So a billion dollar company that locks out a user and does not correctly and quickly handle an appeal would get a giant fee that really hurts.
Given the market value of the company, then it should be able to comply with basic standards of say decency, honesty and perhaps ... transparency.
The other argument is that the major messaging platforms have collectively become an essential basic utility, and accordingly carry some responsibility.
Taking on so many users means you get responsibilities to society that smaller companies don't get.
I've been asking friends to get off WhatsApp forever, and everyone wants to get off it. But family members and clients are on it, so now everyone downloads multiple messaging apps, ones they want to use and the ones they're forced go use.
At this point even if WhatsApp explicitly says they'll sell your information to Satan, people will still use it because it's free.
Crowing 'private company' doesn't absolve you of providing the functions of the town square when you've bulldozed and replaced it and repeatedly stated that you are the town square.
I made a new LLC recently and signed up for PayPal to pay an invoice.
I gave them my info, my tax ID, my bank account, etc.
And within five minutes, they told me that my account was permanently blocked and that I wouldn't be able to use PayPal with my business. No reason was given other than I must have violated their TOU.
I had to go onto Twitter and talk publicly about it, then talked to three different Twitter representatives over a three weeks period, and they finally unlocked my account.
I commend them for unlocking it, but it's certainly given me pause over using them for even sending funds. :(
I can see both sides of this process, and unfortunately, in case of an error, it's almost impossible to resolve the situation without an inside advocate who could influence the outcome and possibly correct the mistake.
This is why we need regulation that protects people/businesses.
The EU is working on it
God, just install that other app or pay for Texts or Beeper if you really need it.
Permaban for no reason, and fail to respond to appeals? A fine of 1 day of revenue, per user, seems reasonable to me.
(Revenue would include revenue of all controlled foreign subsidiaries, tax haven shell companies, etc, of course)
I purposefully avoided doing mobile development to stay away from Google and Apple and it looks like, for some years now, web apps are buttery smooth on any device.
If it would take a 3 person team one employee 10 minutes to resolve, then fine based on about a hundred thousandth of total gross revenue.
Do you live in a democratic country? It's up to you and your neighbors then!
Meta can afford meeting regulatory requirements imposed by nation states.
If my local barber tells me "don't come back here ever again", I'll find another barber within 15min walk from my place.
If Facebook bans me, I might lose a way to communicate with hundreds of people, I might lose access to managing my business and talk to my clients. And often there might be very few viable alternatives.
As Facebook and other large companies become dominant in certain areas, their responsibility should grow, too. And banning users based on some algorithmic detection, without the ability to contact human customer support to understand and fix the situation, should not be acceptable.
We can keep saying "uninstall WhatsApp/Messenger/WeChat!" but for a lot of people this it not viable, because it means cutting social connections or losing clients. There are countries like Spain where WhatsApp is the way to communicate on-line and few people use other IMs.
There are a few things that can change it - either a technology shift (e.g. mobile revolution ended Windows dominance), black swan event (like pandemic that moved everyone to hybrid/remote work), or government regulation. If we don't want the government to intervene, we need to accept that we might be randomly banned by an algorithm and there's nothing we can do about it.
There are alternatives. If we don't want Facebook in general to monopolize every aspect of our lives, we need to actively refuse being assimilated by the Borg and prioritize these alternatives.
Ok, your small online store is banned from advertising on Facebook and Instagram. What will you do?
Do you mean advertising or keeping an internet presence? If you mean "internet presence", I'd would use one of the numerous site builders and I would create a pixelfed and mastodon instances to publish content.
If you mean advertising: I'd write a post here about how my account was banned without justification...
You just need to stop contributing to it if you believe that it is harmful to you and you are okay with the consequences of your choices.
I am not walking around with a soapbox telling everyone they should leave FB and Instagram. Instead, I am simply not participating in it and hoping that this can serve as an example for others.
So when you go to jail, do they tell you 'see the law'? No, they tell spesifically which law you broke.
If you are willing to accept this BS, how do you know they are telling the truth, what if you didn't break their TOS and the real reason they banned you is because they dislike your political views?
What if tomorrow they ban everyone who supports donald trump, or whatever.
My XMPP address will keep working as long as I have control over my DNS records.
There is no technology in the world that isn't vulnerable to this sort of thing. The only way out is legislating against companies cutting you off without reason or recourse.
Indeed! One has control on their DNS records only as long as they are allowed to have control on their DNS records. That control can be taken away as it once happened in my case when a domain name I was using was sinkholed due to a false positive. Full story here: https://susam.net/blog/sinkholed.html
Until the sinkhole incident happened, I was a firm believer of running my own email server with a domain name I have registered, so that it would not be possible for a large corporation to accidentally lock me out of my email. But now that I have seen how one's control over a domain name can be taken away suddenly and without warning, I am not so sure!
They are a monopoly that people are dependent on - it's not as if you can just choose not to use whatsapp. You cannot just move to another messaging app unless you get everyone on the planet to move with you.
I, for example, am required to use whatsapp every day for my job. If I was banned from whatsapp, I would be unable to do my job and be immediately fired.
Messaging is an essential utility now, and just like the other utilities in your house, it is not fair to cut people off from them.
Whatsapp doesn't have rights, they have responsibilities, and they should not be allowed to ban people for no reason.
I live fine without using any FB products
if your livelihood depends on a lame messaging app something is wrong with your business
Go out and meet some people whose families are on Whatsapp. Whose parents or grandparents know exactly how to use the one app and that's it.
I boycott LinkedIn and I have enough trouble as it is because of that. And it's LinkedIn, a lame-ass feel-good social network. WhatsApp is a messaging app and has over 2 billion users, with a penetration so large in some countries (especially Europe) that it gets special treatment for ISPs, it's often the only way to contact some businesses, and has de facto replaced SMS for many. There aren't "thousands of messaging apps" with that kind of userbase.
Pointless for you? Good for you. Your life is not others', though, please have empathy.
Do you see where your logic is failing?
Either have standard open protocols or be regulated.
I would rather the company focusses innovation on the next big step rather than incrementally taking care of these few long-tail and corner cases.
Moreover, its the users who make a company big or small, if there are better options users would anyway migrate away - the comment sounds a bit entitled if I am being honest - you want a great product + great customer service, for free. (I don't buy the 'but i am giving them my personal data in return' argument)