[beagle3]

This is getting blurry as well, and though you are technically correct, one might have to sue or suffer damages for not following their rules:

My children’s schools requires the use of Microsoft Teams From home (and associated TOS) for them to attend class. There is also a parent WhatsApp group for urgent messages to parents. And as of the pandemic, there is also mandatory Zoom classes.

This is a public school. If I sue I could possibly avoid these - I am not even sure of that. But either way, I and my children will suffer if I don’t comply.

Microsoft. Facebook. Zoom. Coerced de facto to follow their rules; they might cancel my accounts if I don’t behave accordingly - Facebook and Google have certainly done so before.

[unishark]

The millions of people locked up in prison would see it as more than a technicality. Personally I'm much more nervous about screwing up some details in following the govt's rules versus a private company.

Getting banned by Google/Facebook and losing all your data in the cloud is just the modern equivalent of losing everything when your hard drive dies. The way to mitigate this danger is the same.

[mschuster91]

> Getting banned by Google/Facebook and losing all your data in the cloud is just the modern equivalent of losing everything when your hard drive dies. The way to mitigate this danger is the same.

No it's not. A HDD failing or getting lost? That can be guarded against with backups.

With getting banned by Google or Facebook? When all your accounts, your identity is tied to that address/account and you get banned, you cannot be reached anymore by people who don't know that you got screwed over.

The obvious solution would be to self-host an email server, but unfortunately that's impossible as it will be mercilessly assaulted by spammers and hackers on the inbound side and you'll be having issues with deliverability on the outbound side.

The real solution would be for legislative and regulatory action that recognizes the importance of identity and forces all email providers to adhere to due process. But unfortunately, worldwide legislators are too old / too incompetent or in the pockets of other people who don't care...

[unishark]

> No it's not. A HDD failing or getting lost? That can be guarded against with backups.

Exactly. Back up your cloud data.

> With getting banned by Google or Facebook? When all your accounts, your identity is tied to that address/account and you get banned, you cannot be reached anymore by people who don't know that you got screwed over.

I thought the fact that I consider this perspective to be absurd was kind of obviously built in to my statement.

You can use a new email to contact people. Especially when you have your backups.

[beagle3]

Google effectively killfiled a domain I run. It took me a few months to figure out, but about 95% of emails sent to @gmail.com or g-suite hosted addresses from that domain (which were, overall ~20% of emails sent), got into a spam folder.

No recourse, no one to talk to; my solution was to switch from a small but reputable ISP I had used for 17 years (and which never had a single spam complaint or blacklist entry in any list I can read) to fastmail for that domain; because Google decided they didn't like something about that setup; already spent a couple of work days no one was paying for to troubleshoot and eventually gave up.

Google+Microsoft+FastMail likely cover 95% of your recipients. If they don't like you, you're going to have a very hard time reaching people.

[mschuster91]

> I thought the fact that I consider this perspective to be absurd was kind of obviously built in to my statement.

It is not absurd, it is reality. With emails you at least can manually walk through the hundreds of sites you have stored in your password manager, hope that the password still works and you did not encounter a site that got hacked and reset all the passwords, and change the email address... but with "sign in with Facebook/Apple ID/..." you are at the mercy of the target site having a fallback login mechanism. (Hint: many don't or it's buggy because never tested)

[unishark]

Ultimately this is just more information in the cloud which you failed to back up.

I end up having to reset forgotten passwords a lot (maybe dozens of times per year) and don't think I've ever encountered a reset situation like you describe. If it's important I can always call them to resolve an account problem. If it's unimportant I can make a new account.

[beagle3]

If it’s an account that’s not tied to anything important, sure; But if it’s tied to a bank account, credit card, utility bill etc, it’s often not as easy to “just make a new account”. You’ll likely need to fax a copy of your id to a fraud department who’ll take their time.

A friend of mine has been unable to convince a credit agency to reset their password as they are out of the country and cannot fulfill the requested authentication task. Wouldn’t be a problem in normal times, as they are back and forth every other month. Except it’s been 7 months since corona disrupted that. They can’t just “sign up for a new account” as it tied to their identity.

I’ve never had this problem myself either. But it’s a real problem.

[dnautics]

It's still fundamentally government that made that choice to force you into one service.

[beagle3]

So? Whoever runs that service gets to set and enforce their ToS and you don't get to appeal. So they enjoy many government rights with non of the checks and balances. (They don't get to employ physical violence yet, true).

[jjk166]

That's the government coercing you, not microsoft. I'm sure microsoft doesn't mind a captive market, but if the government decides to use slack or whatever instead, you're going to switch over to slack regardless of any protest from microsoft.

The companies which seem to benefit the most from the government's power are the ones which would suffer the most from losing the government's current favor. They must bend over backwards to stay in the government's good graces, not the other way around.

[beagle3]

However, if microsoft dislikes me for something I did, they can kick me out; Google has done so with respect to Android APK related stuff, for example.

I'm sure courts can properly resolve this, after a few months, if it did happen ....

It's the government coercing me to comply with Microsoft's TOS that's the problem.

> They must bend over backwards to stay in the government's good graces, not the other way around.

Of course, but they pay for the government's good graces by e.g. giving them free access to all hosted data -- not by making sure the users are well taken care of..

[jjk166]

If a restaurant owner doesn't like me taking my shoes off, they can kick me out. There is a clear business interest in maintaining an atmosphere where people want to eat, and my bare feet would make plenty of people lose their appetites.

If the government points their guns at me and says eat at that restaurant or else, the restaurant owner has done nothing wrong. It is the government forcing me to wear shoes, not him. Even if he lobbied for a law that made dining at his restaurant mandatory, the government still decided on its own to go along with it - the restaurant owner had no power to make them do it. Forcing the restaurant to allow me to take my shoes off will only make the dining experience of everyone else forced to eat there more unpleasant.

It is dumb that the local school chose a setup that relies completely on Microsoft. You and everyone else negatively affected should be sure to show your dissatisfaction with the school board on election day. But there's nothing wrong with Microsoft having the ability to kick you off if it doesn't like you.

[beagle3]

Perfect analogy.

Unfortunately, said restaurant owner can (and has) kicked people of for sharing recipes that owner thinks it owns (but doesn’t have to prove)

The problem was never with the shoes off crowd.