13 ms·

This is one of my least favorite innovations of Silicon Valley, the opaque, confusing, no stated reasons practice of banning users. I totally understand why th

by CPLX 9y ago

This is one of my least favorite innovations of Silicon Valley, the opaque, confusing, no stated reasons practice of banning users. I totally understand why things developed the way they did. The internet is huge and full of bad actors, and a nascent service is in real existential danger of being overwhelmed and swamped by fraud. If you tell bad actors why you're banning them and spend valuable time communicating with them it can put you out of business early on. But like in so many other arenas, the Valley mentality hasn't adopted to the fact that they are no longer underdog rebels besieged by barbarians on one side and big scary rich corporations on the other site. The reality is now that these companies are the ruling class, and the users are the general population. And people rely on these services and base their lives on them. Arbitrary and capriciously depriving people of access to these platforms without any kind of due process rights isn't OK any more. There's a reason we have consumer protection laws, why someone decided we needed things like the Montreal Convention and the FDCPA and CPSC and so on. It's axiomatic that we can't trust monopolistic corporations to do right by the little guy. This Silicon Valley mentality is increasingly going to lead to pitchforks, torches, and regulation in the near future, it's an inevitability. Rightly so.

tankenmate 9y ago
I don't think it is right to regard UpWork as a "nascent service". They have had plenty of time to make better policies if they felt it was necessary, but it's hard to assume other than it is not "worth it" to them. UpWork's antecedents Elance and oDesk have been around for 18 years and 15 years respectively. From outside observations it is not hard to come to the conclusion that they care little beyond "working the numbers", as long as their sales pipe is full they probably won't change. As you suggest bringing this to your local trade body and making a formal complaint is probably the way to go. It will take a long time and a lot of complaints to get there though. In the mean time avoid them, both the buy and sell side.
- adventured 9y ago
  I think it's very clear the parent was not referring to Upwork as a nascent service. They were speaking generally about the process that leads to a culture of ingrained behavior over time, which starts from that nascent service context. You can derive that is very likely the case based on the intelligence and composure of the rest of their post. You can also derive it directly from the full paragraph text, which is not referring specifically to Upwork, rather it is referring to Silicon Valley broadly, and why "things" developed the way they did with how SV firms have tended to treat customers/users.
meuk 9y ago
I am quite bitter about the state of affairs. If a company decides to screw you over, they pretty much can. Legally, there is not much you can do if you're not filthy rich. The most you can do is make a fuss about it on social media. If you attract a lot of people, the company will issue an apology and give you a stupid surprise. I absolutely despise this very common pattern. In the end, the company gets free publicity for screwing you over, and the 100s or 1000s of people in the same situation won't be helped - just because they don't have a massive userbase on social media.
- crankylinuxuser 9y ago
  The state of affairs, is that Silicon Valley along with companies that are willing to sell out to automation for everything - have become the new ruling class. Thought experiment: What happens if Amazon, right now, decided that you are not a good customer and deleted every one of your accounts and deleted all your AWS data? As of right now, you can't buy anything from them goods wise. And if you were using AWS as a webservice platform, now, you can't. No recourse. At all. Your Google account was hacked, but google saw you as a spammer and hacker trying to penetrate Google's security systems. They blast all accounts away that have logged in with your IP address of the duration of the hack. You're now without a whole slew of services. Dead in the water, again. Who do you call? Nobody. But you can leave a badly worded post in Google forums - oh wait, you can't even do that.
  - kuschku 9y ago
    > What happens if Amazon, right now, decided that you are not a good customer and deleted every one of your accounts and deleted all your AWS data? As of right now, you can't buy anything from them goods wise. And if you were using AWS as a webservice platform, now, you can't. No recourse. At all. People actually have sued against that in Germany, and a German court determined that Amazon has to allow you to recover all your data, and all digital products (e.g. Amazon Kindle books) you paid for.
    - crankylinuxuser 9y ago
RandomTisk 9y ago
That's exactly what jumped out at me too, it's pretty disturbing that they're closing someone's account and stealing or preventing them from getting their hard earned money without any real due process. There is a reason when the government hands you a fine or imprisons you they have to tell you exactly what you did wrong, doing anything but is extremely unethical.
- ghthor 9y ago
  This seems reckless on Upworks part considering the lawyers I know are using upwork for a significant portion of they're income.
sillysaurus3 9y ago
Also HN. I no longer have the right to upvote anything. I'm not allowed to more than five comments every three hours. My ranking for my comments is now penalized in a unique way: unlikely to ever be the top comment regardless of upvotes, but my comments are no longer pinned to the bottom, like they used to be. What does that have to do with this? Well... But like in so many other arenas, the Valley mentality hasn't adopted to the fact that they are no longer underdog rebels besieged by barbarians on one side and big scary rich corporations on the other site. The reality is now that these companies are the ruling class, and the users are the general population. And people rely on these services and base their lives on them. That's exactly how this feels. It's everywhere in Silicon Valley. And when you try to talk to them and point out that maybe this is unfair, it's like they don't even grok it. "Fairness? Morals?" It's about power. The power to control you and have you obey. You either have power or you don't. And unless you build something, you have no power at all. Those are uncomfortable conclusions. It pretty much defines what you have to do in life, for years, if you want to be in a position where anyone will listen. But that was always true – the world just makes it more obvious now. But... It's also exciting. We have the ability to acquire power. It's true that most of us won't acquire funding, which is what we really need to influence the world. But at no point in history has it been so easy (relatively speaking) for a side project to suddenly influence the world. If you were a farmer in the middle ages, you were boned. Ditto for most of the present world today. Isn't it weird? SV suddenly became the ruling class; you're exactly right. And no one has really been talking about the implications yet.
- rgbrenner 9y ago
  have you considered emailing hn and asking what's going on? They're usually pretty responsive.. and I've always thought of you as a reasonable contributor to this site.
  - monksy 9y ago
    Well theres that Church guy that shouldn't be named here. They're not always "fair" or responsible.
    - 9y ago
brador 9y ago
We need regulation that any ban must come with a chance to appeal and a fixed end date no more than 3 years into the future. Forgiveness is an important part of humanity that, at times, must be enforced.
crankylinuxuser 9y ago
It's not just "banning users". The core issue is deeper than that. The core issue is that Silicon Valley sold a dream: "We can build business without people in its ranks. Instead, we can staff programmers and build glue-logic around our business cases, and automate everything. This saves all the money from hiring people." The investors bought into that idea. Because if it did work, you can have companies that are 1/10'th the size of previous high industry companies, because all the work is automated. Look no further than all the current crop of companies using software in this fashion. Some AI system "learned" that your combined inputs related a fraction higher as fraud - banned. Or someone checked a box in the wrong location and you're locked out. Or your system is deleting user content at random, and there is no-one to call. Who ends up being tech support for these new companies? The executives. But that's only for people smart enough to realize to send them messages, or otherwise garner their attention via Twitter, Reddit, or HN and happen to be in the right place at the right time. Even the aforementioned gamification needs to be done for even HN, to get the right post at the right time. Where do we go from here? In truth, not many places. Non-software companies with real human service will get eaten out of house and home by companies willing to make deals with machines. The VC funding is in AI businesses, not traditional. But one can still choose to be customers at respectful businesses. But the internet makes that much harder, as going online also includes 'selling out' customer service. Some AI will then tell agents "you can't do that" even , if it is what's needed.
- Slansitartop 9y ago
  > Where do we go from here? In truth, not many places. Non-software companies with real human service will get eaten out of house and home by companies willing to make deals with machines. The VC funding is in AI businesses, not traditional. But one can still choose to be customers at respectful businesses. But the internet makes that much harder, as going online also includes 'selling out' customer service. Some AI will then tell agents "you can't do that" even , if it is what's needed. You're talking like the only solutions to this can come from the market, and if the market forces won't work that way then we're screwed and must give up. The real solution to this is customer/employee friendly regulation. I'm thinking something like a rule requiring an easy, timely way to appeal to a human that's empowered to override the automation after any adverse ruling by it; backed up by the threat of fines and legal sanctions. In the current American federal political climate, that's a stretch, but there are other jurisdictions, at the state level and internationally, where something regulation like this might be feasible.
scardine 9y ago
It feels like there is an incentive to ban high reputation, high earning freelancers from the marketplace for the slightest excuse. New users often charge bellow their market rate in order to build reputation on the platform. Then once you get your 5 stars and start making good money you get banned kafka style, lame explanation, no resource. Looks like they want to keep it a race to the bottom more than anything.
- saint_fiasco 9y ago
  If they take a percentage as commission, wouldn't it be good for them if their freelancers charged a lot of money?
  - s73v3r_ 9y ago
    It's better for them if the money gets put in their escrow, and then they ban the user, confiscating the money.
    - saint_fiasco 9y ago
      But then they don't get money from that user ever again. It only makes sense to do that if they suspect that is the last job their user will take. Otherwise it's better to keep the user happy and keep taking a percentage for all their future work.
      - s73v3r_ 9y ago
        You're thinking way too long term.
  - scardine 9y ago
    I'm sure the do their math but if they make more with higher income freelancers the current state of affairs in the platform does not reflect this - personally I feel it is the contrary as there is more incentive to charge bellow market rate. Perhaps Upwork makes more in volume if workers race bottom. Or they are really dumb. Lets hope some insider post anonymously and explain the contradiction.
vkou 9y ago
The problem in our society is that power is incredibly unevenly distributed. Silicon valley looks at this problem, and says that it needs to be disrupted. It then disrupts it, by taking away power from organizations that have it, and giving it to itself. We then all pat ourselves on the back and order a rum and coke.
njarboe 9y ago
It is too bad that these companies can't charge some high rate for dealing with problems in person at an office. I would sure love to have the option to have no password reset available on my gmail account with the option of going to an office and paying $50 to reset it. Or $50 to figure out why my Google account got banned and the option to get it re-instated. I guess such a system is bad for PR, "Look, Google screws up and makes you pay to fix it.", but for me this would be a really nice system. I really don't like how I can reset my brokerage account password without meeting someone in person and verifying my identity.
- JasonFruit 9y ago
  I think requiring payment when your customer is at their least pleased is probably not a good business move.
  - njarboe 9y ago
    For 5%(?) of people it might be and that 5% are the customers businesses want the most.
sschueller 9y ago
It's gone off the deep end. I created a new twitter account and a few days lates it's banned. I haven't even had a chance to follow/tweet or do anything.
- anatolinicolae 9y ago
  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Slansitartop 9y ago
I look forward to the day when the employment market has been thoroughly disrupted by startups that bans like this have severe economic consequences to those affected. Truly building a better for all of humanity. /s
readams 9y ago
Brazil came out in 1985 and basically involves identical bureaucratic obstacles. Catch 22 was published in 1961 and also describes similar unthinking callous bureaucracy. It's not Silicon Valley you're railing against: it's blind unthinking bureaucracy. It's a problem that goes back much further than the days when "silicon valley" was all orchards.
- paulpauper 9y ago
  I disagree. not like Walmart can deny their employees their pay. The move to independent contractual work instead of salaried work means workers are at the mercy of not only a bureaucracy but simply not getting paid.
- CPLX 9y ago
  Brazil and Catch 22 both describe dealing with tortuous government bureaucracy. There's a long tradition of government being miserable in this regard but it's still a public institution that's accountable to its constituents. In fact often the bureaucracy is because of its public nature. Comparing this to private Silicon Valley companies that are't accountable to anyone for their behavior towards individual users actually illustrates the problem neatly.
Pica_soO 9y ago
Also, a lot of the task-rabbits forced to do customer-service work have a axe to grind with the upper echelon. You can test this out- try to get customer service as a yeoman and try to get customer service as a valley baron. So, lesson learned- never enter true occupation data in a field when registering.
DannyBee 9y ago
"This is one of my least favorite innovations of Silicon Valley, the opaque, confusing, no stated reasons practice of banning users. " This isn't a silicon valley innovation, it was the modus operandi of insurance companies, disability roles etc for years. (and i'm sure various industries before that)

by CPLX 9y ago

tankenmate 9y ago

I don't think it is right to regard UpWork as a "nascent service". They have had plenty of time to make better policies if they felt it was necessary, but it's hard to assume other than it is not "worth it" to them. UpWork's antecedents Elance and oDesk have been around for 18 years and 15 years respectively. From outside observations it is not hard to come to the conclusion that they care little beyond "working the numbers", as long as their sales pipe is full they probably won't change. As you suggest bringing this to your local trade body and making a formal complaint is probably the way to go. It will take a long time and a lot of complaints to get there though. In the mean time avoid them, both the buy and sell side.

adventured 9y ago
I think it's very clear the parent was not referring to Upwork as a nascent service. They were speaking generally about the process that leads to a culture of ingrained behavior over time, which starts from that nascent service context. You can derive that is very likely the case based on the intelligence and composure of the rest of their post. You can also derive it directly from the full paragraph text, which is not referring specifically to Upwork, rather it is referring to Silicon Valley broadly, and why "things" developed the way they did with how SV firms have tended to treat customers/users.

meuk 9y ago

I am quite bitter about the state of affairs. If a company decides to screw you over, they pretty much can. Legally, there is not much you can do if you're not filthy rich. The most you can do is make a fuss about it on social media. If you attract a lot of people, the company will issue an apology and give you a stupid surprise. I absolutely despise this very common pattern. In the end, the company gets free publicity for screwing you over, and the 100s or 1000s of people in the same situation won't be helped - just because they don't have a massive userbase on social media.

crankylinuxuser 9y ago
The state of affairs, is that Silicon Valley along with companies that are willing to sell out to automation for everything - have become the new ruling class. Thought experiment: What happens if Amazon, right now, decided that you are not a good customer and deleted every one of your accounts and deleted all your AWS data? As of right now, you can't buy anything from them goods wise. And if you were using AWS as a webservice platform, now, you can't. No recourse. At all. Your Google account was hacked, but google saw you as a spammer and hacker trying to penetrate Google's security systems. They blast all accounts away that have logged in with your IP address of the duration of the hack. You're now without a whole slew of services. Dead in the water, again. Who do you call? Nobody. But you can leave a badly worded post in Google forums - oh wait, you can't even do that.
- kuschku 9y ago
  > What happens if Amazon, right now, decided that you are not a good customer and deleted every one of your accounts and deleted all your AWS data? As of right now, you can't buy anything from them goods wise. And if you were using AWS as a webservice platform, now, you can't. No recourse. At all. People actually have sued against that in Germany, and a German court determined that Amazon has to allow you to recover all your data, and all digital products (e.g. Amazon Kindle books) you paid for.
  - crankylinuxuser 9y ago

RandomTisk 9y ago

That's exactly what jumped out at me too, it's pretty disturbing that they're closing someone's account and stealing or preventing them from getting their hard earned money without any real due process. There is a reason when the government hands you a fine or imprisons you they have to tell you exactly what you did wrong, doing anything but is extremely unethical.

ghthor 9y ago
This seems reckless on Upworks part considering the lawyers I know are using upwork for a significant portion of they're income.

sillysaurus3 9y ago

Also HN. I no longer have the right to upvote anything. I'm not allowed to more than five comments every three hours. My ranking for my comments is now penalized in a unique way: unlikely to ever be the top comment regardless of upvotes, but my comments are no longer pinned to the bottom, like they used to be. What does that have to do with this? Well... But like in so many other arenas, the Valley mentality hasn't adopted to the fact that they are no longer underdog rebels besieged by barbarians on one side and big scary rich corporations on the other site. The reality is now that these companies are the ruling class, and the users are the general population. And people rely on these services and base their lives on them. That's exactly how this feels. It's everywhere in Silicon Valley. And when you try to talk to them and point out that maybe this is unfair, it's like they don't even grok it. "Fairness? Morals?" It's about power. The power to control you and have you obey. You either have power or you don't. And unless you build something, you have no power at all. Those are uncomfortable conclusions. It pretty much defines what you have to do in life, for years, if you want to be in a position where anyone will listen. But that was always true – the world just makes it more obvious now. But... It's also exciting. We have the ability to acquire power. It's true that most of us won't acquire funding, which is what we really need to influence the world. But at no point in history has it been so easy (relatively speaking) for a side project to suddenly influence the world. If you were a farmer in the middle ages, you were boned. Ditto for most of the present world today. Isn't it weird? SV suddenly became the ruling class; you're exactly right. And no one has really been talking about the implications yet.

rgbrenner 9y ago
have you considered emailing hn and asking what's going on? They're usually pretty responsive.. and I've always thought of you as a reasonable contributor to this site.
- monksy 9y ago
  Well theres that Church guy that shouldn't be named here. They're not always "fair" or responsible.
  - 9y ago

brador 9y ago

We need regulation that any ban must come with a chance to appeal and a fixed end date no more than 3 years into the future. Forgiveness is an important part of humanity that, at times, must be enforced.

crankylinuxuser 9y ago

It's not just "banning users". The core issue is deeper than that. The core issue is that Silicon Valley sold a dream: "We can build business without people in its ranks. Instead, we can staff programmers and build glue-logic around our business cases, and automate everything. This saves all the money from hiring people." The investors bought into that idea. Because if it did work, you can have companies that are 1/10'th the size of previous high industry companies, because all the work is automated. Look no further than all the current crop of companies using software in this fashion. Some AI system "learned" that your combined inputs related a fraction higher as fraud - banned. Or someone checked a box in the wrong location and you're locked out. Or your system is deleting user content at random, and there is no-one to call. Who ends up being tech support for these new companies? The executives. But that's only for people smart enough to realize to send them messages, or otherwise garner their attention via Twitter, Reddit, or HN and happen to be in the right place at the right time. Even the aforementioned gamification needs to be done for even HN, to get the right post at the right time. Where do we go from here? In truth, not many places. Non-software companies with real human service will get eaten out of house and home by companies willing to make deals with machines. The VC funding is in AI businesses, not traditional. But one can still choose to be customers at respectful businesses. But the internet makes that much harder, as going online also includes 'selling out' customer service. Some AI will then tell agents "you can't do that" even , if it is what's needed.

Slansitartop 9y ago
> Where do we go from here? In truth, not many places. Non-software companies with real human service will get eaten out of house and home by companies willing to make deals with machines. The VC funding is in AI businesses, not traditional. But one can still choose to be customers at respectful businesses. But the internet makes that much harder, as going online also includes 'selling out' customer service. Some AI will then tell agents "you can't do that" even , if it is what's needed. You're talking like the only solutions to this can come from the market, and if the market forces won't work that way then we're screwed and must give up. The real solution to this is customer/employee friendly regulation. I'm thinking something like a rule requiring an easy, timely way to appeal to a human that's empowered to override the automation after any adverse ruling by it; backed up by the threat of fines and legal sanctions. In the current American federal political climate, that's a stretch, but there are other jurisdictions, at the state level and internationally, where something regulation like this might be feasible.

scardine 9y ago

It feels like there is an incentive to ban high reputation, high earning freelancers from the marketplace for the slightest excuse. New users often charge bellow their market rate in order to build reputation on the platform. Then once you get your 5 stars and start making good money you get banned kafka style, lame explanation, no resource. Looks like they want to keep it a race to the bottom more than anything.

saint_fiasco 9y ago
If they take a percentage as commission, wouldn't it be good for them if their freelancers charged a lot of money?
- s73v3r_ 9y ago
  It's better for them if the money gets put in their escrow, and then they ban the user, confiscating the money.
  - saint_fiasco 9y ago
    But then they don't get money from that user ever again. It only makes sense to do that if they suspect that is the last job their user will take. Otherwise it's better to keep the user happy and keep taking a percentage for all their future work.
    - s73v3r_ 9y ago
      You're thinking way too long term.
- scardine 9y ago
  I'm sure the do their math but if they make more with higher income freelancers the current state of affairs in the platform does not reflect this - personally I feel it is the contrary as there is more incentive to charge bellow market rate. Perhaps Upwork makes more in volume if workers race bottom. Or they are really dumb. Lets hope some insider post anonymously and explain the contradiction.

vkou 9y ago

The problem in our society is that power is incredibly unevenly distributed. Silicon valley looks at this problem, and says that it needs to be disrupted. It then disrupts it, by taking away power from organizations that have it, and giving it to itself. We then all pat ourselves on the back and order a rum and coke.

njarboe 9y ago

It is too bad that these companies can't charge some high rate for dealing with problems in person at an office. I would sure love to have the option to have no password reset available on my gmail account with the option of going to an office and paying $50 to reset it. Or $50 to figure out why my Google account got banned and the option to get it re-instated. I guess such a system is bad for PR, "Look, Google screws up and makes you pay to fix it.", but for me this would be a really nice system. I really don't like how I can reset my brokerage account password without meeting someone in person and verifying my identity.

JasonFruit 9y ago
I think requiring payment when your customer is at their least pleased is probably not a good business move.
- njarboe 9y ago
  For 5%(?) of people it might be and that 5% are the customers businesses want the most.

sschueller 9y ago

It's gone off the deep end. I created a new twitter account and a few days lates it's banned. I haven't even had a chance to follow/tweet or do anything.

anatolinicolae 9y ago
¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Slansitartop 9y ago

I look forward to the day when the employment market has been thoroughly disrupted by startups that bans like this have severe economic consequences to those affected. Truly building a better for all of humanity. /s

readams 9y ago

Brazil came out in 1985 and basically involves identical bureaucratic obstacles. Catch 22 was published in 1961 and also describes similar unthinking callous bureaucracy. It's not Silicon Valley you're railing against: it's blind unthinking bureaucracy. It's a problem that goes back much further than the days when "silicon valley" was all orchards.

paulpauper 9y ago
I disagree. not like Walmart can deny their employees their pay. The move to independent contractual work instead of salaried work means workers are at the mercy of not only a bureaucracy but simply not getting paid.
CPLX 9y ago
Brazil and Catch 22 both describe dealing with tortuous government bureaucracy. There's a long tradition of government being miserable in this regard but it's still a public institution that's accountable to its constituents. In fact often the bureaucracy is because of its public nature. Comparing this to private Silicon Valley companies that are't accountable to anyone for their behavior towards individual users actually illustrates the problem neatly.

Pica_soO 9y ago

Also, a lot of the task-rabbits forced to do customer-service work have a axe to grind with the upper echelon. You can test this out- try to get customer service as a yeoman and try to get customer service as a valley baron. So, lesson learned- never enter true occupation data in a field when registering.

DannyBee 9y ago

"This is one of my least favorite innovations of Silicon Valley, the opaque, confusing, no stated reasons practice of banning users. " This isn't a silicon valley innovation, it was the modus operandi of insurance companies, disability roles etc for years. (and i'm sure various industries before that)