<story><title>Digital Exile: How I Got Banned for Life from AirBnB</title><url>https://medium.com/@jacksoncunningham/digital-exile-how-i-got-banned-for-life-from-airbnb-615434c6eeba</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>FussyZeus</author><text>People seem to be naturally anti-regulation, failing to see that those regulations don&amp;#x27;t exist purely upon the whims of bureaucrats, but chiefly to address previous issues brought to the regulator&amp;#x27;s attention.&lt;p&gt;Sometime in the last century, this idea was implanted by big businesses in the media and therefore the thoughts of the citizenry that regulation is more than anything, just people who couldn&amp;#x27;t succeed in business bullying people who are, and that shit is so fucking dangerous that it makes me shake. Amazon, AirBNB, Google, Facebook, Apple, none of these companies give a FUCK about you any further than they are legally required to, not one iota further, and we constantly bemoan our politicians over having a &amp;quot;too regulated&amp;quot; business environment.</text></item><item><author>nugget</author><text>Imagine a world in which Experian or Equifax would only fix a mistake on your credit report if you had enough followers to embarrass them on social media.  This is where appropriate consumer protection laws come into play.  The whole idea feels intuitively like a silly overreach to me since I watched Twitter, Airbnb, and these other services grow from nothing and so I take them less seriously, whereas banks and credit bureaus have existed as giants since I was born.  On the other hand, one could imagine GDPR adding a rule that users must be provided with a detailed explanation and an appeals process before accounts can be deleted, and it wouldn&amp;#x27;t seem too burdensome when compared with the rest of the regulation.</text></item><item><author>decasia</author><text>I have no particular opinion about the facts of the specific case in question. But there is something weird about the way customer service is set up these days:&lt;p&gt;1) Company: Doesn&amp;#x27;t like dealing with problem users&amp;#x2F;clients.&lt;p&gt;2) Company institutes policy saying that they can do whatever they want with no explanation. This makes it more efficient to handle the problem users.&lt;p&gt;3) Sanctioned users are now more frustrated than before because they aren&amp;#x27;t even given any explanation of what happened.&lt;p&gt;4) Users who are tech savvy take to social media or use personal networks to get special dispensations (see: every time someone posts on HN about a problem with their Google account and gets special intervention).&lt;p&gt;5) Company: Is happy because there is still an informal workaround for dealing with sufficiently motivated users or weird cases.&lt;p&gt;6) Users: Are left more powerless and potentially frustrated than when they had more sane tech support channels, but the company doesn&amp;#x27;t have to care about this.&lt;p&gt;This seems really suboptimal and the OP&amp;#x27;s comments on power imbalances seem on target. [edit: formatting, wording.]</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>everyone</author><text>People? This seems to be a cultural trend in the US in particular.
In many other countries the value of laws, social services, anti-trust and anti-corruption regulations, and so on, are rightly seen as necessary and desirable.&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately the US is very influential globally, in various ways. eg trade agreements, or just brutally implementing neo-liberal economics on weak countries they can coerce economically and&amp;#x2F;or militarily.&lt;p&gt;The US has also (having effectively no anti-trust for decades) has let many corporations based or founded there grow to unprecedented sizes and power.&lt;p&gt;Theres also other countries &amp;#x2F;areas (Jersey, Cayman Islands, etc.) that make a business of tailoring their laws to allow corporations to avoid paying taxes, pollute, hide data, censor journalists etc.</text></comment>
<story><title>Digital Exile: How I Got Banned for Life from AirBnB</title><url>https://medium.com/@jacksoncunningham/digital-exile-how-i-got-banned-for-life-from-airbnb-615434c6eeba</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>FussyZeus</author><text>People seem to be naturally anti-regulation, failing to see that those regulations don&amp;#x27;t exist purely upon the whims of bureaucrats, but chiefly to address previous issues brought to the regulator&amp;#x27;s attention.&lt;p&gt;Sometime in the last century, this idea was implanted by big businesses in the media and therefore the thoughts of the citizenry that regulation is more than anything, just people who couldn&amp;#x27;t succeed in business bullying people who are, and that shit is so fucking dangerous that it makes me shake. Amazon, AirBNB, Google, Facebook, Apple, none of these companies give a FUCK about you any further than they are legally required to, not one iota further, and we constantly bemoan our politicians over having a &amp;quot;too regulated&amp;quot; business environment.</text></item><item><author>nugget</author><text>Imagine a world in which Experian or Equifax would only fix a mistake on your credit report if you had enough followers to embarrass them on social media.  This is where appropriate consumer protection laws come into play.  The whole idea feels intuitively like a silly overreach to me since I watched Twitter, Airbnb, and these other services grow from nothing and so I take them less seriously, whereas banks and credit bureaus have existed as giants since I was born.  On the other hand, one could imagine GDPR adding a rule that users must be provided with a detailed explanation and an appeals process before accounts can be deleted, and it wouldn&amp;#x27;t seem too burdensome when compared with the rest of the regulation.</text></item><item><author>decasia</author><text>I have no particular opinion about the facts of the specific case in question. But there is something weird about the way customer service is set up these days:&lt;p&gt;1) Company: Doesn&amp;#x27;t like dealing with problem users&amp;#x2F;clients.&lt;p&gt;2) Company institutes policy saying that they can do whatever they want with no explanation. This makes it more efficient to handle the problem users.&lt;p&gt;3) Sanctioned users are now more frustrated than before because they aren&amp;#x27;t even given any explanation of what happened.&lt;p&gt;4) Users who are tech savvy take to social media or use personal networks to get special dispensations (see: every time someone posts on HN about a problem with their Google account and gets special intervention).&lt;p&gt;5) Company: Is happy because there is still an informal workaround for dealing with sufficiently motivated users or weird cases.&lt;p&gt;6) Users: Are left more powerless and potentially frustrated than when they had more sane tech support channels, but the company doesn&amp;#x27;t have to care about this.&lt;p&gt;This seems really suboptimal and the OP&amp;#x27;s comments on power imbalances seem on target. [edit: formatting, wording.]</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>aeorgnoieang</author><text>But who regulates the regulators? As bad as this example is, have you never heard of the nightmares people fall into dealing with &lt;i&gt;government&lt;/i&gt; bureaucracies? If anything, they&amp;#x27;re much much &lt;i&gt;worse&lt;/i&gt; than the worst that companies inflict.&lt;p&gt;Regulatory capture is a real thing too. Regulation isn&amp;#x27;t &lt;i&gt;obviously&lt;/i&gt; positive just because there are reasons people trot out to justify it.&lt;p&gt;You&amp;#x27;re right, companies don&amp;#x27;t generally care about me. But neither does the Social Security Administration, the Department of Justice, my local police department, my local school board, or any post office in which I&amp;#x27;ve ever found myself.</text></comment>