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Comment by sasaf5 | Hacker News Reader

> It also told me that it had permanently disabled my Facebook account—an account that I’d had for more than 15 years, and that was my primary way of staying in touch with family and friends around the world.

You don't need Facebook for that. Write down a list of the people you care about and contact them with some frequency, at least on their birthday.

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contact them how? they don't read email (if they even have an address), they are not using any other messenger. and my introvert nature makes phonecalls very uncomfortable. at best i could send SMS, but that is not suitable (and across continents expensive) for real conversations. also none of the alternatives allow me to keep up with what's happening with them because they only post it on facebook. and there is at least one project that is important to me that i can't participate in without a facebook account because it is coordinated only there.

in general, reaching someone through other ways than their preferred channel only works if both sides are willing to do so. very often, especially with non-technical people that is simply not the case.

you can replace facebook with any other tool that is used for messaging, and you will find cases where not being able to access that tool would be a problem.

most of my contacts are only reachable through one specific messaging tool.

the reality is that we can no longer allow any of these companies to control who does and who doesn't get access. getting access must be a right that mustn't be denied to you if you choose to use it. or, better, all major messaging systems should be made interoperable so that you can stay in touch without needing an account there.

> the reality is that we can no longer allow any of these companies to control who does and who doesn't get access. getting access must be a right that mustn't be denied to you if you choose to use it.

A right to an account on web platforms? Okay... does that apply to every single platform, or only those of a certain size? What size? What about people using the platform to spam, harass, or threaten other users?

> or, better, all major messaging systems should be made interoperable so that you can stay in touch without needing an account there.

This is a far more reasonable take, though still not probably viable.

What about people use the platform to spam, harass, or threaten other users?

those are a matter for a court to decide. noone should lose their account without due process.

in germany some law firms offer a service to help you get your account back with a well crafted letter from a lawyer

Due process? Tell me you’ve never read the Terms and Conditions without telling me. You don’t have a legal right to anything on Facebooks servers. Just because you invest effort and time into something doesn’t mean you have a right or ownership. You aren’t squatting on Facebook’s land. They just haven’t forced you off yet.

In some countries you have legal rights to information collected about you. This can include information collected by social media sites. Just because Facebook has a forced arbitration agreement in their TOS doesn't mean it's valid everywhere, especially in countries that nullify those clauses. The same goes with information collection clauses. Laws supercede terms of services.

And personally, while I don't mind users being able to be banned for harassing users, I do think everyone, including trolls, should have the right to information collected about them and their account

It’s valid in the UK where this person is limited to their rights. Sure people should have right to information collected about themselves but a lot of countries don’t extend that right. Perhaps in a different reality or in 10-15 years time things will change. Not while Zuck is sucking people dry of their data and people use Facebook because they see identity as a valid reason to give up their freedoms so they can sell something to someone they’ll never communicate with again.

Perhaps in a different reality or in 10-15 years time things will change

germany is neither a different reality, nor does it live in the future. but it provides a real example of a place where things already changed.

Not for people in the UK where it matters. Yes I understand hypotheticals and navel gazing at Germany’s data laws. That doesn’t make them more real or possible for this incident.

Sounds nice but the UK doesn’t benefit in regards to laws from another country.

this person doesn't benefit, but the country does. people could demand a change based on the german example. i don't know how likely that is to happen now, but some time ago the UK used to be part of the EU, which means there was a time when such a change would have been quite likely actually.

Sure, that could have happened. I’m not going to argue whether something hypothetically probable is possible.

the german federal cartel office forced for example amazon to change their terms and conditions so that they may no longer arbitrarily close accounts. account closures also must include a reason. further german users can now sue against closures in germany.

so yes, companies can not arbitrarily ignore due process in their term and conditions

Well this person lives in the UK where such protections do not extend so I do not see such relevance to this topic. I would also be curious to find out if there is a difference between “account closed” and “account disabled indefinitely”.

the point is that it doesn't have to be that way. and the examples in other countries show that it is indeed not like that everywhere. it is a fair question to ask which way is better, and looking at other ways to respond to these cases is relevant in my opinion.

It doesn’t have to be that way but it is and won’t be anything different until many variables change. As far as this case is concerned: no there is and never will be due process for this situation nor does any UK law allow for that.

Maybe the user could make an argument in court that Facebook was hurting his business but hard to prove with a free service. No real harm has come to this person.

losing access to a number of customers is a real harm and actually quite easy to prove. the service being free has nothing to do with it.

Usually a “losing access to customers” argument is tied to loss of capital to make the argument stick. It is harder to tie a customer to loss of capital in a free service. Especially a free service that isn’t the only offering.

You didn't answer the rest of my questions, which are sort of relevant. If I run a small platform of a couple hundred users, and one or two of them are actively harassing and threatening other users, my only option should be taking them to court? To say nothing of jurisdictions, or anonymity, or any number of other issues, you should realize that this gives an unfair advantage to platforms that can spend more money on lawyers to argue their case, or lobby for legislative change, etc.

please use a more generous reading of what i said. clearly small companies shouldn't be held to the same standards as big ones. but even small companies should be able to provide an explanation for account closures, and no terms and conditions can abrogate the right to sue. so you don't have to take them to court, but they may well take you to court after you close their accounts. however if you have done your homework, and documented the abuse you'll win, and they will have to pay your court fees.

but until someone sues small companies will probably fly under the radar and the focus is on big companies as it should be. and yes big companies do have an advantage, that's why their actions deserve closer scrutiny.

I dunno. One of the core skills of bullies in school is taking advantage of "due process".

Funny in American schools teachers and administrators are known to show allyship to bullies in that they take no action to stop them unless they go really too far and kill somebody. I took a summer course though that was taught by two German instructors who actually led the bullying directly. Maybe they have a more toxic culture than the US.

I know the EU has a "right for embezzlers to reoffend" law which must have been an example of people who use their social skills as a weapon against other people using their social skills to turn the law into a weapon against the rest of us. The "right to be forgotten" is itself a crime when embezzling is concerned because embezzlers have a very high recidivism rate, essentially 100% when behavioral addictions like gambling are involved. This is a crime which can destroy businesses, ruin lives, deny people a secure retirement, and cause unemployment. I can think of no reason why embezzlement treason should ever be forgot.

ignoring that in my opinion bullying is an entirely different issue that has nothing to do with what we are discussing, if bullies can take advantage of due process then the rules are bad or unsuitable, and just because that may be the case in schools that doesn't mean that due process is a bad idea to begin with.

yes, the laws are not perfect, may need to be changed. actually that is the core of most of this subthread. the example that for this case in germany the laws are better than in the UK, and that it is possible to improve the protection of users against these big companies.

I can think of no reason why embezzlement treason should ever be forgot

this is another example of a law that may not be perfect. again, laws can and should be changed when evidence emerges that the current laws are not suitable to protect people from harm.

in this particular case i would argue that we may not have enough data to decide. there may also be a component of believing that people can change, and the question is what causes them to recommit such a crime, and what can we do about it to change that. one problem here is that a permanent record does not stop people from recommitting a crime, but it does make it very difficult for them to reform because reform requires that past transgressions are forgotten.

but we could go on endlessly finding examples of laws that are broken, and argue about how they should be fixed, or claim that because there are other broken laws, then the one we are discussing must be broken too, or whatever the argument is here. but doing so while we are discussing one such law is not really helpful, and feels like whataboutism.

facebook has billions of unique users (ostensibly) - so, c'mon, person.

So, again, I ask: what size does this sort of argument start applying at? 100 users? 1 million? 1 billion?

say, when 1-10% of a country's (or state's, or whatever) citizens are users of the service, someone should pop their head in and say "we need a different legal strategy for retention and user onboard/offboard."

It should be taught in MBA, and VCs should tell startups that aim to get "millions" of users that they need to plan, in advance, for this sort of thing.

This isn't really a gotcha, i'd put a hard line somewhere around "10% of the global population" as needing extreme scrutiny.

The actual reality is that you worked yourself into the untenable position of being so hands-off with people that you need a social network to do what a phone can do just as well, and that's because most of the people in everyone's social network are not actually people that we care to stay in touch with on a daily or even monthly basis. You don't need a social network. You choose to use one.

There are people in my facebook feed who I haven't seen in person in over 20 years. It's nice to keep up with them and their lives and families, but if I lost access to facebook tomorrow, it wouldn't change a thing for me. I am friendly with these people but I don't actually know them anymore and am not all that invested in their lives.

It is totally possible to have a robust social life and keep up with friends and family without Social Media. OP just needs to put in effort and not hide behind all those excuses. I burned my Facebook account at least 10 years ago, maybe 15... I can’t remember when, it’s been so long. Yet the people who are actually important to me stay in touch. I don’t consider someone an actual “friend” if they are unwilling to even communicate with me if I don’t use social media. These people aren’t actual friends.

it's not just friends. it's teachers, parents of my children's friends, my landlord. doctors, customers, employers, colleagues, even parents or my partner and other relatives, etc. these people absolutely do have the power to dictate which way i communicate with them (and for some of those people i absolutely don't want them to have my phone number if i can avoid it). same goes for groups, i may be able to ask individuals to switch messengers to stay in touch, but i can't move a whole group if that group matters to me.

the problem is that the choice of messengers is decided at the beginning when you meet someone for the first time. the person is not yet a friend but they may become a friend if you can only find a way to stay in touch. for me, as the more technical person in most cases this means that i must accept their choice of messenger, because i can't babysit them to switch. (though i do have counter examples where switching worked)

i travel a lot. when i come to a new place and i need to build up connections to locals it is totally not possible to come in and dictate which messenger they should use to communicate with me. i need to use theirs. only once i gained their trust and a friendship emerges i may suggest switching to a better way to communicate. but the reality is, that if i refuse use their messenger or worse are blocked from using it then i am unable to stay in touch with people i meet.

when i moved to china i long refused to use wechat. i was unable to stay in touch with most of the people i met during that time because of that. until i gave up resisting.

> and my introvert nature makes phonecalls very uncomfortable

It's got nothing to do with introversion, you aren't comfortable makeing phonecalls. Start making phonecalls and it will get better.

If you truly struggle, stop lying to yourself that it's just your introversion and seek help. Mental health issues aren't something to be ashamed of, it is affecting your quality of life and should be diagnosed and treated by a professional.

I'm not saying you have a mental health issue. I'm just saying if you do, you don't need to let it effect your life.

Start making phonecalls and it will get better

possibly, though the reality is that i grew up before the internet and i was making phonecalls just fine then. somehow it got worse. either bad experiences, or something changed when i discovered the ability to communicate with written short messages instead. i have no idea.

but look around on hackernews. i am not the only one who dislikes phone calls. one potential reason i explained here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41345469

i like to take the time to think before i answer, and that just doesn't work on the phone.

but the real point here is that you tell me i should be able to switch away from a method to communicate that i don't like but use another one that i like even less. that doesn't make any sense. why would i do that? (and i haven't even touched on the fact how much i hate giving people my phonenumber, on most messengers at least i can ignore people if they bother me)

So if I build a tool that lets me and 3 of my friends chat privately, I need to give you access because you somehow think you have a right to access?

i don't see how you could come to that conclusion. first please read my response here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41350245 and then reread my parent comment, in particular the last paragraph where i talk about "these companies" and "major messaging systems". it's clearly not referring to "all companies" and even less to a custom tool you built for your friends. at best "replace facebook with any other tool" could be interpreted as applying to your tool, but even then it should be pretty obvious that i could not possibly have a problem not being able to access your tool unless at least one of your friends is also my friend.

so where does that line get drawn then - what metric does it move beyond the tool my friends have and one that meets your criteria

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