I believe we need to pass down new consumer laws to protect the people. We pretty much rely on their services and they have no accountability.
After years, I made my first Instagram post last week. I got instantly banned (it was a picture of a new bag I bought). Apparently the way to get it back is to jump through some hoops and post a selfie with an OTP. I decided that’s a bit much work and I might as well let them delete my account that only follows a bunch of people I know without ever looking at their pictures.
It's bonkers, and clear how they go about obtaining their data.
I don't mind anti-spam measures in cases which are common spam techniques. Hijacking unused accounts is common enough to warrant an approach like this.
It’s also reasonable not to want to provide Instagram not to have too much information because after all it is Meta, however it’s debatable whether sharing a photo with a photo sharing service is too much information.
> Both sides are reasonable, a common form of spam uses hacked accounts that have grown organically, the normal way, and have then been abandoned.
That does not seem to be the case here.
When it comes to money, sure, take caution. When it comes to a dozen-or-so followers+followees, abandoned a decade ago with hardly any posts... congratulations, your marketing efforts or network effects were successful and they're back. Now stop trying to steal their personal data under the guise of "security".
If you must, feel free to make a password recovery via their emergency mail or something, but don't try to steal personal data.
The rest just doesn’t work; the accounts get hacked using the recovery mechanism because the email accounts get hacked or expire and they get used for spam.
The real fundamental change after the dot om bubble was that the open web effectively died and was replaced with a handful of walled gardens. If you have your own site and post pictures to it there are very few that can stop you, posting to Instagram and you're effectively politely requesting a company to take rights to your photo and host or online if they would be so kind.
I would rarely use it, but then I would try to pay for something with it and it would be declined, when I called they always said it was "suspended due to inactivity"
So for example, a backup card you use for gas only, or a store-branded Mastercard that you only usually use at that store.
You still run the risk of a block, but it's reduced.
In emergency you need to contact your bank.
I have had my card declined several times Once on travel to USA - I probably should have told them before - in this case I had to phone them an international call and it was immediately reinstated. They also denied a payment when it was in a place accross the country from my normal use, which wa good as it was not me trying to use it.
Basically if your spending is abnormal - e.g. in a different place or for a large amount then you might have to confirm the payment. The benefit is the bank is able to stop more fraud.
I doubt that. The bank will either cancel my account long before that, or it will work.
> Hijacking unused accounts is common enough
Ah, yes, for all my 20 or 30 followers, can’t have them see a single image, and of course, the hijackers also hijack the computer those accounts are from, so the IP belongs to the same entity it always did.
They make decisions in milliseconds on each purchase to determine whether it might be fraud. This includes looking at past purchase history to see if this transaction is unusual.[1]
[1] https://usa.visa.com/visa-everywhere/security/outsmarting-fr...
Never posted anything. Never liked anything. Never commented. 5 years later I go to login. Account is banned.
And even if no one reported you if you don't have 2fa etc I'd say it's reasonable for FB to assume your (IG) account was sold, hacked or swapped.
The only tag was the brand of the bag
I have no idea, and I can’t check any more :D
I have not had to login since I last reinstalled my computer last year, the session simply continued.
Thucydides , ~5th century BC
Today, in many places, even minor assault will result in consequences. In this way, the law redistributes power from the physically strong to those who may be weak but who have legal standing.
Of course, in an absolute sense, everything redounds to power. All law is in the end, enforced at the point of a gun. But this is an observation with very little practical utility IMO. It's like the saying which people employ when things are not going well, "it could be worse".
To be clear, I'm am here making a case for law as an insurance against indivual domination and warlordism which I think it can be. I am not making a case for the state in general though.
The Athenians then proceeded to kill the adult males and sell the remaining population into slavery. The island was repeopled by Athens, and later produced the Venus of Milo.
If porn/weed/crypto or other stuff is legal, then the bank should not be moral police and close their account. Banks are not police, or judicary system and one cannot run a company without a bank account.
If they explain this with risk, then there should be some special state run bank that handles higher risk customers - and for example freezes money for some time to check everything. But at least does not close the account
Reasonable...but could you describe the elected politicians who will vote to establish that special state-run bank, and keep it going?
In this case the pressure on a government payment system would be even higher as no politician could afford to support something helping porn.
OTOH, I doubt the banks themselves are doing it for personal moral reasons, rather because of outside pressure. They're doing it out of fear of the power that picketers have over their actual livelihood.
This is a “feature”, not a bug.
Passing real laws is hard. Easier to get the huge near monopolies the citizenry de facto require to exist to enforce your shadow legal system.
Remember, the first amendment only applies to the government, and you technically won’t die without a bank account or internet access!
It's a strategic goal of the United States to be able to drop individuals out of the economy.
Don't let the foreign part cloud the picture. You cheese off someone bad enough, we have the mechanism to put an entry in place that echoes out to every lawfully operating money transferer, and suddenly, you don't have money anymore.
Every money transmitter's legal department has a full time department that just day in and day out handles law enforcement or government requests.
Other governments I assume enforce their own versions. Using "The Royal No One", here; but no one wants a world of unrestrictable interaction at a distance. In any form.
We moved away from it because of all the things that go wrong with that, and then the internet happened and we want digital money.
"Digital money" in the broadest sense is how it all works today, even with the coins and notes that are common here in Berlin. "Trust-less" money — without anyone who can undo transactions — is an illusion, as it necessitates the users trust their counterparty as court-ordered refunds can't be guaranteed. But too many entities who can undo transactions has a similar effect, and there's a benefit to scale, so you naturally end up with a small number of Visa/MasterCard/PayPal types who have motive, means, and opportunity to bribe/regulatory-capture governments.
One of the reasons I was originally curious about BTC, before it gave me "scam!" vibes, was the possible it might be a new path that might avoid some of this; but I no longer have that impression.
You still had issues, if the local butcher decided to ban you then you were going to be vegetarian. If the church said you were awful (perhaps in retaliation to you seeing the priest doing something) then you'd basically have to move, you could no longer participate in society.
Society has reconfigured itself away from that. The problem now is you can't even move. If a couple of big corporations ban you, you're screwed. You will struggle to sell your services when 95% of people want to buy your products on amazon and pay by credit card.
The solution here is to have due process and appeals. The impact of amazon or whatsapp blocking you is far more on you than on them, just like the butcher banning you in the past. There's just less comeback, you can't even talk to a person on the phone, let alone face to face. You can't appeal to the rest of the village (well you can, people post on HN or Twitter and get bans overturned, but that's a minority workflow and is far less successful than in the past)
Not all of course, companies with too much power act hostile just for the sake of it (means random management bullshit from power obsessed or just ambitious member of it).
So I am not too sure if even more and more consumer protection laws for for particular situations will solve this instead of making it worse.
Some regulation is necessary for most serious or common matters but regulations are not a magic wand that will solve all of our problems without effort from the individual!
Hint: if you have no evidence of something but believe it because of an underlying philosophy, you should figure out how true it is before arguing its case.