alt Hacker NewsGoogle is the worst offender, but a lot of companies are increasingly hiding themselves behind a wall of automated systems to completely neuter users ability to challenge any decision unilaterally taken by the them. The LLM-age has worsen the situation but it started well before it.
At some point it may be necessary to add the requirement for large companies to have a both human contact point and perhaps a requirement for specifics on account terminations and the like, or at least a way to request them, to the letter of the law.
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Funny you should say that. I'm not a big Instagram user, but have had an account for years. The company I work for has just started an Instagram campaign, and asked anyone who wanted to, to check out their campaign and give it a like. I did so, and a minute later received this email:
"Your Instagram account has been suspended. This is because your account, or activity on it, doesn't follow our Community Standards on account integrity.
If you think that we made a mistake, you have until 8 March 2027 to appeal."
I've now uploaded my drivers licence, a photo of my passport and still apparently that's not good enough for them.
My latest rejection says I have only one more chance. No idea what the transgression was, but apparently there is no recourse.
I guess it's a good thing I don't really give a crap about Instagram in the first place, isn't it.
I opened a Google Workspace account for my solo business to have an email address at my domain, got suspended a month later, had no way of contacting support since they require login and I was the only user, filed an appeal, got no response after a month, eventually contacted their Twitter support account and had access restored, but through this all they charged me for the subscription three times while I was locked out and before I could cancel. I contacted their support after I was restored and they said they wouldn’t refund me because the Workspace account wasn’t suspended just my individual user (even though they acknowledged I was the only user). I had receipts and screenshots of everything including confirmation from Google’s own UI that I was suspended for that entire period, but I just have to let Google steal $100 from me now because what else am I going to do?
Also their explanation for the lockout was that I failed the verification step too many times, which I don’t recall failing even once.
> At some point it may be necessary to add the requirement for large companies to have a both human contact point and perhaps a requirement for specifics on account terminations and the like, or at least a way to request them, to the letter of the law.
This is already implemented, under the EU's Digital Services Act, you can appeal and get specifics about account terminations - see https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/policies/dsa-out-co...
Making the decision is easy, dealing with the consequences is not.
It’s a strategy. Ask RyanAir. They systematically shut down any way to communicate with them, except lawsuits. Tried their chatbot, hotline, email, letter, fax, small claims court (I’m not joking they don’t even care about that). Unless you turn up with a court order and confiscate a plane, they simply won’t give a fuck, and I’m sure it’s a tactic to deter 99% of their problems before they start