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There is a pattern in technology companies and user reports of them: * User does thing that appears to be fine. * User is banned * User has no way of fixing

There is a pattern in technology companies and user reports of them: * User does thing that appears to be fine. * User is banned * User has no way of fixing this, ask for redress, they are just cut out now. I think this pattern is something that should be held in contempt and is eventually thrown away. If I had to guess, though, it won't be.

mooreds 4y ago
Don't forget step 4 and 5: * User posts on HN (or reddit or someplace else) * If post gets attention, issue is resolved via manual, backchannel efforts. If post doesn't get attention, issue remains unresolved.
- OrangeMonkey 4y ago
  I always forget step 4 and 5 - the most important steps as its the only thing that helps the user.
  - notlukesky 4y ago
    That does not work for Oracle because they are not on these forums to the extent of say Stripe or FAANG engineers.
    - nixcraft 4y ago
      Well, I tweeted the link, but my experience shows that Oracle is not a darling company for most solo developers. Typically solo devs go with DigitalOcean, Linode and co (or free stuff from AWS, even Lightsail offer some support). Either way, I hope they get some help.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
  - soco 4y ago
    I tried that for my Tumblr account termination. But because Tumblr is not Google, nobody cared.
- zaarn 4y ago
  Oracle doesn't care about HN unless they can use HN as a direct source of money. Users being mad on HN doesn't matter, being mad at Oracle does not cause Oracle to make profit. If OP wants the issue fixed, the most likely solution is to drop affiliate links in the comments, as a positive revenue flow might get one of Oracle's sales-lawyers to investigate the commotion and see if more monetary sources are available to be cracked open.
  - yellowapple 4y ago
    Apparently Oracle cares enough to down your comment. I get that they gotta keep their lawyers busy but sockpuppetry is kind of a low blow even for them ;)
    - zaarn 4y ago
      There is probably enough people who anthropomorphize Oracle and think that Oracle is somehow about something else than making Larry Ellison a shitton of money.
- cyxxon 4y ago
  Hm, I just yesterday read a post where someone stated that they could not get their account fixed while they themselves were a SWE at Google (I think), so especially 5 is not in any way guaranteed.
- theknocker 4y ago
deltree7 4y ago
You missed out an important step * HNers, redditors and TikTokers somehow always believe the user's side of the story even though they have absolutely no clue about the context or the integrity of the complainer because pitchfork and anti-corp is always the default stance rather than due process on social media
- OrangeMonkey 4y ago
  You are not wrong at all. That said - I would only state that myself, and more than a few users here I imagine, have been in situations where we did nothing untoward and were banned, suspended, had a corporate automatic system take negative action for us that was undeserved. I think most folks are willing to assume a corporate "banality of evil" because they have seen it. You are 100% right though, this could be warranted.
- HelloNurse 4y ago
  In general, this point of view has some merit; but this is Oracle.
- josephcsible 4y ago
  If you get sued and don't bother to show up to court, the judge will take the other side's word as gospel and you'll lose with a default judgment against you. This isn't unfair, though. Similarly, since these companies never give their side of the story, I see nothing unfair about assuming they're in the wrong.
  - deltree7 4y ago
    Actually companies absolutely should take that path. Society deserves Trump and Musk way of dealing with public instead of being professional and courteous. Oracle should absolutely out the guys whom they suspend because they have kiddie porn or did illegal transactions on their site or break terms of services. Seeing Musk and Trump's success, one bold company will do it and will be enormously successful in deploying an army of cults against the Karens of the world. As they say, you can't bring a knife to a gun's fight
datavirtue 4y ago
Helping the handful of customers you fuck over accidentally is not web scale. So, they are not interested. If you can't automate it, they automate it anyway.
mikro2nd 4y ago
It's worse than that. You omitted * User has no idea what they did wrong, and nor does anybody else. And the trouble with that is, nobody can learn what the offensive behaviour was. (Perhaps that's intentional?)
- vkou 4y ago
  It's not intentional against legitimate users, but it is intentional against people abusing the system, because telling them how they got caught will let them adjust what they are doing, to avoid getting caught in the future.
  - mikro2nd 4y ago
    Yes. Exactly. Telling people what they've done wrong enables them to behave better in future. Isn't that what we want... rehabilitation?
    - vkou 4y ago
      That works on people who are using your system with good intentions. That does not work on people who are using your system with malicious intentions (and who face zero personal consequences when they get caught again, and again, and again). They don't get rehabilitated, when you tell them which rule you broke[1], they just adjust their malicious use to work around that rule. Rehabilitation is only possible when both parties are operating in good faith, which is why it is done with threat of prison, fines, revocation of parole, etc. It can't be done when the 'rehabilitated' party can just reneg on the agreement with zero consequences. The point of anti-abuse rules isn't the letter of the rules, it's the intent behind them. 'There's no rule that says a dog can't play basketball' only works in children's fairy tales. There's a reason why no large firm or financial institution will tell you the why. It's not because they think you have good intentions, and they hate you. It's because they are afraid you have malicious intentions, and they aren't interested in holding your hand as you defraud them. Of course, people in category one get burnt by this, and then complain on Twitter/FB/HN. [1] If you want to live in a world where anti-abuse systems tell you which rule you broke, you'll probably need to also live in a world where there are very serious consequences that are - with high consistency - inflicted on people breaking those rules in bad faith. We don't live in that kind of world, things like the CFAA are at the same time, both overly broad and draconian and largely toothless.
jnwatson 4y ago
It helps to understand the motivation why “Big tech” operates this way. Any time a company offers something free that is Turing complete, abuse occurs at incredible scale, scale that can only be opposed through automated means. The next level of abuse is that the same abusers will use all the same escalation methods as legit accounts. They want to figure out why they got blocked so they can evade the blocking. It takes a lot of work to separate the legit accounts from the abusers.
- jl6 4y ago
  The problem is tractable when the users are paying customers. The issue arises when the product is “free”. The users treat their account like a burner phone, and the service providers treat the users like disposable cattle.
  - vlovich123 4y ago
    I thought so too buy many abusers will create accounts en masse & add stolen fake credit cards as payment options (or create virtual cards with very small limits? Not sure if services disallow those kinds of options for that reason). People are quite creative.
intothemild 4y ago
This happened to me with my Amazon (non AWS) account. I live in Europe, and when shopping on Amazon, sometimes the thing I want is in The UK or the US, I'll always try to get it from Europe first so it saves on carbon. But after Brexit, using Amazon UK was no good since getting anything out of the UK was painfully slow.. so I started to use Amazon Germany. Suddenly my account was flagged as fraudulent, i was banned, and I've tried multiple times to get it unbanned.... To no avail. I was told by one of the customer support people the real reason why it was banned... You're not supposed to hop from one Amazon country to another. So why have a universal login? So all my books on Kindle were gone, my movies and tv shows I digitally bought through Prime Video were gone... Everything, all because i committed the crime of not always buying from the same country. So now i make throw away accounts one for each country, and hop between them, refuse to subscribe to prime, and refuse to give Amazon anymore money.

mooreds 4y ago

Don't forget step 4 and 5: * User posts on HN (or reddit or someplace else) * If post gets attention, issue is resolved via manual, backchannel efforts. If post doesn't get attention, issue remains unresolved.

OrangeMonkey 4y ago
I always forget step 4 and 5 - the most important steps as its the only thing that helps the user.
- notlukesky 4y ago
  That does not work for Oracle because they are not on these forums to the extent of say Stripe or FAANG engineers.
  - nixcraft 4y ago
    Well, I tweeted the link, but my experience shows that Oracle is not a darling company for most solo developers. Typically solo devs go with DigitalOcean, Linode and co (or free stuff from AWS, even Lightsail offer some support). Either way, I hope they get some help.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- soco 4y ago
  I tried that for my Tumblr account termination. But because Tumblr is not Google, nobody cared.
zaarn 4y ago
Oracle doesn't care about HN unless they can use HN as a direct source of money. Users being mad on HN doesn't matter, being mad at Oracle does not cause Oracle to make profit. If OP wants the issue fixed, the most likely solution is to drop affiliate links in the comments, as a positive revenue flow might get one of Oracle's sales-lawyers to investigate the commotion and see if more monetary sources are available to be cracked open.
- yellowapple 4y ago
  Apparently Oracle cares enough to down your comment. I get that they gotta keep their lawyers busy but sockpuppetry is kind of a low blow even for them ;)
  - zaarn 4y ago
    There is probably enough people who anthropomorphize Oracle and think that Oracle is somehow about something else than making Larry Ellison a shitton of money.
cyxxon 4y ago
Hm, I just yesterday read a post where someone stated that they could not get their account fixed while they themselves were a SWE at Google (I think), so especially 5 is not in any way guaranteed.
theknocker 4y ago

deltree7 4y ago

You missed out an important step * HNers, redditors and TikTokers somehow always believe the user's side of the story even though they have absolutely no clue about the context or the integrity of the complainer because pitchfork and anti-corp is always the default stance rather than due process on social media

OrangeMonkey 4y ago
You are not wrong at all. That said - I would only state that myself, and more than a few users here I imagine, have been in situations where we did nothing untoward and were banned, suspended, had a corporate automatic system take negative action for us that was undeserved. I think most folks are willing to assume a corporate "banality of evil" because they have seen it. You are 100% right though, this could be warranted.
HelloNurse 4y ago
In general, this point of view has some merit; but this is Oracle.
josephcsible 4y ago
If you get sued and don't bother to show up to court, the judge will take the other side's word as gospel and you'll lose with a default judgment against you. This isn't unfair, though. Similarly, since these companies never give their side of the story, I see nothing unfair about assuming they're in the wrong.
- deltree7 4y ago
  Actually companies absolutely should take that path. Society deserves Trump and Musk way of dealing with public instead of being professional and courteous. Oracle should absolutely out the guys whom they suspend because they have kiddie porn or did illegal transactions on their site or break terms of services. Seeing Musk and Trump's success, one bold company will do it and will be enormously successful in deploying an army of cults against the Karens of the world. As they say, you can't bring a knife to a gun's fight

datavirtue 4y ago

Helping the handful of customers you fuck over accidentally is not web scale. So, they are not interested. If you can't automate it, they automate it anyway.

mikro2nd 4y ago

It's worse than that. You omitted * User has no idea what they did wrong, and nor does anybody else. And the trouble with that is, nobody can learn what the offensive behaviour was. (Perhaps that's intentional?)

vkou 4y ago
It's not intentional against legitimate users, but it is intentional against people abusing the system, because telling them how they got caught will let them adjust what they are doing, to avoid getting caught in the future.
- mikro2nd 4y ago
  Yes. Exactly. Telling people what they've done wrong enables them to behave better in future. Isn't that what we want... rehabilitation?
  - vkou 4y ago
    That works on people who are using your system with good intentions. That does not work on people who are using your system with malicious intentions (and who face zero personal consequences when they get caught again, and again, and again). They don't get rehabilitated, when you tell them which rule you broke[1], they just adjust their malicious use to work around that rule. Rehabilitation is only possible when both parties are operating in good faith, which is why it is done with threat of prison, fines, revocation of parole, etc. It can't be done when the 'rehabilitated' party can just reneg on the agreement with zero consequences. The point of anti-abuse rules isn't the letter of the rules, it's the intent behind them. 'There's no rule that says a dog can't play basketball' only works in children's fairy tales. There's a reason why no large firm or financial institution will tell you the why. It's not because they think you have good intentions, and they hate you. It's because they are afraid you have malicious intentions, and they aren't interested in holding your hand as you defraud them. Of course, people in category one get burnt by this, and then complain on Twitter/FB/HN. [1] If you want to live in a world where anti-abuse systems tell you which rule you broke, you'll probably need to also live in a world where there are very serious consequences that are - with high consistency - inflicted on people breaking those rules in bad faith. We don't live in that kind of world, things like the CFAA are at the same time, both overly broad and draconian and largely toothless.

jnwatson 4y ago

It helps to understand the motivation why “Big tech” operates this way. Any time a company offers something free that is Turing complete, abuse occurs at incredible scale, scale that can only be opposed through automated means. The next level of abuse is that the same abusers will use all the same escalation methods as legit accounts. They want to figure out why they got blocked so they can evade the blocking. It takes a lot of work to separate the legit accounts from the abusers.

jl6 4y ago
The problem is tractable when the users are paying customers. The issue arises when the product is “free”. The users treat their account like a burner phone, and the service providers treat the users like disposable cattle.
- vlovich123 4y ago
  I thought so too buy many abusers will create accounts en masse & add stolen fake credit cards as payment options (or create virtual cards with very small limits? Not sure if services disallow those kinds of options for that reason). People are quite creative.

intothemild 4y ago

This happened to me with my Amazon (non AWS) account. I live in Europe, and when shopping on Amazon, sometimes the thing I want is in The UK or the US, I'll always try to get it from Europe first so it saves on carbon. But after Brexit, using Amazon UK was no good since getting anything out of the UK was painfully slow.. so I started to use Amazon Germany. Suddenly my account was flagged as fraudulent, i was banned, and I've tried multiple times to get it unbanned.... To no avail. I was told by one of the customer support people the real reason why it was banned... You're not supposed to hop from one Amazon country to another. So why have a universal login? So all my books on Kindle were gone, my movies and tv shows I digitally bought through Prime Video were gone... Everything, all because i committed the crime of not always buying from the same country. So now i make throw away accounts one for each country, and hop between them, refuse to subscribe to prime, and refuse to give Amazon anymore money.