[squigz]

You didn't answer the rest of my questions, which are sort of relevant. If I run a small platform of a couple hundred users, and one or two of them are actively harassing and threatening other users, my only option should be taking them to court? To say nothing of jurisdictions, or anonymity, or any number of other issues, you should realize that this gives an unfair advantage to platforms that can spend more money on lawyers to argue their case, or lobby for legislative change, etc.

[em-bee]

please use a more generous reading of what i said. clearly small companies shouldn't be held to the same standards as big ones. but even small companies should be able to provide an explanation for account closures, and no terms and conditions can abrogate the right to sue. so you don't have to take them to court, but they may well take you to court after you close their accounts. however if you have done your homework, and documented the abuse you'll win, and they will have to pay your court fees.

but until someone sues small companies will probably fly under the radar and the focus is on big companies as it should be. and yes big companies do have an advantage, that's why their actions deserve closer scrutiny.

[PaulHoule]

I dunno. One of the core skills of bullies in school is taking advantage of "due process".

Funny in American schools teachers and administrators are known to show allyship to bullies in that they take no action to stop them unless they go really too far and kill somebody. I took a summer course though that was taught by two German instructors who actually led the bullying directly. Maybe they have a more toxic culture than the US.

I know the EU has a "right for embezzlers to reoffend" law which must have been an example of people who use their social skills as a weapon against other people using their social skills to turn the law into a weapon against the rest of us. The "right to be forgotten" is itself a crime when embezzling is concerned because embezzlers have a very high recidivism rate, essentially 100% when behavioral addictions like gambling are involved. This is a crime which can destroy businesses, ruin lives, deny people a secure retirement, and cause unemployment. I can think of no reason why embezzlement treason should ever be forgot.

[em-bee]

ignoring that in my opinion bullying is an entirely different issue that has nothing to do with what we are discussing, if bullies can take advantage of due process then the rules are bad or unsuitable, and just because that may be the case in schools that doesn't mean that due process is a bad idea to begin with.

yes, the laws are not perfect, may need to be changed. actually that is the core of most of this subthread. the example that for this case in germany the laws are better than in the UK, and that it is possible to improve the protection of users against these big companies.

I can think of no reason why embezzlement treason should ever be forgot

this is another example of a law that may not be perfect. again, laws can and should be changed when evidence emerges that the current laws are not suitable to protect people from harm.

in this particular case i would argue that we may not have enough data to decide. there may also be a component of believing that people can change, and the question is what causes them to recommit such a crime, and what can we do about it to change that. one problem here is that a permanent record does not stop people from recommitting a crime, but it does make it very difficult for them to reform because reform requires that past transgressions are forgotten.

but we could go on endlessly finding examples of laws that are broken, and argue about how they should be fixed, or claim that because there are other broken laws, then the one we are discussing must be broken too, or whatever the argument is here. but doing so while we are discussing one such law is not really helpful, and feels like whataboutism.

[genewitch]

facebook has billions of unique users (ostensibly) - so, c'mon, person.

[squigz]

So, again, I ask: what size does this sort of argument start applying at? 100 users? 1 million? 1 billion?

[genewitch]

say, when 1-10% of a country's (or state's, or whatever) citizens are users of the service, someone should pop their head in and say "we need a different legal strategy for retention and user onboard/offboard."

It should be taught in MBA, and VCs should tell startups that aim to get "millions" of users that they need to plan, in advance, for this sort of thing.

This isn't really a gotcha, i'd put a hard line somewhere around "10% of the global population" as needing extreme scrutiny.