the appeals, and then re-enabled the accounts.