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The truth is: - Company can work with government to put someone in jail. And the company has the important resource for that: money. - A google account blocke

by zakki 2y ago

The truth is: - Company can work with government to put someone in jail. And the company has the important resource for that: money. - A google account blocked, so someone lost their income because their Adsense or developer account is not accessible anymore. This is a violence in my opinion. - Once you have an agreement with a company, the company can change the rule without your agreement.

robertlagrant 2y ago
> Company can work with government to put someone in jail Yes, but that is very unusual. It requires a lot of checks and balances to get past. > This is a violence in my opinion. Understood. We strongly disagree here, but it's interesting. I've never considered blocking an Adsense account to be in any way similar to being locked in jail for 20 years, for example, but I'll bear in mind that this is an opinion some people hold.
- piva00 2y ago
  > I've never considered blocking an Adsense account to be in any way similar to being locked in jail for 20 years, for example, but I'll bear in mind that this is an opinion some people hold. I think it's the concentration of power in just a handful of players that carries the similarity, they control what you can do (not unlike the state but through economic means instead of violence). Being imprisoned is of course much worse than losing access to your Google Account but if you depend on having a Google/Amazon/Meta account for your work (let's say, as a small business owner selling online) it will be crippling to lose access to Adsense and Instagram/Facebook Ads while losing access on selling through Amazon Marketplace. In some markets you simply wouldn't be able to compete with others that haven't lost their access, you are essentially blocked from participating in the market. And those companies' processes don't have checks and balances like a functioning government provides.
  - robertlagrant 2y ago
    > not unlike the state but through economic means instead of violence Well - the state can do both of these, and does. > In some markets you simply wouldn't be able to compete with others that haven't lost their access, you are essentially blocked from participating in the market I partly agree. However, I think - say - Youtube Creator is a career with very limited potential outside of YouTube. But that's because YouTube pays really well compared to its competitors. If YouTube paid worse, then no one would rely on it as a revenue source. It's like spending your life servicing a rich person's Model T Ford. You might be well paid, but your alternatives are no better than mechanic in a garage. That's your choice, and your risk.
    - piva00 2y ago
      I left out YouTube and instead used Amazon to show more of what can actually happen: you try to open an online store in the USA (or another market where Amazon dominates online sales to a good percentage) selling through your website, you don't get many sales that way since a lot of people in the USA will go to Amazon to make purchases, you feel that to participate in that you need to open an Amazon Marketplace storefront; you sell through that for a few years until... You get banned from Amazon's marketplace. You didn't choose to participate in it, you were forced to due to the majority of your consumers being in that platform, you have no recourse, you have just been disappeared from business due to a private party's processes and decisions. YouTube is another case to discuss but mostly through the eyes of market dominance, disappearance of the Open Web, and network effects. There simply isn't any other platform that can serve the market as YouTube does because of network effects. In that I usually end up in arguments about the Open Web vs this lunacy we currently experience where each platform is completely closed off and no interoperation is possible to really give a chance to competitors to raise. YouTube doesn't follow a common protocol that someone else could provide a product on and interoperate with YouTube, you either publish on YouTube or you simply cannot participate in that market. That's wrong, the web shouldn't have become that way but we allowed it.
- throwaway14356 2y ago
  There could be many employees. At some point the 20 years would compare. It isn't strange for people losing income to die or lose quality of life. We also don't put people in prison without explaining why. You have to earn it.

by zakki 2y ago

robertlagrant 2y ago

> Company can work with government to put someone in jail Yes, but that is very unusual. It requires a lot of checks and balances to get past. > This is a violence in my opinion. Understood. We strongly disagree here, but it's interesting. I've never considered blocking an Adsense account to be in any way similar to being locked in jail for 20 years, for example, but I'll bear in mind that this is an opinion some people hold.

piva00 2y ago
> I've never considered blocking an Adsense account to be in any way similar to being locked in jail for 20 years, for example, but I'll bear in mind that this is an opinion some people hold. I think it's the concentration of power in just a handful of players that carries the similarity, they control what you can do (not unlike the state but through economic means instead of violence). Being imprisoned is of course much worse than losing access to your Google Account but if you depend on having a Google/Amazon/Meta account for your work (let's say, as a small business owner selling online) it will be crippling to lose access to Adsense and Instagram/Facebook Ads while losing access on selling through Amazon Marketplace. In some markets you simply wouldn't be able to compete with others that haven't lost their access, you are essentially blocked from participating in the market. And those companies' processes don't have checks and balances like a functioning government provides.
- robertlagrant 2y ago
  > not unlike the state but through economic means instead of violence Well - the state can do both of these, and does. > In some markets you simply wouldn't be able to compete with others that haven't lost their access, you are essentially blocked from participating in the market I partly agree. However, I think - say - Youtube Creator is a career with very limited potential outside of YouTube. But that's because YouTube pays really well compared to its competitors. If YouTube paid worse, then no one would rely on it as a revenue source. It's like spending your life servicing a rich person's Model T Ford. You might be well paid, but your alternatives are no better than mechanic in a garage. That's your choice, and your risk.
  - piva00 2y ago
    I left out YouTube and instead used Amazon to show more of what can actually happen: you try to open an online store in the USA (or another market where Amazon dominates online sales to a good percentage) selling through your website, you don't get many sales that way since a lot of people in the USA will go to Amazon to make purchases, you feel that to participate in that you need to open an Amazon Marketplace storefront; you sell through that for a few years until... You get banned from Amazon's marketplace. You didn't choose to participate in it, you were forced to due to the majority of your consumers being in that platform, you have no recourse, you have just been disappeared from business due to a private party's processes and decisions. YouTube is another case to discuss but mostly through the eyes of market dominance, disappearance of the Open Web, and network effects. There simply isn't any other platform that can serve the market as YouTube does because of network effects. In that I usually end up in arguments about the Open Web vs this lunacy we currently experience where each platform is completely closed off and no interoperation is possible to really give a chance to competitors to raise. YouTube doesn't follow a common protocol that someone else could provide a product on and interoperate with YouTube, you either publish on YouTube or you simply cannot participate in that market. That's wrong, the web shouldn't have become that way but we allowed it.
throwaway14356 2y ago
There could be many employees. At some point the 20 years would compare. It isn't strange for people losing income to die or lose quality of life. We also don't put people in prison without explaining why. You have to earn it.