5 ms·

"Don't be too skeptical. Most of the people on HN had some big company restrict/kill an account by some BigCo at some point." Most? That is a pretty serious st

by edanm 14y ago

"Don't be too skeptical. Most of the people on HN had some big company restrict/kill an account by some BigCo at some point." Most? That is a pretty serious statement, and I really doubt you can back it up. I don't have statistics on this and don't know where to look for them, but I would guess that the numbers of HN'ers that have had an account closed by a BigCo is actually much less than 1%, never mind more than 50%. Am I grossly underestimating here? Keep in mind that these stories tend to be very popular, so there could definitely be a lot more of these stories around than is statistically correct. P.s. As for one of cletus' point above, I've also noticed a few of these kinds of points eventually bring out more details which tend not to confirm the events, as told in the original posts. Nothing specific to this case of course, I've just caught myself a few times thinking "hmmm, looks like it wasn't such a crystal-clear case of the company being wrong".

deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
blake8086 14y ago
My eBay account was closed because someone disputed a purchase from a family member, and my previous address was the same as theirs. Now it would take 99 other HNers who haven't had accounts closed to cancel me out and keep the ratio at 1%.
- lotharbot 14y ago
  On the other side of the same coin: HN gets 120k uniques per day (as of October 5, 2011 - http://ycombinator.com/newsnews.html http://ycombinator.com/newsnews.html ). So it will take another 1,199 people who've had accounts closed to put the ratio at above 1%. Of course, this is all incredibly blatant misuse of statistics. What we really need is a poll.
  - EGreg 14y ago
    Then we can argue about the biasedness of the poll
  - kgermino 14y ago
    >What we really need is a poll. Ok, /newpoll... >Sorry, polls are turned off for a while. Now we'll never know.
ryanlbrown 14y ago
I tried to make a purchase with PayPal a month or so ago and forgot I was on Tor. They blocked my account until I can verify my location. To verify my location they need to call the landline at my address. Too bad I don't have a landline at my address. There's probably another way to get my account back but I've sort of lost interest now.
- theatraine 14y ago
  You'd be much more motivated if you have thousands of dollars in your account! A similar thing happened with my business's PayPal. I tried to transfer funds, and they decided that it was a good time to re-verify our location. Since we missed the phone call, we now have to wait for them to mail a letter.
monkeypizza 14y ago
My father had a 6 year old paid flickr account with 30k photos, 2m+ views, shut down without warning or explanation. It contained tons of original genealogical research, macro shots of plants, photographs of family-related newspaper stories... And possibly some videos with copyrighted music clips. It's a shame how far we've fallen from traditional justice, which involves: 1. right to confront your accuser, 2. right to legal representation, 3. knowing the charges and evidence against you 4. right to call witnesses and present evidence 5. judgement by your peers I know, flickr owns the servers, they make the rules etc. But as human beings, and as a company, I think it's a mistake for them to behave this way. The feeling of injustice is really powerful, and I think everyone would be better served if companies didn't disregard it.
- krichman 14y ago
  Not only that, but I think it would be reasonable to require by law that a service must give its users prompt notice of termination and a reasonable timeframe during which they can download the content they created. What happened to your father AFAIC was a crime.
- fauigerzigerk 14y ago
  I agree that they are making a big mistake causing those feelings of rage and helplessnes. But the rights you list are rights we have in court. We never had any right to representation in an internal procedure of some private company. If our access to essential digital facilities ends up being dominated by a handful of global companies, these companies will be regulated like traditional facilities if they don't start regulating themselves in a sensible way very quickly. Resolving conflicts, finding out what the truth is in a particular case, all of that costs money. We will either pay it in taxes or as part of a purchase we make.
  - monkeypizza 14y ago
    Flickr is yahoo's toy, if they get pissed off they can take it home and deprive everyone of the game; it's still legal to be a jerk. The whole world used to be that way, though - kings owned everything and if you didn't like it, die - but it pissed people off so bad, they took back the rights to what really was the king's property. The real problem seems to be how easy it is to enter into extremely unjust agreements online. In the real world, it's not easy to sign a contract giving up all your future rights - imagine if a car company tried to slip clauses into a car purchase agreement giving them the right to take back the car without explanation at any time. People would rebel. But online, people regularly click through things just as bad as this. People act like reputation pressure is enough to stop this - but in the real world, not everyone is informed enough to keep up to date on every entity's reputation, and in many places, communities have just taken the shortcut of making certain types of deals illegal, at the expense of the freedom of the seller to make that type of contract.
xiaoma 14y ago
I have been (by Reddit), and had no history of spam or disallowed use. I wasted time writing and responding to comments and nobody except me could see anything I wrote. I was unknowingly talking into the void for weeks. That was 5 years ago and to this day, I've never forgiven them.
- finnw 14y ago
  Good thing that never happens on HN

by edanm 14y ago

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

blake8086 14y ago

My eBay account was closed because someone disputed a purchase from a family member, and my previous address was the same as theirs. Now it would take 99 other HNers who haven't had accounts closed to cancel me out and keep the ratio at 1%.

lotharbot 14y ago
On the other side of the same coin: HN gets 120k uniques per day (as of October 5, 2011 - http://ycombinator.com/newsnews.html http://ycombinator.com/newsnews.html ). So it will take another 1,199 people who've had accounts closed to put the ratio at above 1%. Of course, this is all incredibly blatant misuse of statistics. What we really need is a poll.
- EGreg 14y ago
  Then we can argue about the biasedness of the poll
- kgermino 14y ago
  >What we really need is a poll. Ok, /newpoll... >Sorry, polls are turned off for a while. Now we'll never know.

ryanlbrown 14y ago

I tried to make a purchase with PayPal a month or so ago and forgot I was on Tor. They blocked my account until I can verify my location. To verify my location they need to call the landline at my address. Too bad I don't have a landline at my address. There's probably another way to get my account back but I've sort of lost interest now.

theatraine 14y ago
You'd be much more motivated if you have thousands of dollars in your account! A similar thing happened with my business's PayPal. I tried to transfer funds, and they decided that it was a good time to re-verify our location. Since we missed the phone call, we now have to wait for them to mail a letter.

monkeypizza 14y ago

My father had a 6 year old paid flickr account with 30k photos, 2m+ views, shut down without warning or explanation. It contained tons of original genealogical research, macro shots of plants, photographs of family-related newspaper stories... And possibly some videos with copyrighted music clips. It's a shame how far we've fallen from traditional justice, which involves: 1. right to confront your accuser, 2. right to legal representation, 3. knowing the charges and evidence against you 4. right to call witnesses and present evidence 5. judgement by your peers I know, flickr owns the servers, they make the rules etc. But as human beings, and as a company, I think it's a mistake for them to behave this way. The feeling of injustice is really powerful, and I think everyone would be better served if companies didn't disregard it.

krichman 14y ago
Not only that, but I think it would be reasonable to require by law that a service must give its users prompt notice of termination and a reasonable timeframe during which they can download the content they created. What happened to your father AFAIC was a crime.
fauigerzigerk 14y ago
I agree that they are making a big mistake causing those feelings of rage and helplessnes. But the rights you list are rights we have in court. We never had any right to representation in an internal procedure of some private company. If our access to essential digital facilities ends up being dominated by a handful of global companies, these companies will be regulated like traditional facilities if they don't start regulating themselves in a sensible way very quickly. Resolving conflicts, finding out what the truth is in a particular case, all of that costs money. We will either pay it in taxes or as part of a purchase we make.
- monkeypizza 14y ago
  Flickr is yahoo's toy, if they get pissed off they can take it home and deprive everyone of the game; it's still legal to be a jerk. The whole world used to be that way, though - kings owned everything and if you didn't like it, die - but it pissed people off so bad, they took back the rights to what really was the king's property. The real problem seems to be how easy it is to enter into extremely unjust agreements online. In the real world, it's not easy to sign a contract giving up all your future rights - imagine if a car company tried to slip clauses into a car purchase agreement giving them the right to take back the car without explanation at any time. People would rebel. But online, people regularly click through things just as bad as this. People act like reputation pressure is enough to stop this - but in the real world, not everyone is informed enough to keep up to date on every entity's reputation, and in many places, communities have just taken the shortcut of making certain types of deals illegal, at the expense of the freedom of the seller to make that type of contract.

xiaoma 14y ago

I have been (by Reddit), and had no history of spam or disallowed use. I wasted time writing and responding to comments and nobody except me could see anything I wrote. I was unknowingly talking into the void for weeks. That was 5 years ago and to this day, I've never forgiven them.

finnw 14y ago
Good thing that never happens on HN