[em-bee]

the german federal cartel office forced for example amazon to change their terms and conditions so that they may no longer arbitrarily close accounts. account closures also must include a reason. further german users can now sue against closures in germany.

so yes, companies can not arbitrarily ignore due process in their term and conditions

[righthand]

Well this person lives in the UK where such protections do not extend so I do not see such relevance to this topic. I would also be curious to find out if there is a difference between “account closed” and “account disabled indefinitely”.

[em-bee]

the point is that it doesn't have to be that way. and the examples in other countries show that it is indeed not like that everywhere. it is a fair question to ask which way is better, and looking at other ways to respond to these cases is relevant in my opinion.

[righthand]

It doesn’t have to be that way but it is and won’t be anything different until many variables change. As far as this case is concerned: no there is and never will be due process for this situation nor does any UK law allow for that.

Maybe the user could make an argument in court that Facebook was hurting his business but hard to prove with a free service. No real harm has come to this person.

[em-bee]

losing access to a number of customers is a real harm and actually quite easy to prove. the service being free has nothing to do with it.

[righthand]

Usually a “losing access to customers” argument is tied to loss of capital to make the argument stick. It is harder to tie a customer to loss of capital in a free service. Especially a free service that isn’t the only offering.