My grandfather’s Apple account was blacklisted too but I was less sympathetic to him because he genuinely sends spam email from his personal account (it’s politically motivated).

One day he was bricked from his accounts because he ran afoul of Apple’s ToS. The problem then was I couldn’t feel sure that he hadn’t actually done something which a reasonable person would say should result in account closure.

Paris’s case is much more strange, because it feels more likely to be a false-positive.

There is no legal right to have an account with Apple or Google, and I’m not sure I want there to be. But so much of our lives are built on these services and these stories erode our trust that the services themselves can handle the responsibility of adjudicating acceptable use. We need our digital accounts to be robust in the very long-term, even when there are bad actors who want to do all manner of bad things. And we need to feel confident that a properly empowered human reviewed the case and can articulate the reasons for a ban. When we charge a person with a crime, we tell them what the crime was and give them due process to fight it. I’m not sure I want the courts to decide these questions but we need some more due process when it comes to account termination.

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tw04 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

> There is no legal right to have an account with Apple or Google, and I’m not sure I want there to be.

There shouldn’t be a legal right to an account, but there absolutely should be a legal right to sit down with someone from the company to plead your case, understand why the account was locked, and at least be given the opportunity to gather your things if they decide not give you a second chance.

If you get evicted from an apartment they don’t just change the locks and keep all your stuff…

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andy_ppp 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

There should be a legal right to a clear explanation and a mechanism of appealing these decisions with an external organisation. I think it’s unreasonable to expect that they should be able to delete users this casually with everything that is tied to your devices.

You could make it so costs for arbitration could be paid up front by the person appealing and then if the account deletion was deemed wrong the company refunds said user. Could probably apply to monetisation on YouTube that I see withdrawn for very dubious reasons too.

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ProllyInfamous 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

>arbitration could be paid up front by the person appealing

We need a constitutional amendment that prevents binding arbitration agreements, which removes judicial review from public accessibility.

There absolutely should be a legal right to pursue this through the courts (which require a response from the company, to avoid default judgment).

----

My main PiHole blocks all of *.google.* & *.apple.* for many reasons. My exploration into PiHoles began a decade ago, after Google pulled a similar response-less account termination (without explanation). This left me unable to update a blog (with several million annual impressions), with no recourse [0].

[0] Unlike OP's situation, I was able to download most of my writing/photos, only because they were public-facing (website).

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abigail95 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

We have these systems - they are called courts. The subject is in Australia and so am I, I can file a case up to around $100k USD for $150 in filing fees.

If Apple doesn't respond they will lose by default and possibly be held in contempt.

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andy_ppp 2 days ago | parent [-]

Are you sure this is available in the UK or US? I’m pretty sure all the legal agreements you sign when joining say the decisions of Amazon or YouTube or Facebook are final so are these Terms illegal?

	▲	abigail95 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		You can file a claim for whatever you want in a court. You have a much higher chance of winning if your claim involves something like you paid a company for a service and they didn't give you it - and now you have damages. If the company says they have a contract with you where you agreed to this, that's not a very good defense against the Consumer Legal Remedies Act or the Unfair Competition Law, one or both of those provide statutory damages, these are California laws that get enforced every day. You find a Superior Court in CA, pay a few hundred dollars to file, and let Apple respond. It would be the same story in the UK as it is in California or Australia.

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Workaccount2 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

What sucks is that it's a group of probably like 2000 people who are causing all the insane bureaucracy around these digital accounts.

People running scams that will shamelessly and relentlessly pull any string at their disposal to keep their account running.