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> The point of anti-abuse rules isn't the letter of the rules, it's the intent behind them. This is really indefensible abusive behavior by all these cloud com

• vkou 4y ago
  > Imagine if the real world operated that way. The real world does operate in exactly that way, with a scant few exceptions. It's often even less scrutable than what I described. > The police arrest you and throw you in jail for unspecified reasons and you're not allowed to know why or defend yourself. Since you're saying this, it doesn't sound like you've had a lot of confrontations with police. (And if you ever do, I'd strongly advise against trying to 'defend yourself' from them.) The police can and absolutely do arrest, intimidate, harass, and violently assault people for unspecified, fabricated or utterly bullshit reasons, and then release them (because they can't justify those reasons in a court of law, but they have an incredibly broad, completely unaccountable amount of inscrutable discretion that they can use to make your life a living hell.) A store can absolutely throw a nuisance customer out, and ban them from returning, without specifying exactly how much of a nuisance they permit that customer to be. Hell, even in a court of law, one of the most deterministic billiard-ball-newtonian-world aspect of our life, the ultimate decision of life or death, freedom or innocence is decided by an opaque group of 12 neural networks, each full of their own biases, prejudices, and each heavily influenceable by courtroom demagoguery. Who don't - and aren't required to - explain their decisions. There's very few, very narrowly defined set of spaces in our society where the rules are clearly, fully spelled out, with little to no room for arbitrary interpretation, and where decisions can be scrutinized. They are an incredibly narrow exception, not the rule, and they tend to be more present in situations where the consequences of a mistake are more serious. (Questions of housing, credit, money, life and death.) Unfortunately, access to a rented VM doesn't quite rise to that level of seriousness. It does, however, tend to offend programmers, who are both over-represented here, and often mistakenly think that the world is a fair newtonian-billiard-table. In reality, it's neither fair, nor deterministic.
  • yellowapple 4y ago
    > The police can and absolutely do arrest, intimidate, harass, and violently assault people for unspecified, fabricated or utterly bullshit reasons, and then release them (because they can't justify those reasons in a court of law, but they have an incredibly broad, completely unaccountable amount of inscrutable discretion that they can use to make your life a living hell.) And I'd hope you agree that such behavior is bad and shouldn't be tolerated. "Cops are capricious unaccountable douchebags therefore it's okay for tech companies to be capricious unaccountable douchebags" is hardly a convincing argument.
  • jjav 4y ago
    > The police can and absolutely do arrest, intimidate, harass, and violently assault people for unspecified, fabricated or utterly bullshit reasons I was going to include a sentence on police corruption in the original response but decided to leave it out. Yes, that happens, far more often than it ever should. But an important point is that it is corruption. It is not how the system is supposed to work. It's not much consolation to the victims of said corruption, but it is an important distinction in how society is built. Given that it is corruption it's at least possible to fight it. Maybe not personally (unless you're rich) but via organizations such as the ACLU and (some of) the press. > Unfortunately, access to a rented VM doesn't quite rise to that level of seriousness. In today's world, it does. Just this week there was a discussion here on how the unjustified account blocks impact the poor with the least resources. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32304320 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32304320
    • vkou 4y ago
      > But an important point is that it is corruption. It's only corruption if they are doing it for the benefit of someone in particular (Say, a politician that uses them for a personal vendetta). Most of the time, they aren't, they are just doing it because their mentality is to treat the citizenry as the enemy. It's not corruption, nobody benefits from it, it's just plain banal evil. > It is not how the system is supposed to work. According to who? You and me? Sure, but we're a minority opinion on this question. The public is overwhelmingly opposed to us on this. > In today's world, it does. > Just this week there was a discussion here on how the unjustified account blocks impact the poor with the least resources. Strong disagreement. All of these problems are nothing compared to what one bad cop (Or landlord, or employer, or boss, etc, etc, etc) on a power trip can do to you, especially if you are poor. And, as I said, they are one of the more 'accountable' institutions you get to interact with. You have (in theory) legal and constitutional protections against abuse by them.