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Remember that Whatsapp belongs to Mark Zuckerburg, not you, the users, or the developers. They can ban anyone for any reason at any time, and it does not need t
by lrvick 1y ago
Remember that Whatsapp belongs to Mark Zuckerburg, not you, the users, or the developers. They can ban anyone for any reason at any time, and it does not need to be a good reason. There is no appeals court for corpotech.
This is a great lesson on the fragility of building businesses on private, centralized, and proprietary platforms.
It is a lesson I wish I learned a lot earlier in my career.
- reddalo 1y ago>There is no appeals court for corpotech. Unless you live in the EU. [1] [1] https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/policies/dsa-out-court-dispute-settlement https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/policies/dsa-out-co...
- closewith 1y agoYeah, this is a perfect example of the need for regulation of the mega-apps.
- lrvick 1y agoThis will never happen in any useful way internationally on an open internet. The only winning move for users is to invest in decentralized open source unkillable alternatives.
- closewith 1y agoIt's already happening in the more stable democracies.
- 6510 1y agoIt depends entirely on comments like the one you wrote here. To me it is obvious they had more than enough time and opportunity to do it properly themselves and the tools at their disposal get more glorious every year. Users grow more and more dependent on them. Services control more of our lives. They have LLM's now! Really good ones! So good they can format and sort 90% of the customer service issues into well known boxes. You can also have people pay for support. 1000 euro might be nothing compared to losing an account. Write me a nice report what exactly went wrong. It can be [] my fault [] their fault. It can result in [] permanently banned [] account restored. They can [] refund the fee [] ask for ____ more money. They thought themselves to important to do it themselves. You are unworthy of even the worse kangaroo court and unworthy of trial by robot. Those are pretty damn low standards. It will eventually happen because we have lots of wealthy influential people in the global law apparatus and they are really being mocked here. Mega corps are going for the heaviest punishment they can apply for all possible offenses they chose not to describe. LOL You aren't sentenced to death only because they lack the means to do it but I'm sure they are killing plenty of people indirectly. I even think out taxes should pay for their customer service.
- immibis 1y agoOn the open internet, no, but the financial system is both closed and very valuable to companies like Meta. Europe can't stop American websites collecting personal data without consent. It can stop them getting any payments from Europe though. Usually that's worth more to them than the data.
- cbeach 1y agoI’m in Europe and the EU was certainly no help when Google blocked me from Adsense with no recourse.
- jstummbillig 1y agoMeanwhile, in the real world, people who actually run businesses have to rely on quasi utilities like the stuff that meta offers, because building a business for the people who are willing to to use mastodon is not a fucking thing.
- Sammi 1y agoBuy a domain and make your own system. Only use other people's platforms for marketing and pr, or as commodity providers that are easily replaced. You can make your own business that you actually own and control. It's even cheap - only need a domain and a vps.
- immibis 1y agoBoth domains and VPSes aren't yours. More importantly, your customers will never find it because they're idiots who only look on Instagram. Meta encourages this kind of idiocy, of course. You get to choose: accept reality as it is, or deal in false reality and go out of business accordingly.
- lrvick 1y agoI run a profitable b2b tech company that does not use any Google, Apple, Microsoft, or Meta products. Is that the easiest choice? Hell no. But it makes us a lot harder to kill, and is great for morale.
- thunderfork 1y ago[dead]
- jjani 1y ago> b2b There you have it. Now try B2C.
- lrvick 1y agoMy team and I produce tons of software for consumers, but we open source all of it for free. Proprietary software should not exist and consumers are getting raked over the coals enough as it is.
- ulfw 1y agoThis is exactly why Google, Meta, etc shouldn't have the power to own such a huge part of the (western) web
- lrvick 1y agoWe, the users, gave them that power. We can also take it away. You actually can lead a productive socially rich life and even run a tech company in the modern world without using any products by Google, Microsoft, Meta, Apple, etc. There are open source alternatives to everything if we do research beyond what is advertised to us.
- OccamsMirror 1y agoWhat kind of mobile phone do you have?
- kldg 1y agolol, unrelated to anything, but I had a police detective in my house about a year ago for something unrelated to me, though he did question me. At the end, he asked for my phone number. "Oh, I don't do phones. I've got a VOIP number if you want." He was so friendly up to that point, but then he clearly SCOWLED at me; I was so taken aback that I laughed at it.
- dredmorbius 1y agoI know this is OT for the thread, but I'd be interested in hearing how you're using VOIP, provider(s) you've used, and any interesting hacks. I'd recently twigged that I don't want a mobile phone that forwards to, say, an Asterisk server I control, but an Asterisk server (and VOIP number(s)) I can optionally forward to a mobile or other service (e.g., possibly Jitsi Meet or Signal). That last I could then interact with on a subnotebook laptop or tablet device. The phone would principally exist as a tether or true-emergency comms.
- 1y ago
- amelius 1y agoWhatever the reason, they should have at least communicated it before banning the user. Leaving people in the dark makes them rightfully angry.