[pdonis]

> There are billions of Meta users.

But the vast majority of them are not paying users, as this cafe owner was. At best this lawsuit sets a precedent for people who are paying for business account services. It does not help ordinary free users at all.

[aurareturn]

Interestingly, if you look at Reddit sub regarding Instagram, a lot of people go there for help after they've been banned erroneously. One of the top recommendations was to make a paid account for ads just to get a human to look at their request.

Insane.

I don't think Meta and Google should be allowed to ban people without anyway for innocent users to recover the account or to download their own data after a permanent ban.

[pdonis]

If Meta and Google had to provide actual support of the kind you describe to non-paying users, they would not be able to run their operations at scale. When the number of your users runs into nine or ten figures, even tiny error rates in your automated algorithms mean large numbers of people are being erroneously banned, and that is simply unfixable because your being able to operate at scale requires almost all of your processes to be automated. Having humans do them is simply not possible.

The only way I would ever see this getting fixed would be for them to abandon the ad-supported business model and actually charge ordinary users for their services. Whether you like it or not, "you get what you pay for" is a thing. If you are getting a service for free, you actually have no right to any kind of support. You just have to take whatever you get. Yes, it sucks, but unfortunately the only way to make sure you aren't a victim is to not trust anything you care about to these services. Which is why I don't.

[aurareturn]

I get it. I'm not business illiterate.

However, it's still human on the other end. They know they ban a ton of users erroneously. They should have an appeals process for this. For example, maybe allow banned users to pay $1.99 to get a human review. Or provide an actual appeals process or invest in better spam detection.

In my case, it was obvious that it was a mistake. I used NordVPN, a very popular VPN, to browse Instagram.com on my laptop while logged in. Instant ban.

At the very least, banned users should be able to export their data. I had a ton of old contacts on my IG follower/following list that I lost. Impossible to get back.

[strogonoff]

Don’t conflate the concepts of user and customer. “You are a product” as a user is not an exaggeration but ground truth. They run a business, not a charity or government-subsidized public service, and their paying customers are advertisers.

If you have a problem with Big Social banning your free account, you have a problem not with Meta but with this business model being legal. Offering free “service” to collect and retain ad viewer eyeballs distorts the way market is supposed to work, because it’s impossible to compete with free and customers are locked in.

The only way out of this ever-deepening quagmire is to forbid this business model; all users should be paying customers, so the company is accountable to them, they can vote with their wallet, and the market can do its job properly.

[pdonis]

> The only way out of this ever-deepening quagmire is to forbid this business model

I'm not sure this would actually fix the problem. The existing Big Social companies are so committed to this business model that I don't think they are capable of switching. I think some other company (that doesn't exist now) would have to figure out how to run the all-users-are-paying-customers business model at scale for things like search and social media. But who would run such a company? The company that was in the best position to do this, twenty or so years ago, was...Google. They had the tech resources, and they had the "Don't be evil" motto, which back then they were actually making some effort to live up to. And yet nobody there tried to get this done. Who is going to do it now?

[strogonoff]

By “forbid it” I meant “make it illegal” (not as in “big government tell everyone what to do”, but as in “let the market do its job properly”). If it’s illegal, they would have no other choice would they!

[aurareturn]

I think by now, everyone knows how Meta's business model works. No need to explain it.

The point isn't that I'm a product or a customer. The point is that given the locked in data that can affect real human lives, Meta and Google ought to put more into the process of reversing erroneously banned accounts. I'm not a law expert. Regardless, it's this person who won the case has done a good thing for all Meta users.

[strogonoff]

> The point is that given the locked in data that can affect real human lives, Meta and Google ought to put more into the process of reversing erroneously banned accounts.

There’s many things they could do to affect human lives better, but they have a fiscal responsibility to not spend money on that unless those humans are their paying customers.

Again, this is not a charity. This is a legal business, if you don’t like this you should fight for a change to the definition of “legal”.

[pdonis]

> I'm not business illiterate.

Then why are you saying they should do something that, if you're not business illiterate, you know they can't do at scale?

> They know they ban a ton of users erroneously.

Yes. And they also know...

> They should have an appeals process for this.

...that anything like this that involves humans will not scale. That's why they don't do it: because they can't and still operate at scale.

> banned users should be able to export their data.

Which, again, they cannot support at scale.

Again, the only way this could ever be fixed would be for Meta and Google (and others) to abandon the ad-supported business model. But the only way that will ever happen is if they lose enough users to get their attention. In other words, stop feeding the monster. Complaining that the monster is bad and is doing bad things is pointless now.

> Impossible to get back.

Which, unfortunately, is why you shouldn't depend on them to store such data in the first place.