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I'm no fan of Facebook, but I think this is pretty extreme. Other than laws barring discrimination against protected classes, nobody has a right to demand that

I'm no fan of Facebook, but I think this is pretty extreme. Other than laws barring discrimination against protected classes, nobody has a right to demand that any company provide them services.

jlawson 5y ago
Yes they do have that right, if the company has no substitute, and if doing without it is a substantial impact on life. For example, the power company. The telephone company. A sole ISP with no local alternatives. A company that owns an important toll road near your house. Monopolistic social media companies. Etc.
- Karunamon 5y ago
  They don't have that right now. There is no legal framework yet for demanding a social media company provide you an account. Many of us would like to see that changed.
  - fredsmith42 5y ago
    If you own a Quest VR headset and have purchased games, a ban means you cannot play or download them. I would hope that would be reasonable grounds for a suit in small claims court. If they make membership in the social network a requirement of using a product you purchased, that comes with responsibilities on their end too.
    - Karunamon 5y ago
      That'll be irrelevant soon, thankfully. https://www.nme.com/news/gaming-news/oculus-quest-2-headsets-wont-need-facebook-logins-in-the-future-3082780 https://www.nme.com/news/gaming-news/oculus-quest-2-headsets...
- vinaypai 5y ago
  IMO, you really need to reexamine your life choices if your consider Facebook an essential service on par with electricity. Frankly, it provides negative value and my life has been vastly improved since I logged off and blocked their cookies a couple of years ago.
  - JohnHaugeland 5y ago
    The courts in four countries have already made this requirement. Just because it isn't necessary for you does not mean that it's not necessary for someone else. People don't need to "examine their life choices" just because you disagree with their needs.
908B64B197 5y ago
> Other than laws barring discrimination against protected classes You have a point here. I'm running with the assumtion that most of the ban appeals that are going to end up in small claims court are from legitimate users stuck with an automated false positive. Pretty sure if a human spent 30 seconds looking at the ban, they would overrule it. The issue is getting a human to actually look at it. I doubt users brazenly breaking rules would go through the process of going to small claims court. Looking at the thread, I see a lot of people with unusual names (for instance asians and native americans) getting banned. I wonder if this couldn't be interpreted as discriminating these people. Of course, we can only assume FB's good faith here, hence why it would not be a problem for them to produce evidence of bad behavior from the people they banned.
Nextgrid 5y ago
There is an argument to be made that if the company has more than a % of marketshare in a given market or feature and intentionally prevents interoperability then it indeed owes services to everyone. In this case, Facebook is the new website/storefront/phone number for a lot of small businesses as well as the default communications medium for a large chunk of the population and makes it impossible to interact with these without having an account (unlike let's say a telco or email provider which will happily receive contacts from other providers).
JohnHaugeland 5y ago
Actually, it's required for a great many businesses, such as utilities. It's really weird that HN people think that businesses never have obligations of this kind. It's not even uncommon.

I'm no fan of Facebook, but I think this is pretty extreme. Other than laws barring discrimination against protected classes, nobody has a right to demand that any company provide them services.

jlawson 5y ago

Yes they do have that right, if the company has no substitute, and if doing without it is a substantial impact on life. For example, the power company. The telephone company. A sole ISP with no local alternatives. A company that owns an important toll road near your house. Monopolistic social media companies. Etc.

Karunamon 5y ago
They don't have that right now. There is no legal framework yet for demanding a social media company provide you an account. Many of us would like to see that changed.
- fredsmith42 5y ago
  If you own a Quest VR headset and have purchased games, a ban means you cannot play or download them. I would hope that would be reasonable grounds for a suit in small claims court. If they make membership in the social network a requirement of using a product you purchased, that comes with responsibilities on their end too.
  - Karunamon 5y ago
    That'll be irrelevant soon, thankfully. https://www.nme.com/news/gaming-news/oculus-quest-2-headsets-wont-need-facebook-logins-in-the-future-3082780 https://www.nme.com/news/gaming-news/oculus-quest-2-headsets...
vinaypai 5y ago
IMO, you really need to reexamine your life choices if your consider Facebook an essential service on par with electricity. Frankly, it provides negative value and my life has been vastly improved since I logged off and blocked their cookies a couple of years ago.
- JohnHaugeland 5y ago
  The courts in four countries have already made this requirement. Just because it isn't necessary for you does not mean that it's not necessary for someone else. People don't need to "examine their life choices" just because you disagree with their needs.

908B64B197 5y ago

> Other than laws barring discrimination against protected classes You have a point here. I'm running with the assumtion that most of the ban appeals that are going to end up in small claims court are from legitimate users stuck with an automated false positive. Pretty sure if a human spent 30 seconds looking at the ban, they would overrule it. The issue is getting a human to actually look at it. I doubt users brazenly breaking rules would go through the process of going to small claims court. Looking at the thread, I see a lot of people with unusual names (for instance asians and native americans) getting banned. I wonder if this couldn't be interpreted as discriminating these people. Of course, we can only assume FB's good faith here, hence why it would not be a problem for them to produce evidence of bad behavior from the people they banned.

Nextgrid 5y ago

There is an argument to be made that if the company has more than a % of marketshare in a given market or feature and intentionally prevents interoperability then it indeed owes services to everyone. In this case, Facebook is the new website/storefront/phone number for a lot of small businesses as well as the default communications medium for a large chunk of the population and makes it impossible to interact with these without having an account (unlike let's say a telco or email provider which will happily receive contacts from other providers).

JohnHaugeland 5y ago

Actually, it's required for a great many businesses, such as utilities. It's really weird that HN people think that businesses never have obligations of this kind. It's not even uncommon.