[duiker101]

I am confused, maybe I misread something but it seems like you did get banned for unknown reasons (which very sadly seems to becoming a common occurrence) but has nothing to do with how you looked like that morning? Are you sure you did not violate any ToS even if accidentally?

[gnufreex]

Well I was never warned over 3 years. I never accepted payment away from Upwork, i maybe couple of times got off site communication on client request, but nobody gave me infraction for that. I think that should come before the ban.

I figure there is two possible reasons they banned me. Facial recognition software decided that my profile pic (when I was younger and clean shaven) is not sufficiently similar to my pic taken during video call.

Other reason might be that they think my services are not being needed, as I had interviews without hire... except those were ones where I did not want to be hired, it was not like client rejected me. I simply wanted to pick best jobs, while still having time to concentrate on my long running contract with full time employer. In a hindsight, I probably should have set my profile to private in order not to get any invites. And go public only when I want side-job. I did not know they count that metric.

[deanclatworthy]

Or maybe this is a big misunderstanding, and your blog post title is clickbait.

[LyndsySimon]

I see nothing wrong with that.

The man's livelihood was destroyed, without a provided justification or an apparent means of appeal. The "court of public opinion" is basically his only shot to get it back, and that requires views. Clickbait gets views.

[dang]

That's not a bad argument, but it isn't a good fit for HN. Clickbait is against the site guidelines, because its strengths—attracting quick attention and generating indignation—are actually weaknesses for intellectual curiosity, the main value of this site.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

[ilaksh]

Its not clickbait. They gave him no explanation for the ban. They required a video call. It is reasonable to speculate that his appearance could have been a factor.

[dang]

Ok, but the title doesn't speculate; it makes the claim outright. People naturally feel rage at the image of someone being banned so arbitrarily and trivially. Generating rage with evidenceless claims is definitely clickbait.

[rightbyte]

Maybe clients you turned down gave you 1 stars or what ever.

Do you think it was chat bots? These automated fraud detection system are a nightmare.

I did some jobs at elance as a student. You could feel how the platform was on the side of the work buyers. I stopped trying making money there after a dispute with a SEO dude over payment for some text where he wanted me to do another one before I got payed ... luckely the money (30 USD) was in escrow for me and I actually got it from elance, but it's a buyers market.

[gnufreex]

They can't give me one star if I did not start contract with them. I need to accept contract to be able to affect JSS

[NullPrefix]

Maybe the platform thinks you accepted those contracts off the platform.