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While people like to scream and lose their mind about who the president is and what they're blathering on about today it's this situation that I never see any p

While people like to scream and lose their mind about who the president is and what they're blathering on about today it's this situation that I never see any politician talk about in a meaningful way and I never see get attention. This situation impacts the average person and has the potential to impact the average person more than who the president is at any given time. Because at least with governmental politics there is actual recourse. Until we demand that our government begin to prioritize consumer rights against these modern-day robber barons this kind of stuff will continue to happen. Unfortunately until it happens to you nobody seems to care. Often times the person that happens to gets blamed because their actions definitely must have caused this. This would actually be a fairly simple thing for the FTC to correct if they wanted to. They're already empowered to do this kind of stuff and wouldn't need any new powers granted to them. They could simply say when an account is suspended or disabled or you are banned including a shadow ban that you must provide the specific details of what caused the ban and what specific provisions were violated in the terms of service. Because when you're the size of Google you effectively are a monopolistic common carrier. So being able to say something like we can do this at any time for any reason is not appropriate at that scale. Because denying you access to phone service is denying you access to a basic utility. It would actually be interesting to see state boards of utilities begin to pull things like this under their control. This would give enormous consumer rights to people. Because while your landline carrier can deny you service and remove your service they must have very strict documented reasons for that and there is an actual transparent appeal process as part of it. Filing an appeal and not being able to be part of the appealed discussion is not an appeal at all.

ToucanLoucan 2y ago
[flagged]
- BadHumans 2y ago
  I'm the first to dogpile on the Democrats in a lot of areas but I feel they have done very well with the FTC in the past 4 years and it is a shame they did not do a good job at highlighting their accomplishments. This short-lived era of attempting to hold corporations accountable is likely done though now that Republicans are in complete control.
  - ToucanLoucan 2y ago
    I'm well aware of it, but if it can be undone entirely on the first day of the next admin, then it's not progress, it's band-aids and we've had too damn many band-aids from the Democrats for decades. Are band-aids good? Sure. Are they a replacement for a cast and splint? No.
    - BadHumans 2y ago
      You can get a cast off tomorrow and I can break your arm again same day so I'm not sure what your analogy is trying to say about longevity.
- elmerfud 2y ago
  Power shifts back and forth all the time and despite whether they have an R or a D beside their name how they view a particular issue seems to be very fluid on their political beliefs of the moment. Also considering that 80% of the government is reelected at the federal level every two years. If the people cared it would change. Politicians primary goal is to continue to remain in power the problem is that the people are not unified enough in having their expectations conveyed and then sticking to them. Even outside of that the FTC is fully empowered to implement the protections that are needed right now without congresses involvement or the president. It's certainly not as strong as passing a law but they have the authority to regulate this stuff. As do state level utility boards. I don't know how to make people care until it happens to them. Maybe someone on the inside who feels like we do that there should be better consumer protections around this will start banning some very popular politicians or other very famous people who can bring wide scale attention to this problem. I fear without the attention of someone famous getting knocked off and having to fight to get it back there will never be a change.
  - nobody9999 2y ago
    >Even outside of that the FTC is fully empowered to implement the protections that are needed right now without congresses involvement or the president. You do realize that the FTC chairman serves at the pleasure of the President, right? As such, the new President (or more likely his Heritage Foundation lapdogs) will decide what the FTC can and cannot do. If it's within the executive branch, the head of that branch (who is that again?) has broad authority to do whatever they want, and Congress' (given that a "veto-proof" majority on any bill is so unlikely as to be impossible) and/or the populace's only recourse is through the Federal courts -- assuming you have the time and money to pay for lawyers and wait for your appeal to be denied by SCOTUS, then you're done. So good luck with that. You're gonna need it.
Mistletoe 2y ago
Actually who you vote for determines this a great deal. A democratic president actually brought some bite back to the FTC. https://www.wbur.org/onpoint/2024/10/02/biden-ftc-antitrust-regulation-consumers-tech-pharma https://www.wbur.org/onpoint/2024/10/02/biden-ftc-antitrust-...
reaperducer 2y ago
Until we demand that our government begin to prioritize consumer rights against these modern-day robber barons this kind of stuff will continue to happen. Imagine what could happen if the modern-day robber barrons end up on the president's cabinet, making policy decisions. Oh, wait… https://www.forbes.com/sites/mollybohannon/2024/08/19/trump-suggests-he-would-give-elon-musk-a-cabinet-position-in-second-term/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/mollybohannon/2024/08/19/trump-...
kypro 2y ago
> They could simply say when an account is suspended or disabled or you are banned including a shadow ban that you must provide the specific details of what caused the ban and what specific provisions were violated in the terms of service. I think you're misunderstanding why this happens. Banning without a clear explanation or shadow banning users is a feature, not a bug. It grants platforms the ability to arbitrarily make decisions about who can use their platform without having to apply a consistent standard that would be questioned and challenged. Governments don't want to change this because it benefits them. It means when they're able to tell a platform to ban a user and that user can be banned for "violating the ToS", instead of telling the truth and saying the user was "banned on order of the government". The reason why governments don't care about this issue is because no one with power would benefit from this transparency.
rssoconnor 2y ago
> I never see any politician talk about in a meaningful way and I never see get attention. I grew up before number portability. Let me tell you that phone number portability is among the greatest visible government mandated boons in my lifetime (though I suspect there many other less visible ones). The fact that the user in question in this post was able to reassign his phone number at all is basically a modern anti-corporate miracle. I don't really mean to detract from your point. Certainly much more could and should be done. But we have to acknowledge that, miraculously, more than nothing has already been done.

ToucanLoucan 2y ago

[flagged]

BadHumans 2y ago
I'm the first to dogpile on the Democrats in a lot of areas but I feel they have done very well with the FTC in the past 4 years and it is a shame they did not do a good job at highlighting their accomplishments. This short-lived era of attempting to hold corporations accountable is likely done though now that Republicans are in complete control.
- ToucanLoucan 2y ago
  I'm well aware of it, but if it can be undone entirely on the first day of the next admin, then it's not progress, it's band-aids and we've had too damn many band-aids from the Democrats for decades. Are band-aids good? Sure. Are they a replacement for a cast and splint? No.
  - BadHumans 2y ago
    You can get a cast off tomorrow and I can break your arm again same day so I'm not sure what your analogy is trying to say about longevity.
elmerfud 2y ago
Power shifts back and forth all the time and despite whether they have an R or a D beside their name how they view a particular issue seems to be very fluid on their political beliefs of the moment. Also considering that 80% of the government is reelected at the federal level every two years. If the people cared it would change. Politicians primary goal is to continue to remain in power the problem is that the people are not unified enough in having their expectations conveyed and then sticking to them. Even outside of that the FTC is fully empowered to implement the protections that are needed right now without congresses involvement or the president. It's certainly not as strong as passing a law but they have the authority to regulate this stuff. As do state level utility boards. I don't know how to make people care until it happens to them. Maybe someone on the inside who feels like we do that there should be better consumer protections around this will start banning some very popular politicians or other very famous people who can bring wide scale attention to this problem. I fear without the attention of someone famous getting knocked off and having to fight to get it back there will never be a change.
- nobody9999 2y ago
  >Even outside of that the FTC is fully empowered to implement the protections that are needed right now without congresses involvement or the president. You do realize that the FTC chairman serves at the pleasure of the President, right? As such, the new President (or more likely his Heritage Foundation lapdogs) will decide what the FTC can and cannot do. If it's within the executive branch, the head of that branch (who is that again?) has broad authority to do whatever they want, and Congress' (given that a "veto-proof" majority on any bill is so unlikely as to be impossible) and/or the populace's only recourse is through the Federal courts -- assuming you have the time and money to pay for lawyers and wait for your appeal to be denied by SCOTUS, then you're done. So good luck with that. You're gonna need it.

Mistletoe 2y ago

Actually who you vote for determines this a great deal. A democratic president actually brought some bite back to the FTC. https://www.wbur.org/onpoint/2024/10/02/biden-ftc-antitrust-regulation-consumers-tech-pharma https://www.wbur.org/onpoint/2024/10/02/biden-ftc-antitrust-...

reaperducer 2y ago

Until we demand that our government begin to prioritize consumer rights against these modern-day robber barons this kind of stuff will continue to happen. Imagine what could happen if the modern-day robber barrons end up on the president's cabinet, making policy decisions. Oh, wait… https://www.forbes.com/sites/mollybohannon/2024/08/19/trump-suggests-he-would-give-elon-musk-a-cabinet-position-in-second-term/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/mollybohannon/2024/08/19/trump-...

kypro 2y ago

> They could simply say when an account is suspended or disabled or you are banned including a shadow ban that you must provide the specific details of what caused the ban and what specific provisions were violated in the terms of service. I think you're misunderstanding why this happens. Banning without a clear explanation or shadow banning users is a feature, not a bug. It grants platforms the ability to arbitrarily make decisions about who can use their platform without having to apply a consistent standard that would be questioned and challenged. Governments don't want to change this because it benefits them. It means when they're able to tell a platform to ban a user and that user can be banned for "violating the ToS", instead of telling the truth and saying the user was "banned on order of the government". The reason why governments don't care about this issue is because no one with power would benefit from this transparency.

rssoconnor 2y ago

> I never see any politician talk about in a meaningful way and I never see get attention. I grew up before number portability. Let me tell you that phone number portability is among the greatest visible government mandated boons in my lifetime (though I suspect there many other less visible ones). The fact that the user in question in this post was able to reassign his phone number at all is basically a modern anti-corporate miracle. I don't really mean to detract from your point. Certainly much more could and should be done. But we have to acknowledge that, miraculously, more than nothing has already been done.