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by BobCat 1426 days ago
Non-lawyer here: one reason corporations won't give you info about exactly what they think you did wrong is it gives you no grounds to sue them for slander.

Similarly, no HR department will inform another HR department if you were fired or why, they'll only confirm dates of employment.
2 comments
mlyle 1426 days ago
> Non-lawyer here: one reason corporations won't give you info about exactly what they think you did wrong is it gives you no grounds to sue them for slander.

Telling you something that they think about you, without witnesses, is not slander.

e.g.

> Typically, the elements of a cause of action for defamation include:

> A false and defamatory statement concerning another;

> The unprivileged publication of the statement to a third party (that is, somebody other than the person defamed by the statement);

> If the defamatory matter is of public concern, fault amounting at least to negligence on the part of the publisher; and

> Damage to the plaintiff [from the statement itself].

https://www.expertlaw.com/library/personal_injury/defamation...

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IMO, there's two reasons why they won't tell you why you're suspended:

* It may help bad actors figure out how to circumvent the system (but, trust me, they already know!)

* It may reveal their own wrongdoing.

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hedora 1426 days ago
I can imagine someone arguing that Google's fraud department defamed them, causing another department (the third party) to take actions that damaged the plaintiff. "unprivileged" might be hard to argue though.
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mlyle 1426 days ago
Google talking to Google is not a third party in any sense.

In general, businesses don't need to do business with you and can exercise relatively arbitrary judgment on this. It gets scary when we're talking about entities with significant market power just deciding to exclude you, though.

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fallingknife 1426 days ago
If Google says "we suspended your account because you did x, y, and z, which caused us to suspect that you are committing fraud" that is not slander, unless you can prove that they didn't actually think so, which is impossible.
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