[bvinc]

This is every company that deals with fraud of some sort. They collect evidence. Once evidence is damning enough, they ban, without giving any information. If they were to give out their evidence, then their evidence collection methods would become known and would no longer be effective.

Furthermore, even when they get it right, people who were banned correctly come on to the internet to complain.

But sometimes they get it wrong. And the only recourse seems to be a public shaming online.

[madrox]

Imagine if our justice system worked like this, where you could get convicted without ever seeing the evidence against you because it would reveal the methods the police used.

I realize it’s not entirely the same thing, but it’s also not entirely different.

[koolba]

> Imagine if our justice system worked like this, where you could get convicted without ever seeing the evidence against you because it would reveal the methods the police used.

That exists and it’s just as prone to abuse as you think: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Foreign_Intellig...

[em3rgent0rdr]

Also the US No Fly List.

[Tao332]

Also the Disposition Matrix https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disposition_Matrix

[vitro]

Read Kafka's The Trial [1], nice description of how it feels to be a person living in such system.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Trial

[version_five]

Just a reminder that Kafka's book like The Trial and The Castle are based on his experience working within the Hapsburg Empire bureaucracy. He wasn't imagining some nightmare world so much as documenting it.

[MiddleEndian]

I wasn't arrested, repeatedly seduced by a barrage of women with ulterior motives, or killed by the government, so my story would make a terrible novel, but this is how I felt dealing with the government as the executor of a family member's estate.

After I grieved for some time and taken sentimental items, her house had fallen into disrepair, so I sold it at a loss to an investor, and I was mostly ready to start moving on with my life. Somehow, the death certificate provided to me by the government about a year prior to this did not indicate that the government was aware of her death, and I needed send them back a copy of that very certificate in order to make the government officially aware of what happened.

Then I was told that I would need to wait six months for the estate process to end. During that time, I was given random tasks to do at no set interval, usually with deadlines of only a couple days. Then literally one day before the six month time period was over, I was told that the government would be taking the money in the estate due to unpaid medical bills from some years before her death (the same trips to the hospital that had failed to diagnose her illness in the first place). After getting more lawyers to investigate whether this was possible and correct (it was, private creditors' time limit starts at the time of death, but government's time limit starts whenever the aforementioned paperwork is filed (also this only took me a day or so to figure out, because I do not enjoy long drawn out bureaucratic processes unlike the state government I was interacting with)), I resigned to give up and give them the money.

However, that was not an option either. It took ANOTHER six months of random tasks to actually give them the money. I honestly don't remember what most of the tasks were, because none of it made any sense, but the final task really summed up the whole process. I received a call on a Thursday afternoon: I had to mail a physical check to my lawyer to then hand-deliver to a department within seven days, but that department was only open on Mondays 10AM to noon.

All for the terrible crime of having a family member die without having memorized estate law ahead of time. I do consider what they did some unnecessary abstract form of violence/coercion, because otherwise I obviously would not have voluntarily signed up to do any of that shit. At least if they had been honest enough to tell me at the start they were planning to just take everything, I would've just declined to be the executor and let the government do what it wanted with the property. They could have had that money (probably more money, since I wouldn't have paid a third of it to an estate lawyer and the house would've been in better condition) close to two years earlier and left me alone at the same time.

[withinboredom]

My Uncle-in-law is literally going through this process right now. There’s literally nothing left for the family despite so much being left to it. It’s mind-blowing how land that has been passed down for generations just goes “poof.” Meanwhile, had the family member known they were going to pass away, they could have just sold the land for a token amount and it wouldn’t have been part of the estate.

[toss1]

And these are two fine examples of why if you have anything at all, you want to put as much of it as possible in a trust. Properly constructed and administered, this will avoid all of the above sort of nonsense related to estate probate processes, properly avoid many taxes and processes, keep it all non-public (probate in inherently public), and greatly reduce the burden on your family/successors. Find a GOOD Trust & Estates attny (not just a rando hanging out a shingle, of which there are many), having an LLM degree in T&E is a good sign. Is not necessarily that expensive, and if you have any significant house equity, etc., and especially that with children, it's a very good idea.

[withinboredom]

After watching it all play out, I’d find it hard to have convinced this person to do that. They grew up in a world where debt wasn’t a thing that could send you to poverty, rather a useful tool. When they inherited the land, there wasn’t much, if any debt. Today, most people have debt as a means of survival vs. a tool. This makes setting up a trust harder in their eyes because they might need the assets for more debt.

No idea how any of this works, just 2am shower thoughts.

[MiddleEndian]

It's cruel, it's slow, and it's a game you don't realize you're playing (until you've done it once I guess, not looking forward to the next time(s)).

[epistasis]

This is the difference between public and private entities.

However when a monopoly starts to take over, what is a private entity starts to have governmental powers.

In the US, there has been a century long politics effort to reduce anti-monopoly protections, to the point that the standard is now "are consumers being actively harmed in pricing" and what you experience would likely never be considered something that could now result in anti-monopoly action.

And without those anti-monopoly protections, eBay gets to collect economic rents—pure economic waste that profits eBay and hurts everyone else.

We need a return to Georgism to help fight some really bad politics that have developed over the past century.

[rzwitserloot]

In the justice system of most western countries, the general trend is: "Rather 10 criminals who go free, than one innocent person behind bars".

To live up to that statement, society pays. Through the nose - letting criminals walk free is annoying, we do pay the cost of trying to find them, and we pay a large cost gathering evidence to make it stick in court even when e.g. the cops are 80% sure. Courts are very expensive; judges have a salary. As a society we pay this, because, well, take the frustration of OP and now imagine the penalty is not 'banned from ebay', it's 'in jail for life' or even just 'most employers will no longer employ you because criminal record'.

eBay could choose to pay these costs. It will mean:

* Paying for a tribunal of sorts, paying to have them set up procedures and checking that they live up to them.

* Accepting that most fraudsters will just go 'free'.

* Accepting that fraudsters who do get 'caught', still spend a lot of time 'free' whilst the laborious process runs its course.

* To manage fraudsters, rules are created and publicised which interfere with legitimate business to some extent; everybody on the platform will have to deal with the fact they can no longer do this. (Laws that oversimplify - in society parlance: Walking through a red light even when there are clearly no cars at all is still illegal; that anybody can clearly see it was safe to do this doesn't change either the fact that you could be ticketed for this offense, or that police should just arbitrarily let this go).

In this case, 'society' becomes 'ebay users'. Do ebay users want to carry the burden of this cost? In any case, ebay users carry the burden of paying for the salaries of eBay's board which may well be excessive.

Why isn't there an ebay alternative? One that is more expensive for buyers and sellers but has all this? In large part, network effect makes it infeasible to have many ebay-esques out there. None of them would be any good at that point, and/or you get services that make it easy to post to all of them.

[ClumsyPilot]

> * Accepting that most fraudsters will just go 'free'.

But already go free, there is staggering ammount of fraud, counterfeit, stolen and illegal goods on Ebay.

Their system is more like "10,000 criminals who go free, 15 random people get banned and the person who wrote the algorythm get a raise and no-one measures the amount of crime or gives a shit"

[withinboredom]

My wife got banned from some service a year or so ago. I asked her if she complained, she said no. I thought to myself, “well, I bet those spam-stats are going to look great this quarter.”

[nitwit005]

It seems to be fairly rare for there to be a way to complain. They often make you log in to file a support ticket, but you can't log in anymore.

I suspect most of these companies have no real idea what their false positive rate is.

[ascar]

And even if there is a way to complain, unless they take action to reverse the decision it's probably not considered a false positive. And most complaints probably achieve nothing.

[kingcharles]

> In the justice system of most western countries, the general trend is: "Rather 10 criminals who go free, than one innocent person behind bars".

As someone with almost a decade of experience in the criminal justice system in the USA, it is pretty much the exact opposite. Of the dozens of prosecutors I know, I can't think of a single one that would care if someone is innocent of the crime for which they are charged.

[t-3]

Yep. The really messed up part is that normal people who end up in court are often punished more harshly than professional criminals. It's insane to see guys go to jail with long sentences for driving on a suspended license, while habitual offenders and scofflaws get slaps on the wrist.

[kingcharles]

This is very true. If you go to jail often you know the things that can help to get your case settled out quickly for a low plea.

[ipaddr]

Have you heard of facebook marketplace, esty, shopify? EBay doesn't have the monopoly it once did.

People go to court for murder yes but they also go for smaller things like a neighbour's tree causing property damage. The cost are different.

Companies that force users to give up the ability to sue need to provide an alt system.

"Rather 10 criminals who go free, than one innocent person behind bars"

This is not how things work outside of tv and talk radio. 1/3 of people in jail are innocent. Cops being sure doesn't make a fact true. Everyone has different priorities and cops are extremely good at jumping to simple answers because this is in their collective interest.

[bluGill]

EBay is still where you turn for random things that few people need. Baby toys can sell on Facebook, but parts for an obsolete computer are valuable to the right person and worthless to everyone else.

[ipaddr]

Amazon is the place for rare things few people need these days.

Selling things where you need the perfect partner are not things that sell well through an auction. An auction is 7 days where you hope to get many people interested in your unique product. An obsolete computer is better on a shelf with a price tag available all year until it sells.

[hattmall]

Yeah you can sell like that on eBay. Most things aren't auctions.

[account42]

Amazon is absolutely terrible for anything used or where minor variations matter (e.g. collectors items) as they will just combine all listings into one with a generic image. Useless for many things that eBay covers.

[jhugo]

And yet eBay remains the biggest marketplace of obsolete computers.

[Gibbon1]

I'm hearing a lot more people talking about selling stuff via Nextdoor.

If you want something old school web 1.0, https://www.car-part.com/ for junk yard parts.

[JadeNB]

> In the justice system of most western countries, the general trend is: "Rather 10 criminals who go free, than one innocent person behind bars".

> To live up to that statement, society pays. … As a society we pay this, because, well, take the frustration of OP and now imagine the penalty is not 'banned from ebay', it's 'in jail for life' or even just 'most employers will no longer employ you because criminal record'.

Aren't you describing a cost that is alleviated by (allegedly) making sure that the innocent aren't imprisoned, or, rather, a cost that would be borne if the legal system made sure to imprison those whom "the cops are 80% sure" were guilty?

[morpheuskafka]

> Accepting that most fraudsters will just go 'free'.

I think part of the problem is that even if eBay is willing to spend a lot more money on this process, everyday buyers will blame them whenever something goes wrong and just stop using it altogether. Basically, they want to be seen as an alternative to Amazon and don't want buyers to ever think about risk. The sophisticated users are already aware of it and are very skeptical, but the newer users who never read or leave reviews make them money too.

[ghaff]

There are two sides to every fraud. So if 75% of suspected/accused fraudsters go free, on the other side is a ton of buyers/sellers who got scammed. And to top it off the word gets around that you can scam on eBay and almost certainly get off with it.

eBay can try to make people whole who claim to be defrauded. But in addition to being expensive that creates its own perverse incentives.

[sokoloff]

I have several hundred EBay transactions over the last 15 years, probably 99 buys for every sale.

In the past few years, EBay has gotten very good at being pro-buyer (which is good for me). I can think of 2 transactions in the last 3 years that were “enough not as described” for me to bother to complain. In both instances, the sellers immediately offered something reasonable and we all moved on with our lives. (I think both sellers were clueless as to the defects, being high-volume churners of resold tech.)

It might be the case that EBay is more buyer friendly than Amazon at this point.

[hellotomyrars]

This reflects my experience as well. Same with Paypal. As a buyer when I have had issues, those issues have all been resolved to my satisfaction after going through the dispute process.

I dislike Paypal as a company and they do a lot of shitty things but the benefit to me using their services is tangible.

Honestly even sites like Aliexpress and Banggood have always resolved issues to my satisfaction once a dispute has been filed.

[actually_a_dog]

Almost all fraudsters on eBay already go free, at least in certain circumstances. I have reported numerous, obvious fake items in categories I'm familiar with to eBay, and had virtually none removed.

[bryanrasmussen]

So, it seems that you know better than Blackstone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackstone%27s_ratio even though, as others have commented in response, the current American system does not follow the principle.

[citizenpaul]

You have a vastly incorrect understanding of ths topic. I highly suggest you read some criminal justice theory for your own good. Instead feel free to DV and remain ignorant.

[raxxorraxor]

A law professor in my country just recently stated that proactive bans on online platforms are not a problem. My country is known for being digitally underdeveloped but I was still surprised that you can refrain from touching grass so effectively.

[ajross]

> Imagine if our justice system worked like this

Imagine if our justice system had to operate at a profit.

eBay isn't operating as a democratically endowed, taxpayer-funded operation for the public commonwealth. They're just a company trying to make a buck. It turns out, if you want to make a buck by providing market-making services to third parties, you become a huge magnet for scams and fraud. And you need to deal with that. This is how it works.

If you really got what you seem to want, it would be a government-regulated online market. And... let's be honest, that would probably be much worse for the buyers (who are the targets of fraud, remember) than eBay ever has been.

[bambax]

> I realize it’s not entirely the same thing

It is absolutely the same thing.

[MichaelBurge]

That's actually how it works though. See "Parallel Construction".

Except instead of saying "Access Denied" which immediately makes you suspicious and comment on the internet, they construct an alternative evidence chain so you waste your effort defending against the wrong thing, and the true techniques never come into question.

[kingcharles]

You have no constitutional right in the US to see any of the evidence against you before trial.

And where I am in Illinois, until a couple of years ago, if you were held in a county jail awaiting trial you were prohibited by law from having a copy of any of the evidence against you.

[charlieyu1]

So pretty much China. The methods used should be as vague as possible so that anyone could be convicted when convenient. Keeps the fear factor up.

[mulmen]

Well you have a choice in e-commerce marketplaces. You don’t have a choice in justice systems.

eBay does not have a monopoly on violence.

[jimnotgym]

Well yes and no. In the UK ebay has a monopoly. There are no other marketplaces that offer the same services and the same reach. That is why it should be regulated.

[rdtwo]

Traffic and as speeding tickets almost work the same way

[cjbprime]

You can contest them in court and demand that evidence is shown. That's not almost the same at all.

[notch656a]

You can but at least in the last state I lived, a cop's guesstimation is accepted (they count in their head or watch and count the lines or something, or that's the theory). In practice if the cop used an uncalibrated speed gun or whatever he'll always just say it was his guesstimation and precedent holds that the preponderance of the evidence shows that the ticket is valid.

So it returns back to the evidence being hidden and parallel construction being used to present the court case.

[______-_-______]

I honestly think that's still better than most online bans. If you find out you were ticketed because a cop had a bad day, it's not justice, but at least it's closure. Now you know, and you can accept it or fight/appeal if you're so inclined.

If you're permabanned because of a google/ebay AI bug, you can't even get that far.

[cormacrelf]

Not sure if this is your intention or even what jurisdiction you’re talking about, but “a preponderance of the evidence” is a fancy way of saying “to a civil standard” ie “more likely than not”. Seems unlikely for a criminal offence, where that’s never the standard. It was probably a fair bit more complicated than you’re making out.

[notch656a]

Those are the literal words spoken by the judge the last time I challenged a speeding case. I was also forced to testify against myself and told clearly and specifically by the judge I had no fifth amendment right to remain silent.

[admittedly that challenge happened in a different state than the guesstimation state. I don't even bother to challenge in the guesstimation state because you're basically fucked no matter what.]

The judge's explanation to me was that any offense without possible jail time are held to preponderance of the evidence and constitutional rights such as 5th amendment are revoked.

I've also been called to show up in a 'Mayors court' for speeding where the mayor who is the cousin of the cop oversees your case. Good luck with that; the ACLU has actually done a pretty extensive documentation on Mayor's courts and the corruption involved there.

[tyrfing]

> in some states, minor traffic violations aren't considered "crimes"—they're "civil" offenses. So, in these states, the government might be held to a lesser standard of proof for traffic cases. For example, in New York, the standard of proof for traffic violations is "clear and convincing evidence." And in Oregon, the state needs to prove traffic offenses only by a "preponderance of the evidence."

[marcus0x62]

De jure it is more complicated, de facto, not so much.

[dandanua]

> If they were to give out their evidence, then their evidence collection methods would become known and would no longer be effective

Companies can give the exact reason for a ban at least, without disclosing the methods of deduction. There is absolutely no reason to hide this information.

Such a behavior of companies is a big "f*ck you" to democracy and justice, not to criminals. It's exactly how totalitarianism looks like.

[ClumsyPilot]

> It's exactly how totalitarianism looks like..

Ofcourse it does, a corporation is a totalitarian organisation by design - I don't understand why anyone is surprised to learn this. Any disobedience or herecy and you are removed with prejudice.

[bcrosby95]

The exact reason is probably that their ML model told them to. They probably have no ability to give a more satisfying answer.

[dandanua]

I don't think their model just says them "fraud/no fraud". There are different types of fraud, which should be written in their TOS.

[zippergz]

No, this is not how these systems work. You're correct that they don't say "fraud/no fraud" but they generate a score (like a credit score) based on a massive number of inputs, and there are thresholds over which action (account ban, etc.) is taken. It does not in any way map to "types of fraud" and it does not map to the TOS. It's about identifying activity or accounts that look sufficiently similar to previous bad actors.

[protomyth]

I still wish some Congress person would introduce a consumer fairness act that required companies to give the specific evidence and reason for any service ban if the company has over 100,000 users. I don't think the security implications override the current level of abuse.

[jhugo]

It's difficult though; giving the reason would directly lead to an explosion of fraud, because you are telling the fraudsters exactly what they screwed up and how to avoid the ban next time.

Anti-fraud is basically all smoke and mirrors; if you reveal the methods it doesn't work any more.

[protomyth]

They have abused their need to conceal methods by not having proper customer service to resolve situations where innocent people are banned. Internet and banking services are too important to our lives, much like utilities, to allow this abuse to continue. If they wanted secret methods, then they needed to provide adequate customer service to offset their failures.

[jhugo]

If the human customer service provides an off-ramp from being banned, then the fraudsters will use that too. So the question still boils down to the exact same thing in the end: how do you reliably tell the difference between the fraudsters and the legitimate customers?

[protomyth]

Don't know, not my area, but like every other business in the US that cost should be born by the business not the consumer. Don't push large groups of people to the thin ice if you don't want laws passed.

[yanderekko]

Yep. OP's only real recourse is to just try again in 6 months or a year or whatever and hope that their ML algorithm evaluates their data differently.

If Ebay gave a credit report-style summary saying "you're banned because you're associated with this IP range" or something, then indeed this becomes information that would be exploited by fraudsters. If OP is actually innocent then their being banned is considered an acceptable risk.... one can only hope that in future model training though that this ban would be considered a false positive.

[rkk3]

>> They collected a ton of my sensitive information (address, phone, bank account, etc)

> Yep. OP's only real recourse is to just try again in 6 months or a year or whatever and hope that their ML algorithm evaluates their data differently.

And what change their identity? They already have their PII and banned them for life.

[hattmall]

Literally just use different spelling or ordering of names. Change address slightly or use a PO box, work address, relative house. New bank account etc. If they got the social that may be the sticking point, but I'm not even sure of that.

[hdjjhhvvhga]

> If they were to give out their evidence, then their evidence collection methods would become known and would no longer be effective.

I would like to dispute this. Of course, there is a cat-and-mouse game between popular online services and fraudsters, but the argument "if we show you the methods we use to spot them, they won't become effective" is a flawed argument. Sure, it helps a little, but after some time many of these just become public knowledge anyway.

I know if I like too many photos on Instagram, they will block me temporarily, and if I repeat it within certain period, they can ban me for a few days and so on. Having these thresholds and other rules spelled out would be helpful to users. They would know what to avoid, and if they misbehave, they can be rightfully punished. Giving blows out of the thin air is simply unfair.

[Jach]

It's also a rather unconvincing argument when there are so many blatant instances of service abusers getting away with it on platforms that can afford very talented employees. In short, whatever it is they're doing is already quite ineffective. While in theory it could be a little more ineffective if we knew what they were doing, it's also possible that they could be a lot more effective if they changed what they're doing and were transparent about it. A hierarchical reputation system (vouching or invite-style) would solve many issues in many domains, for instance; its main downside is during hyper-growth phases where you need onboarding to be as frictionless as possible. But for a big established company like ebay, I think requiring a new account to be vouched for by an existing account which takes on some risk if the new one turns abusive would be quite doable.

At least in your IG example the ban is finite. I don't want the law to be used so bluntly but I'd really prefer if all bans had to be time limited, even if only technically where due to exponential scaling for repeat offenses the time exceeds expected human lifespans.

[notahacker]

> I know if I like too many photos on Instagram, they will block me temporarily, and if I repeat it within certain period, they can ban me for a few days and so on. Having these thresholds and other rules spelled out would be helpful to users

It would be far more helpful to spammers, who could then set all their bots to send threshold - 1 likes and invitations than the average user who rarely ever considers liking enough stuff to trigger it (and is able to take the hint and just not like stuff as much if they do get a warning). Plus in practice it's probably not just a simple threshold, but a function weighted by timing and topics and relatedness of accounts and which is completely unintelligible to the average person (but potentially informative to more advanced spambot developers).

[ipaddr]

Do you not think these limits are being tested and shared already? I ran into a temporary ig ban when getting rid of a number of people I followed. When I searched for answers the limits were everywhere being discussed.

Before bug bounty programs this was the reason given for not disclosing security issues. All it did was keep the issues underground not fixed and allowed security bugs to exist forever.

[netr0ute]

Then make the thresholds low enough so that spam bots are totally ineffective by staying below the threshold.

[alpaca128]

If you lower the threshold far enough you'll also hit some of the most active users.

[Aeolun]

True, but they’ll know exactly what’s up.

[CamperBob2]

There is another recourse, which is legislation. Contact your representatives and let them know that the integrity of eBay's evidence collection methods should be eBay's problem to deal with, and not their customers'.

[srcreigh]

> If they were to give out their evidence, then their evidence collection methods would become known and would no longer be effective.

Doesn't this argument apply to the criminal justice system?

[xwdv]

I doubt this is the full story.

[Maursault]

While there is surely more to it, this kind of scenario should have been predicted before Internet companies got big. You see, the company can lose real money if there actually is a legal issue with an account holder and they don't act; they can be implicated in crime and be fined and have to spend money on attorneys to sort it out. However, it costs the company absolutely nothing to find, using automation, all complaints against any account holder valid and instaban them. It's cold, hard business. Everyone accused is punished without any resources spent on investigation to discover the truth. The truth here doesn't matter to the company. People don't matter to the company. Only money matters.

[ranger_danger]

So we should start accusing all the biggest sellers until somebody does something more useful?

[Maursault]

No. Business should be regulated to protect the consumer and remove this incentive for businesses to unilaterally screw the consumer.

[MichaelZuo]

The current situation is screwing a small number of unlucky consumers, but providing a net benefit for the overall aggregate of consumers, due to lower prices and fees.

What your proposing is to screw consumers overall in order to provide fairer treatment for the unlucky few due to ebay having to charge much higher fees in order to cover the cost of fraudsters.

Since buying and selling goods and services online is not a constitutional right, or any right anywhere as far as I know, a proposal to force such a change does not seem like it will pass muster in a serious court of law.

I'm not a lawyer but even to my untrained eye you will need far better arguments to get any traction.

[Thaxll]

What about taking them to court?

[PolygonSheep]

This runs into two problems:

1) It's a private company, they can refuse service to anyone for any reason - this is spelled out in the TOS:

> If we believe you are abusing eBay and/or our Services in any way, we may, in our sole discretion and without limiting other remedies, limit, suspend, or terminate your user account(s) and access to our Services, delay or remove hosted content, remove any special status associated with your account(s), remove, not display, and/or demote listings, reduce or eliminate any discounts, and take technical and/or legal steps to prevent you from using our Services.

> Additionally, we reserve the right to refuse, modify, or terminate all or part of our Services to anyone for any reason at our discretion.

2) There is a mandatory arbitration clause in the TOS so you can't take them to court.

> You and eBay each agree that any and all disputes or claims that have arisen, or may arise, between you and eBay (or any related third parties) that relate in any way to or arise out of this or previous versions of the User Agreement, your use of or access to our Services, the actions of eBay or its agents, or any products or services sold, offered, or purchased through our Services shall be resolved exclusively through final and binding arbitration, rather than in court.

I don't like it but that's how it is. For some reason no one - right, left or center - seems interested in regulating these things.

[Gigachad]

For what? They have the right to refuse service.

[spacexsucks]

This is why i lost $400 thanks to dumbasses like you