Upwork banned my account for 'being dishonest'
This is one of my least favorite innovations of Silicon Valley, the opaque, confusing, no stated reasons practice of banning users.<p>I <i>totally</i> understand why things developed the way they did. The internet is huge and full of bad actors, and a nascent service is in real existential danger of being overwhelmed and swamped by fraud. If you tell bad actors why you&#x27;re banning them and spend valuable time communicating with them it can put you out of business early on.<p>But like in so many other arenas, the Valley mentality hasn&#x27;t adopted to the fact that they are no longer underdog rebels besieged by barbarians on one side and big scary rich corporations on the other site.<p>The reality is now that these companies <i>are</i> the ruling class, and the users are the general population. And people rely on these services and base their lives on them. Arbitrary and capriciously depriving people of access to these platforms without any kind of due process rights isn&#x27;t OK any more.<p>There&#x27;s a reason we have consumer protection laws, why someone decided we needed things like the Montreal Convention and the FDCPA and CPSC and so on. It&#x27;s axiomatic that we can&#x27;t trust monopolistic corporations to do right by the little guy.<p>This Silicon Valley mentality is increasingly going to lead to pitchforks, torches, and regulation in the near future, it&#x27;s an inevitability. Rightly so.