This! Couldn't agree more. I believe this is a much more bigger, huge problem compared to privacy, which is preventable (users can choose not to use a service) but this can take down entire businesses because of data giants' crappy/false alerting systems.
It should be illegal for Google, say, to remove listing without proving, or if that's not possible, if they remove they should legally be forced to compensate for the damage done. (Of course Google is just an example here, applies to any large enough platform)
Maybe then they will take this serious.
By that logic you can just not use Google. But that's ridiculous, as ridiculous as the statement that users can choose not to use a service. I believe it's impossible to live in modern society without having an account in FAANG, even harder than a business not having a google maps listing.
This is ofc locale-dependent, but if before the pandemic you could barely live without a smartphone, today is just impossible (at least in the 2 countries I visit often).
Switched banks.
> gvmt Covid mandatory app to travel anywhere?
There wasn't one, thank $DEITY (Germany).
> QR code for restaurants?
Never encountered one without a menu yet, but I'd just go to another one.
> Places that require an app in general?
Never encountered those, either. There was one on my offline backpacking trip which required digital payment. It was sad, but I had to forfeit.
Some places do require an app and while there are alternatives, there may not be another choice in the future. But not today, most of my elderly neighbours also don't own a smartphone and yet they survive in this city (Antwerp).
Life without a smartphone is possible, and imho calmer and more relaxed.
The easiest way to avoid this is by going physically to your bank branch.
> gvmt Covid mandatory app to travel anywhere?
Don't live in a country that does this, so I don't know.
> QR code for restaurants?
I ask for a menu.
> Places that require an app in general?
Haven't seen that happen yet. There are some parking lots that require an app to park in them, but I just park elsewhere. The laundry room in my apartment complex requires an app to pay, so I just go to the laundromat down the street instead.
I do have a smartphone, although I'll switch to the dumbest phone I can find when this one dies. I do not use any apps for doing any commerce or the like, though. It's far too risky for my taste.
A lot of people talk about 'needing' a smartphone for services/stuff I have never used, and probably would never use. I suppose I just kept living my life as I did before the 2010s, while everyone else changed. I was already in my 30s at that time, so not subject to the same social pressures a younger person would have felt, so perhaps it was easier.
That and my avoidance of Facebook didn't really matter until I had a kid and he started nursery school. I somehow got myself elected head of the Parents' Council, but it's been tough dealing with the mental block the slightly-younger generation has for email, and Signal is apparently a little too out there for non-techy 20/30-somethings of either gender.
I'm not as privacy-conscious as you, as I have a fairly recent iPhone; I'd probably be better described as social-media-skeptical, but your right to live a normal life without a smartphone is tied to my right to live a normal life without intrusive social media.
I use a bottom tier flip phone in the US, and a 13 year old Nokia with a pay-as-you go SIM in Europe.
I've noticed that there has been a generational shift towards smartphone-only communications, but I haven't really had to deal with it. I'd like to hear more about that. Oddly I use some of the same communication tools that young kids use, namely Discord, as it doesn't require a phone number. Linking online accounts and communications to a phone number has always put me off.
Also, even a lot of Facebook skeptics have no idea they’re owned and run by the same company…
I've been using GrapheneOS with F-droid and Aurora Store without logging into a Google account for years.
I've yet to run into a single thing I either couldn't use or couldn't work around.
I had to buy a replacement phone in a hurry last year when my old phone's screen stopped working, just so I could login to make an urgent bank transfer. I would have preferred to take my time over what to buy, but so many financial things I use are blocked without a smartphone now.
As for "working around" it, it's ridiculous to impose that expectation on the general population. Sure, you and I will always be able to find a way to hack around restrictions, but it's inaccessible to the overwhelming majority of the population.
Most people use phones they bought at their local electronics store, with default Android OS and default settings.
The exception establishes that you can.
The exception very specifically and precisely does disprove the rule.
At that point, you literally cannot live as an adult in the society without FAANG dependence, even if it's a third party Android phone, at least not legally.
For example, I went to visit the beach, which is on a national park. Parking required an app. There were park rangers there, the location was staffed, but they did not accept cash or credit card. Just an app. And there are two phone operating systems now, Apple and Android. So no. Can’t live without FAANG. I ended up downloading the app on the spot and purchasing a pass.
I’m sure the park service does this for their convenience. And it’s so populated near the coasts that if anyone doesn’t comply, they still have plenty of people who would gladly use the app. They can get away with demanding smartphone use. You can certainly get away with not having a smartphone further inland, and not needing to depend on FAANG explicitly. But I know this expectation is going to creep into the continent over time. In 5 years, if you say “I don’t have a smart phone” you’ll just be denied service. Period. No questions asked. And you will be considered the unreasonable party by most.
> In 5 years, if you say “I don’t have a smart phone” you’ll just be denied service. Period. No questions asked.
IANAL, but I feel like that should be illegal.
Sure, they can set up an app and those who want to use it may do so, but for things things like parking there ought to be an alternate. Beach, national park etc is a predominantly offline service for which it's absurd to insist on using an app.
Especially for something that's on a "national park" — I don't really know what the "national" part indicates (not from USA) but I'm assuming that the govt is involved.
Somebody should go to court.
The noose is tightening around the necks of those few of us who do not use smartphones. I hope a future wave of 'tech minimalism' gains enough traction to ensure that there are alternatives, but for now, as we ride the wave of tech-optimism and the mass adoption of intrusive technologies in the name of convenience or cost cutting, most people seem to see asking for alternatives as unreasonable.
There is an element of innate freedom in anonymous, analogue processes, even if they are not entirely 'anonymous' - such as writing a car license plate number on an envelope of cash for a drop box - it might as well be if the information is never entered into a searchable digital database where it will presumably be stored for eternity.
I few years ago I went camping at a state park in a system that had recently introduced usage fees (having always been free in the past). The state apparently partnered with some obscure parking app company to collect the fees. The use of the state park required submitting a considerable amount of information to a third party, with little or no information on how that data might be used, stored, or sold - in essence you had no choice but to submit to a third party's TOS in order to use public facilities at all. I did not like this at all, and having no smartphone, I paid cash at the manned office - only to have them collect my information and enter it into the parking app database.
A few months ago someone here made a comment in another discussion about having a pervasive sense that things are not quite as they should be. That stuck with me.
In the US, there are still large groups of Mennonites whose choices to avoid most post-19th century technology are generally well-accepted by the rest of the population, the best known of which are the Amish. They do travel around to varying extents, because not every Mennonite community agrees to what degree to avoid technology and under what circumstances - some have a community cellphone, some even have family cars (with a preference for less showy models); many are fine with taking public transit or hiring an "English" (non-Amish) driver. Individual smartphone ownership and use would conflict very strongly with what I understand of even the most "liberal" Amish communities, though.
There's got to be some sort of alliance that privacy-conscious techies can form with technology-skeptical religious communities, despite radically different worldviews.
No you can't just use a web app.
Nooooo...this is dark UX to artificially increase the number of violators and collect more revenue.
I expected better from the park service but around here they've started making people enter their license plate number on parking lot passes too to prevent the time-honored tradition of sharing day passes. They're in revenue-generating mode these days.
Case in point:
I had to drop off a cashier's check at a landlord's office. Same deal-- paid streetside parking, but didn't realize it was app-only. I struggled with downloading the app on a crappy connection and couldn't successfully pay for parking after 45 minutes of fucking with it.
What am I going to do, leave? I drove an hour to get there and had 3 minutes' worth of business there. In the end I just ended up parking illegally.
To be any scummier, they'd have to implement paid parking at rest stops and ticket anybody who dashes past the meter trying to get to the bathroom before they piss themselves.
Oh, this is completely possible -- I do it.
But it won't stop them from getting your personal data.
There's not need to pit fairness in business dealings against privacy. Both are wins for the average person.
We can chew gum and walk at the same time, no need to throw privacy under the bus.
Giving your personal data to private companies, however, is a choice. You can simply not use their services.
If you don't want to be homeless, you're either renting or buying, and in either case people are going to be processing your personal data. You're also probably going to need a bank account, which you also can't open without handing over personal data.
If you want electricity, you're then dealing with another company that is processing your data. Same for water and gas and internet.
Sure, some things are optional, some things can be worked around by buying in person and using cash instead of buying online. But a lot of things are just not practically optional.
It’s not as simple as “don’t use them”
Good luck with that. I get that you can refuse to email anybody with a gmail.com address, but lots of people use Google to host email. You may not be willing to upload your address book to Facebook, but the people who also have you in their phone book have likely shared that with FB through Instagram.
These companies get to know you pretty well even if you never directly use their services.
I love this liberal argument. It's the sister argument of "Well, if you don't like YouTube censorship, then you can start your own YouTube!" It is truly out of touch with how societies actually function.
This argument only works when you have lots of market competition full of small players where it doesn't make any difference which service you use. But large corporations can effectively become something like public utilities that function like economic gatekeepers in a way that even governments are incapable of.
It is also hostile and encourages/enables the hostility of big players. My presumption is characterized by liberality, but it's a presumption, which means I default to liberality, unless there is a good reason to restrain it. Saying "just don't use it" can either be unrealistic, or something like a move of last resort. We regulate business and have always regulated business for a reason, pace free market extremism.
The common good is the concern of the law, and protecting the individual is for the sake of the common good. Start there, and you might take a different view of the function of economies in societies and how they may or may not be constrained.
There is no real choice in our modern society to "not give your personal data" to these megacorps.
I did not gave my data to TeleSign but apparently they have it. And my operator did not tell me.
This is what I do, but it certainly doesn't stop private companies from getting my private data anyway.
There is no way to opt out of this.
It seems so bizzare google will publish such information without ever validating it with the business. It must cause a lot of damage and support quite the environment of scammers though.
Why should they? Validation would be expensive, and the false information doesn't hurt Google. Where else are you gonna list?
why instead?
Meanwhile these companies who have essentially became a public utility don’t provide customer support or explanations.
Non EU companies are the worst offenders at not understanding their privacy obligations (particularly ones that provide tags)
it's actually very clever. the more profit hungry and and invasive a company is, the more desperate they are to sell your data, the shittier they have to make their website - or break the law and get a nasty fine a year or two down the line
this idea that gdpr isn't enforced or is somehow expensive (?) doesn't have any grounding in reality: just 2 months ago, Meta was fined 1.2 billion euros for GDPR breaches. they've also already been fined hundreds of millions multiple times. in 2021, Amazon was fined ~800m euros. smaller businesses are being fined all over the place[1]. GDPR is the opposite of expensive. it's profitable
GDPR is a huge deal at companies that handle any data at all. they don't think it's not being enforced
if you were criticising the lack of enforcement of a github policy, do you think you'd actually go and make sure they weren't enforcing it? so why not the EU?
>If the EU would actually enforce GDPR it would be amazing
>The EU should not focus on privacy laws any further
and not to be advdersarial, but they do enforce GDPR. have a look at the enforcement tracker and sort by Fine:
https://www.enforcementtracker.com/
TLDR: less than 2 months ago, Meta - one of those de facto public utilities you're describing - was fined 1.2 Billion Euros for GDPR breaches. they and Amazon have previously been fined hundreds of millions
I meant the need to start a new front.
The solution that ended up working for me was to start paying a few dollars a day for Adwords. For some reason that cleared the issue up the next day. Then, I turned AdWords down to a few bucks a week and then later off entirely.
Yes, for some reason it cleared up after spending money. I really hope it’s not the norm. Sounds like extortion to me.
I don't hate it, I appreciate it. Better than having no easy recourse. Because I bet if everyone were treated equally, it'd be shitty service for all. Better to toss in a few bucks if it's valuable and get the support (and some ads run).
Since that amounts to a kind of extortion, I can't see how it would do anything but make me furious.
It really pissed me off because I wrote a long thoughtful review and mentioned the good aspects of the restaurant too as well as some recommendations, and it’s just completely gone
The worst part is the restaurant is sitting at 4.5 stars despite being quite bad, and the recent low star reviews are all questioning the rating, which is obviously artificial
I used to be that naive, then I tried to correct a Places issue on Facebook. I stumbled into this netherworld of similar people being abused with horrible tools continually banging their heads against a wall "to help people," with little or no support from Facebook.
After months of trying, I totally failed at my task, and I vowed never again. These company just abusively exploit people's need to help others for their own profit. If Google/Facebook/etc. wants me to work for them, they can pay me and give me reasonable tools.
OpenStreetMap didn't have the same error (which was still on Facebook, last I checked). Facebook Places has a buggy duplicate detection system that would frequently merge different places together, including one I specifically cared about. It would suck in any new instances into its merged blackhole. IIRC, a huge portion of the activity in that "netherworld" Facebook group I found was trying to mass-report merge errors to the automated system, which frequently didn't work.
However, OpenStreetMap would have been a very good suggestion for some of the other "netherworld" Facebook group members. Many of them seemed care about making Facebook Places accurate in general, so they'd look for and fix errors far afield from the stuff they actually interacted with.
My mind just boggles at the implicit additional bureaucracy, expenses, and slowdowns being cheered for. The kind of mess which results in a system so complex that it has its own "degrees which shouldn't exist" spawned from it like medical billing.
And then of course there is it a single living human at google you can contact to even find out which review was flagged, why, and what to do about it.
I don’t even read reviews anywhere anymore, they’re all faked or AstroTurfed anyway that they give no indication of anything. What a brave new world.
Intentionally or accidentally, it's a great problem for big tech to have. You scramble with everybody else to be on the service and the DDOS crowd, confused tourists and local ruffians take your account offline. Better grovel up to reinstate your honour and pay for protection/added services/more identity validation that doesn't stop the problem from happening. Same thing every big country does, we are all under a "security umbrella".
Honestly, real life advertising needs to make a come back. And localized knowledge of the businesses worth keeping alive, when Google's security algorithm dumps them without administration even knowing it. Eggs all in one basket, was never a good idea.. right?
At least in Germany, you can file for a court order ("Einstweilige Verfügung") against Google - that usually works out and is relatively cheap, a couple hundred euros. Consult a lawyer, I think most EU countries have a similar instrument. Do note, you might have to file for an order both against the Google Europe HQ in Dublin/Ireland and against your country's Google office.
And the privacy argument is often effectively countered with security concerns, even more so if that is expressly stated so in the ToS.
Just to be clear: I'm 100% on the GP's side, I'm just curious what the Verfügung could do here. In order for the court issue such an order, it needs at least a reasonable legal basis.
On a side note: GDPR demands that companies provide a way to get a manual review for decisions made by machines.
Correct. Unfortunately, from what I've heard so far, all that this entails is that some drone looks over the case, and checks a "reviewed" box or so. It's a right to manual review, not to manual rectification.
Rather than "Evan at" I'd say "especially at". It costs big companies way more money to deal with legal issues than it costs you to raise them.
You only have so many staff lawyers and it doesn't take a lot to get them bogged down. The bigger you are, the now likely you are too have a bunch of legal work.
It's simply in their best interest to make your legal case go away as quickly as possible in most cases.
Courts (at least in Germany) cannot just arbitrarily decide on what is just or not; they must follow the rule of law. Without some adequate legal basis, a court won't order a thing.
> It is not for others to convince you that you should consider human rights more important than corporate rights.
Human rights are by definition more important than corporate rights. I take offense at your suggestion that I'd consider the latter more important, given that I explicitly stated that I'm 100% on the GP's side.
Once you have monopoly or near-monopoly, you become more like infrastructure, whether you provide electricity or access to customers.
At that point, you either have to expect to be willing to host anyone who stays within the law, or have the monopoly broken up.
Only the most hardcore market fundamentalists/objectivits tend to disagree about this principle, in my experience. (Which means practically nobody outside the US). Though some seem to be quite willing to accept abuse of market power if it primarily hurts their political enemies.
> Only the most hardcore market fundamentalists/objectivits tend to disagree about this principle, in my experience.
Even if the court agrees in principle, it still needs a adequate legal basis to issue an order. Violation of a law, or a contract, or whatever. I asked the GP, who seems to have experience with such cases, what this legal basis this could be.
The legal basis to intervene is there, but may be vague and open to interpretation.
For instance, a near-monopoly position might cause other regulations, like laws against unfair business practices to be interpreted more strictly than for other intermediaries:
https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX:02...
As long as the population within a jurisdiciton univerally supports the principles behind a ruling, finding some regulation to support it usually can be done.
In the US, there seems to be two factors that make it a lot harder to enforce such regulation (to the extent that they even exist there) - The fact that these companies are American and able to buy influence through lobbying and contributions - The current division in American politics, where virtually any position supported by one side automatically will be opposed by the other, causing paralysis
The key thing is, going via the court system or even "just" the legal department without involving the courts short-circuits the relatively powerless first-level support.
If you're interested in the finer details and a bit of ranting, read e.g. this post from lawyer Christian Saefken [1] - it's geared towards Twitter (and Facebook, which a friend of mine had success with just the same).
Contracts work both ways: now imagine Google, or Facebook, or Twitter stating that you can't close your account without a good reason because you have a contract.
The point is that you don't need a good reason, you just need a previously agreed upon reason.
A cursory examination of the ToS [2] is shows numerous cases in which Google (or the user) can terminate the contract. Whatever happened here, it's all but certain that Google claims that one of these cases is fulfilled, hence they have the right to terminate the contract.
> If you're interested in the finer details and a bit of ranting, read e.g. this post from lawyer Christian Saefken [1] - it's geared towards Twitter (and Facebook, which a friend of mine had success with just the same).
> [1] https://christian-saefken.de/abmahnen-aber-richtig/
That lawyer is claiming a Right to Free Speech. I don't how this strategy can be successful, as Twitter will counter-claim that they it's a private platform they are free to regulate. Sexualized content can be free speech but surely one wouldn't claim that Twitter has the obligation to host it if they don't want to.
If Twitter indeed caved, then they caved simply because they assessed that said Tweet wasn't worth the trouble, not because they were legally obliged to.
If its not you're part of the problem.
Your comment feels very passive aggressive, FYI. There's no need to make accusations like that.
There's no way of getting this ban reversed, there's no way of invoking any human to perform a manual review on the ban. It is a permanent restriction that impacts her ability to communicate with her customer base.
If your country has a working small-cases court system, there are good odds you can achieve the same result without any lawyer involvement at all. But if you are discovering this from a random internet comment, you are almost certainly better talking with a lawyer about it anyway.
Be sure to CC [email protected] and [email protected]
Only issue: not sure that the GDPR applies to companies. And it's a 'pro' account I guess?
Recital 14 - The protection afforded by this Regulation should apply to natural persons, whatever their nationality or place of residence, in relation to the processing of their personal data. This Regulation does not cover the processing of personal data which concerns legal persons and in particular undertakings established as legal persons, including the name and the form of the legal person and the contact details of the legal person.
You know you're doing it wrong when the the Ministry of Information in Brazil has better customer service than you do.
Care to explain?
But tivert didn't say that! tivert instead said "...the Ministry of Information in the movie Brazil ..."
chinathrow should read more carefully.
giardini said "> chinathrow should read more carefully."
tivert said "I will direct you to other thing I added when I edited what I said: tivert said 'Edit: add "the movie" to remove ambiguity.'"
How isnt that also true here? They're a private business, they have a right to kick you off by automated systems if they think it's cheaper to have a couple of errors in the automatic system than to pay for manual reviewers. Hey, they're a private business and don't have to justify themselves, right?
Call your US Senators and Representative. Explain the problem.
Call your State Senators and Representative. Explain the problem.
Contact the FTC and file a complaint.
First saving on having to hire an appropriate level of customer service staff. Second that percentage of people who give up.
It's a feature, not a bug.
I think one of the pixel phone had an option to detect when there was a human on the other end of the line. Definitely made me consider getting it back when I was looking for a new phone.
Though from what I've seen, most places have callback options.
I use that for good purpose - I fix a lot of invalid information on Google Maps around my home town, and they apply the changes without batting an eye. This is good for society. But I can clearly see how that could be used for abusive purposes.
7 days ago, boom. Your account has been suspended for not following the business guidelines. The only thing I've updated recently was our hours. It's been listed without problems for about two years.
Of course they don't tell you what the issue is. They just tell you to fix it and then beg them to reinstate you. It takes up to two weeks apparently (7 days so far). And if they decide not to, the only thing you can do is delete the listing, and two years worth of hard earned reviews go up in smoke.
A few days ago one of our staff told me a Korean tourist came in the day before we were suspended and accused us of being fake. I don't know exactly what happened but due to the tourist's limited English nobody could persuade them we were the real location. Or maybe they were looking for somewhere else entirely? Who knows. Apparently they left a negative review, which I can't see while the account is suspended. Probably they reported the location as fake.
So that's it. Two years, over 100 positive reviews sitting at 4.9 stars. Gone because of one confused tourist. Or maybe because I updated the hours. Or maybe an automatic spam check didn't like us.
I sincerely hope that the next round of EU laws tackles this instead of privacy. It's just as big an issue, especially if you're running a small business.