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Always have a backup payment processor. PayPal especially, but even Stripe will shut you down or freeze your balance with little recourse. Amazon killed my par

by eloff 4y ago

Always have a backup payment processor. PayPal especially, but even Stripe will shut you down or freeze your balance with little recourse. Amazon killed my parents business by just sheer incompetence and support took a year to get partially back to operation, by which time it was over. Facebook incorrectly nuked my wife’s Instagram account and hopes of becoming an influencer. No recourse. Google can ban your account with your email with no recourse. You lose your email history, contacts, documents, etc with no way to login to a myriad of online services. I’m really low on patience with the big tech companies. I hope the government reins them in.

bipson 4y ago
As much as I have sympathy for the pain (besides the influencer thing) - what exactly do you expect from the government here? And I say this as European, I mean, we at least have some regulations...
- Brian_K_White 4y ago
  There's lot's of things government could do. Start with codifying some concepts that define when a service is responsible for having too much impact on a user's life, and attach responsibility to that, instead of just 'private company, do anything you want' It's not an accurate or sufficient or desirable representation of reality to allow these various big companies to actively seek out having you entrust them with parts of various critical paths in your life, and then be able to nuke those with no protection or recourse on your part. In 1975 when no one had an email address or a cell phone, and neither were required to do anything in life, it was fine to treat them like luxiries that if you lose them, so what? That was still true but just a bit less so a few years later, and it's just been gradually becoming less so every year, and by now, it is simply not true at all. It should essentially be illegal for a service provider to completely break some of these services without some sort of graceful shutdown or hand-off process, in the same way and for the same reasons it's illegal to shut off electricity and gas and phone in a lot of cases even after the subscriber has failed to pay. They get shut off eventually of course, but there are exceptions and ways for the subscriber to fight, and they are mandated by the government, not out of the goodness of the power companies hearts. Basically the power company isn't allowed to just let grandma freeze in the winter even if she fails to pay. It's not unfair to the power company. The investors in the power company are free to be in some other business if they don't like those terms. Today, an email account should not be treated the same way as a spotify account, even if you're not even charging money for the service. If you don't like that, you don't have to offer an email service at all. The requirement I imagine is some minimal level of continued function enough to complete other account management procedures, which means being able to both receive and send at least some emails. Maybe a limited amount, maybe limited attachment size etc, but enough to at least send the one or few emails from the previously recognized address to other parties as part of the proof of identity to direct them to a new address. This even in cases where the account was terminated for supposed cause like illegal activity. This means that one of the other things government can do is recognize that exception for liability. The government can determine not to penalize a service provider or allow others to sue them for having one of these accounts active at that limited level of functionality if the account sends someone a phising email or something. Or maybe the procedure is the accounts do stop functioning so no email is passed, but, it can still be used by the owner to contact the service provider to invoke some kind of recourse procedure 9f they need it. So the spammer is blocked but mom can still jump through hoops and eventually regain access, including old mails and maybe even including unread received mails while it was down. There are all kinds of things a government can do, and fully fairly and defensibly and officially, just by codifying some principles. What do I expect from the government? Something. They can absolutely do something. It's work to work out exactly what and how and develop some consistent rational legal theory to base it on, but that it literally their job is to to exactly that.
- f-securus 4y ago
  I think support shouldn't be 100% automated. The big tech companies are automating everything and sometimes those false positives need to be corrected and there isn't a way to actually do so. I don't know how the government could enforce proper support but I believe something as simple as requiring the ability to discuss your critical issue with a human being as a start. Then you get into what is a 'critical' issue but I think being locked out of your account that is used as a gateway to multiple other accounts qualifies.
- RhodesianHunter 4y ago
  Believe it or not here in the US we have a lot of regulations as well. They're just designed to favor the big guy.
  - bipson 4y ago
    That's not what the rest of the world considers a "regulation"
  - eloff 4y ago
    I believe those are called barriers to entry to protect vested interests. Also known as pulling the ladder up behind you. Why that works in the US is beyond me. I recall a recent study from one of the Ivy leagues that shows that historically the elected representatives favor the elite over the people in the US. I think the elected representatives have to represent the people, otherwise you don’t really have a democracy, right?
- wasmitnetzen 4y ago
  In Germany, there has been a high-level court decision last year about requiring a "proper" recourse process[1]. [1]: https://www.sueddeutsche.de/politik/facebook-bgh-urteil-1.5367814 https://www.sueddeutsche.de/politik/facebook-bgh-urteil-1.53... (German)
- Forgeties79 4y ago
  >As much as I have sympathy for the pain (besides the influencer thing) Why not? You have no clue what she was doing and it's a totally viable source of income for plenty of people.
  - f-securus 4y ago
    Because influencer is another way to say individual advertiser. Nobody wants more advertising.
    - eloff 4y ago
      If that were true, influences wouldn’t exist. Clearly they can make money because they add value for people. If that value is actually improving people’s lives it’s another matter, but from an economics standpoint it seems to exist.
      - f-securus 4y ago
        Advertising works because it is a psychological hack. Influencers are using the same hack and once it becomes more than a passion or hobby project then the monetary incentive perverts their judgement. I'm all for people sharing their knowledge and hobbies to inform others but the term 'influencer' has a connotation in which they are earning money from 'influencing' others and that seems an awful lot like basic advertising to me.
        Forgeties79 4y ago
        >I'm all for people sharing their knowledge and hobbies to inform others And I'm all for them getting paid to do so. I'm not sure where you draw the line. Is a cocktail influencer sharing a cool hobby or pushing a product? The answer is usually "both." So where do they fit in for you?
        f-securus 4y ago
        If the cocktail influencer started making videos with the intent of getting paid then their judgement is already clouded. Even if they decided they wanted to do the morally correct thing and give honest reviews, their livelihood now depends on this income and as such they are biased subconsciously. Ultimately they are self-employed advertisers. We need less advertising in this world, IMO.
- eloff 4y ago
  If a company has your livelihood, bank balance, etc by the balls - they should at least be required to offer a minimum level of human support with a path for escalating things or a way to reasonably handle disputes with a neutral adjudicator. The stakes are too high to simply leave decisions up to algorithms.
  - eminent101 4y ago
    > If a company has your livelihood, bank balance, etc by the balls Whose fault is it that people are relying on free email service (with no human support) for critical things like livelihood, bank balance, etc.? Is the provider of a free email service liable for the damages they can cause? What do their terms and conditions say about it? Do they have a disclaimer in there for this kind of things?
    - dncjvhvusy 4y ago
      It's not free if there's a contract. The social responsibility is still there. You can't go around providing free drugs to people and then get upset when you get locked up over it.
- ensignavenger 4y ago
  At the very least the right to get a dump of your data after they close your account. Also, for money things like PayPal, they should only be able to hold your funds for a reasonable amount of time, then they have to transfer them to your bank account. They should not be allowed to just keep your money. For sales of digital items, they should not be allowed to revoke your access to the items you have bought. Maybe they should just have to provide a basic file download for a certain amount of time.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- Retric 4y ago
  At a minimum long term freezing an account with a positive balance should be treated as simple theft. It’s fine if they want to arbitrarily flag something as fraud and refund money, but saying something is suspicious therefore we keep your money isn’t.
  - eloff 4y ago
    They should have to pay interest on seized funds. Like fed rate +5%. Then it will only happen in serious cases and they will resolve it quickly.
- michaelteter 4y ago
  Regulations that could be imposed: 1. When a service is blocked or terminated, the terminating company must provide clear and specific reasons for the termination (they almost never do this now) 2. Additionally, there must be a human support channel to discuss the matter - even if it requires payment for the privilege of gaining support help (think 900 numbers of the past) 3. Human support and decision paths must be documented and followed such that a final decision can be understood within the context of the rules of the organization (thereby enabling possible efficient legal options for the consumer to further dispute the ruling) 4. As other people have noted, having access to export your data if you are being permanently blocked from the service 5. Having financial compensation (refunds) or post-service DRM access to content you have paid for
judge2020 4y ago
The problem is that few card processors will underwrite you for your small transaction volume at the start, so PayPal/Braintree and Stripe are go-to solutions with the promise to scale up without ever needing to rewrite your payment processing code. Once you get big, you can either seek out a real contract with the services (but this requires a lot of scale) or go for something like Adyen or Chase which seem to still require some level of scale but not a million dollars a day or anything.

by eloff 4y ago

bipson 4y ago

As much as I have sympathy for the pain (besides the influencer thing) - what exactly do you expect from the government here? And I say this as European, I mean, we at least have some regulations...

Brian_K_White 4y ago
There's lot's of things government could do. Start with codifying some concepts that define when a service is responsible for having too much impact on a user's life, and attach responsibility to that, instead of just 'private company, do anything you want' It's not an accurate or sufficient or desirable representation of reality to allow these various big companies to actively seek out having you entrust them with parts of various critical paths in your life, and then be able to nuke those with no protection or recourse on your part. In 1975 when no one had an email address or a cell phone, and neither were required to do anything in life, it was fine to treat them like luxiries that if you lose them, so what? That was still true but just a bit less so a few years later, and it's just been gradually becoming less so every year, and by now, it is simply not true at all. It should essentially be illegal for a service provider to completely break some of these services without some sort of graceful shutdown or hand-off process, in the same way and for the same reasons it's illegal to shut off electricity and gas and phone in a lot of cases even after the subscriber has failed to pay. They get shut off eventually of course, but there are exceptions and ways for the subscriber to fight, and they are mandated by the government, not out of the goodness of the power companies hearts. Basically the power company isn't allowed to just let grandma freeze in the winter even if she fails to pay. It's not unfair to the power company. The investors in the power company are free to be in some other business if they don't like those terms. Today, an email account should not be treated the same way as a spotify account, even if you're not even charging money for the service. If you don't like that, you don't have to offer an email service at all. The requirement I imagine is some minimal level of continued function enough to complete other account management procedures, which means being able to both receive and send at least some emails. Maybe a limited amount, maybe limited attachment size etc, but enough to at least send the one or few emails from the previously recognized address to other parties as part of the proof of identity to direct them to a new address. This even in cases where the account was terminated for supposed cause like illegal activity. This means that one of the other things government can do is recognize that exception for liability. The government can determine not to penalize a service provider or allow others to sue them for having one of these accounts active at that limited level of functionality if the account sends someone a phising email or something. Or maybe the procedure is the accounts do stop functioning so no email is passed, but, it can still be used by the owner to contact the service provider to invoke some kind of recourse procedure 9f they need it. So the spammer is blocked but mom can still jump through hoops and eventually regain access, including old mails and maybe even including unread received mails while it was down. There are all kinds of things a government can do, and fully fairly and defensibly and officially, just by codifying some principles. What do I expect from the government? Something. They can absolutely do something. It's work to work out exactly what and how and develop some consistent rational legal theory to base it on, but that it literally their job is to to exactly that.
f-securus 4y ago
I think support shouldn't be 100% automated. The big tech companies are automating everything and sometimes those false positives need to be corrected and there isn't a way to actually do so. I don't know how the government could enforce proper support but I believe something as simple as requiring the ability to discuss your critical issue with a human being as a start. Then you get into what is a 'critical' issue but I think being locked out of your account that is used as a gateway to multiple other accounts qualifies.
RhodesianHunter 4y ago
Believe it or not here in the US we have a lot of regulations as well. They're just designed to favor the big guy.
- bipson 4y ago
  That's not what the rest of the world considers a "regulation"
- eloff 4y ago
  I believe those are called barriers to entry to protect vested interests. Also known as pulling the ladder up behind you. Why that works in the US is beyond me. I recall a recent study from one of the Ivy leagues that shows that historically the elected representatives favor the elite over the people in the US. I think the elected representatives have to represent the people, otherwise you don’t really have a democracy, right?
wasmitnetzen 4y ago
In Germany, there has been a high-level court decision last year about requiring a "proper" recourse process[1]. [1]: https://www.sueddeutsche.de/politik/facebook-bgh-urteil-1.5367814 https://www.sueddeutsche.de/politik/facebook-bgh-urteil-1.53... (German)
Forgeties79 4y ago
>As much as I have sympathy for the pain (besides the influencer thing) Why not? You have no clue what she was doing and it's a totally viable source of income for plenty of people.
- f-securus 4y ago
  Because influencer is another way to say individual advertiser. Nobody wants more advertising.
  - eloff 4y ago
    If that were true, influences wouldn’t exist. Clearly they can make money because they add value for people. If that value is actually improving people’s lives it’s another matter, but from an economics standpoint it seems to exist.
    - f-securus 4y ago
      Advertising works because it is a psychological hack. Influencers are using the same hack and once it becomes more than a passion or hobby project then the monetary incentive perverts their judgement. I'm all for people sharing their knowledge and hobbies to inform others but the term 'influencer' has a connotation in which they are earning money from 'influencing' others and that seems an awful lot like basic advertising to me.
      - Forgeties79 4y ago
        >I'm all for people sharing their knowledge and hobbies to inform others And I'm all for them getting paid to do so. I'm not sure where you draw the line. Is a cocktail influencer sharing a cool hobby or pushing a product? The answer is usually "both." So where do they fit in for you?
        f-securus 4y ago
        If the cocktail influencer started making videos with the intent of getting paid then their judgement is already clouded. Even if they decided they wanted to do the morally correct thing and give honest reviews, their livelihood now depends on this income and as such they are biased subconsciously. Ultimately they are self-employed advertisers. We need less advertising in this world, IMO.
eloff 4y ago
If a company has your livelihood, bank balance, etc by the balls - they should at least be required to offer a minimum level of human support with a path for escalating things or a way to reasonably handle disputes with a neutral adjudicator. The stakes are too high to simply leave decisions up to algorithms.
- eminent101 4y ago
  > If a company has your livelihood, bank balance, etc by the balls Whose fault is it that people are relying on free email service (with no human support) for critical things like livelihood, bank balance, etc.? Is the provider of a free email service liable for the damages they can cause? What do their terms and conditions say about it? Do they have a disclaimer in there for this kind of things?
  - dncjvhvusy 4y ago
    It's not free if there's a contract. The social responsibility is still there. You can't go around providing free drugs to people and then get upset when you get locked up over it.
ensignavenger 4y ago
At the very least the right to get a dump of your data after they close your account. Also, for money things like PayPal, they should only be able to hold your funds for a reasonable amount of time, then they have to transfer them to your bank account. They should not be allowed to just keep your money. For sales of digital items, they should not be allowed to revoke your access to the items you have bought. Maybe they should just have to provide a basic file download for a certain amount of time.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
Retric 4y ago
At a minimum long term freezing an account with a positive balance should be treated as simple theft. It’s fine if they want to arbitrarily flag something as fraud and refund money, but saying something is suspicious therefore we keep your money isn’t.
- eloff 4y ago
  They should have to pay interest on seized funds. Like fed rate +5%. Then it will only happen in serious cases and they will resolve it quickly.
michaelteter 4y ago
Regulations that could be imposed: 1. When a service is blocked or terminated, the terminating company must provide clear and specific reasons for the termination (they almost never do this now) 2. Additionally, there must be a human support channel to discuss the matter - even if it requires payment for the privilege of gaining support help (think 900 numbers of the past) 3. Human support and decision paths must be documented and followed such that a final decision can be understood within the context of the rules of the organization (thereby enabling possible efficient legal options for the consumer to further dispute the ruling) 4. As other people have noted, having access to export your data if you are being permanently blocked from the service 5. Having financial compensation (refunds) or post-service DRM access to content you have paid for

judge2020 4y ago

The problem is that few card processors will underwrite you for your small transaction volume at the start, so PayPal/Braintree and Stripe are go-to solutions with the promise to scale up without ever needing to rewrite your payment processing code. Once you get big, you can either seek out a real contract with the services (but this requires a lot of scale) or go for something like Adyen or Chase which seem to still require some level of scale but not a million dollars a day or anything.