My girlfriend had her Tumblr account terminated by some automated process and Tumblr won't respond to her. And this was devasting to her, because not only was it content she had spent a long time curating, but there were many friends of hers that she only had contact with through Tumblr due to her wish to protect her offline identity. To suddenly lose dozens of good friends overnight due to a software error was insanely depressing for her.
The effects of these account terminations can be far-reaching. After watching the effect on my SO, I have to wonder how many suicides have been precipitated by an unfair account termination?
- Appeal the deactivation, with guaranteed human review of the account if above the, say, 20th %ile of account age
- Download your text and media assets
- Send a message to social connections with an e-mail where to reach you
- Truly delete everything within the next 24 hours (right to be forgotten, etc.)
In the OP's scenario, for instance, YouTube could have at least allowed his partner to export all the videos.
There are some definite easy wins to be made by players in this space that don't even involve them having to hire more humans.
It actually might be a potential business opportunity. Gig economy social media moderation. Pay $50 and YouTube contracts out with a company for $40 to pay a subcontractor $30 to spend an hour reviewing your appeal and account history and making a recommendation.
It has an icky protection racket feel to it and would incentivize YouTube to be more aggressive in deactivating accounts. But... maybe it's less icky than advertising, selling your privacy for pennies, and permanently deleting your stuff?
Also, I have no idea if this will work, but: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19418165 - a bit of quote-googling (recommended to verify) suggests this person may use gmail. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
The bank (Square) issue is that I ordered something online, FedEx screwed up the delivery, it got returned to merchant, but merchant does not respond. I asked bank for chargeback, but they can't do one as the package got delivered (back to the merchant). Their support script only allows chargebacks when there is no delivery at all. They tried to get me to persuade FedEx to change the package status to nondelivered, but I refused, so they gave me the money back anyway and closed my account because it was easier than changing their immutable support script to allow for an edge case where a package was delivered, but not delivered to customer.
That comment was from a few years ago so the poster may be relatively distant to Tumblr nowadays and it might take a few additional people-hops (if it doesn't fall through) to get anywhere. I also wonder if old/deactivated non-public account data is held indefinitely (eg, private messages)... it probably is...
Regarding Stripe, wow, I admittedly didn't quite read the name the first time through the paragraph, and was very surprised when I actually noticed ("...that Stripe?"). I guess it makes sense; they're similar in scale and incumbance to the big-N stuffy local banks now. A good reminder that class-leading web design isn't necessarily a function of broad-spectrum competence across the board, just a very well-paid design team lol
I take it you can't reopen an account? :/
(Uh, if you'd even want to...)
I sent an unsolicited email to the person above, and was polite about asking, but no reply yet :)
The comment I linked incidentally happened to be (understandably) stuck in my head, but some bumbling around and experimentation with Algolia for a few minutes (trying keywords like "works at", "engineer" and "dev") also found https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29700627, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12924580, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12928349, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20701499, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19815847, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16971725, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3587191, and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4728531. It's quite possible none of these are relevant or useful; I also just thought of https://github.com/search?q=tumblr&type=users, which surfaces an interesting level of signal right on page 1, and this is not even mentioning LinkedIn, notwithstanding that site's caveat of "oh no" vs "likely most direct solution to problem" :)
(Now to work through this small pile of unrelated interesting things that also mysteriously opened themselves over the past few minutes. Welp. All good :D)
It'd their platform and a free service, so maybe it is fine to deactivate you and remove your content from the world.
But to simultaneously remove your access so you lose everything is just a demonstration that they have zero care about your work or compassion that their customers are human beings. In other words, they are straight-up psychopaths
If you care about anything, do NOT use these services for that. Great for junk accounts, but otherwise...
If we permit immediate removal, what are the reasonable boundaries? Legal/illegal is a court decision but you can't run all such decisions through the courts. So now we're back to Google just deciding what they will remove and it's on you to back things up. Sucks but that's probably reality we'll have to live with.
If it's cporn or other felony content, then fine, shut it all off.
For anything else, allow download only from the last three IP addresses the owner personally logged in from, plus two (if they've moved or are nomadic), plus maybe the same two or three last logged-in-from MAC addresses. Limit to three successful copies downloaded, then shut off.
Alternatively, if you still think that zero future sharing through their site must be the rule, then at least provide the content on a media copy at a nominal fee such as [cost of media]+ [50% service charge] + postage.
Finding fault is the easiest thing in the world. But if you apply your brain to finding a solution instead of merely a problem, things work better.
Additionally, the hosts like Google/YouTube, etc. can say that they have found that the material has potential legal issues, and they will hold it for release when the courts sort it out.
Again, the key here is to have some kind of recourse. Anything less is psycopathic - they make a fair exchange by providing a "free" service in exchange for the users' attention, and then when someone puts in 2/3 of a decade of attention and content-building, to simply cut it off with no recourse is just massive theft or vandalism, at best.
And, if they are not going to provide that, they need to provide at least constant prompts that Damocles' sword is hanging over their heads and they need to make local backups.
Note: Yes it ain't easy and it ain't fun, just like driving a car during rush hour.
This works in the content creation sphere.
I don't remember anyone being upset if they changed emails and started posting on usenet from a different email address. The discussion at hand was what was important.
People are ultimately causing themselves all this stress and worry over absolutely nothing. All these make believe missed opportunities if you don't put in all this effort to get one of the lottery tickets.
Your expectations from free service should be zero. It can go out of business at any time. Or they can stop offering it at anytime.
So it's ok if someone takes your car the next time you park on a free parking lot?
It doesn't work that way in the physical world. I don't see why it should work that way in the digital world. Offering to hold your property for free isn't a license to steal or destroy it.
They should, but they should also clearly communicate what content they consider acceptable and I think they should also notify the user and give them time to move their things out if G decides the content is deemed unacceptable. Especially if the content is not obviously and egregiously violating the terms of service and hasn't been considered a problem for the past seven years. Pulling the rug like that all of a sudden isn't cool.
If I offer to hold your grocery bag while you go to the restroom, do you think it's OK for me to throw it all away because after digging aronud a bit, I notice you have bought apples I don't like? What if I've been repeatedly extending the same courtesy for the past ten years and never had a problem with these apples until today? What if I advertise myself as a free bag holding service by the entrance to the restroom?
I think people should have the expectation that if a company (or individual) offers a service and holds on to your property (be it digital or physical), they should treat it responsibly and not just trash it all out of the blue.
> Clearly it wasn't following intent of the site.
That does not seem clear at all based on a reading of youtube's policies.
> And the user didn't really lose anything, as they still have the originals.
That's not something Google can decide or verify. Instead, they could help the user move their stuff out and that would ensure they still have everything.
But I like this line of arguing; I think copyright infringement is ok because the copyright holder still has their original copy which has in no way been affected.
Not the best analogy since the parking lot is just an empty physical space. Taking it away wouldn’t also “delete” your car. The car is actually a separate physical object. But in a cloud drive, the file and the space are the same. Taking away the space is obviously going to take away the file.
On top of all that, the file still exists elsewhere for most people.
Unless explicitly stated. And we all know that: 1) most of the internet users don’t read the Terms of Service, and 2) YouTube probably states in their Terms of Service doc that they can do whatever they want with your data (I don’t know this for sure because of point 1)
The closest analogy is; if you park without paying, your car might get impounded.
Not a bad analogy. Getting an impounded car back is often described as being abusively expensive beyond real costs.
That would be a improvement for the OP.
Though I don't think any of the giants have an incentive to offer this since might draw more attention than just telling them to fuck off.
It seems to be human nature, and also nature of the market. It's the digital equivalent of race to the bottom. The shortsighted, uninformed, apathetic, and irrational people outnumber those who care, by a huge margin. "Just educate people" isn't happening any more than we can just tell people to "git gud." And that is why, in the physical space, we have laws that offer people some protection against terrible products that are unfit for purpose, unsafe, broken, etcetra. We wouldn't need those laws if we could just fix people and make them informed & rational; in that case, the market would truly sort out itself. It's just not happening, and it's also not happening in the digital space, so it's very possible we're going to see the same laws in the digital space.
There are alternative paid options (vimeo, dropbox, S3) that should work fine.
This is also a big problem with gmail, hotmail, and a thousand other email providers. Most people assume their data is permanent and safe in a free email account. That's probably true 99.99% of the time, but it's not guaranteed. If your data is important, you should really pay someone to host it, or back it up yourself.
Till the cost of bad press exceeds the cost of providing a usable support service.
The existing managers get their bonuses from the cost savings and move on to other things. 3 years later, a new generation of managers take over, realize the goodwill is already gone, and it would take an unrealistic herculean effort to reverse public sentiment. And it would take years. They take the easy route and try to squeeze even more money from the services by cutting more costs (yay AI!).
That's how giant companies fail.
Ban or shadow-ban whenever
Raise prices whenever
Sell your private info to whomever
Violate your privacy however
1.) Letting a lawyer contact Google and then suing them.
2.) Using regulations such as GDPR to ask for correction of data about yourself and/or challenging the automated decision about yourself.
No warning.
No explanation other than "suspicious activity" or "violation of [vaguely worded] policy."
No human to call who can help troubleshoot, other than a tech-savvy friend or relative.
No recourse.
There needs to be a technology bill of rights, not just for people dealing with Google, Amazon, Apple, and Facebook, but also the myriad other technology operators which can disrupt our lives in an instant with some poorly programmed process or unanticipated edge case. Ultimately, the OP or my non-tech savvy employee or my mother should be able to get real answers and/or help from a human being when wronged by Google, a telco, or the local bank.
(Repost #1)