We should have the ability to run any code we want on hardware we own

> If you decide you don't want a relationship with either of those companies you will be extremely disadvantaged.

Even more worrying is the inverse of this - if Google and/or Apple decide for whatever reason they don't want a relationship with you (aka they ban you for no reason) - you are completely screwed

Even if they ban you for a reason, you're screwed. Granted, the ban may have been warranted, but you're essentially put into a societal prison with no due process or recourse.

That is a great analogy. There are countries where a police can throw you into a lifetime jail with zero option for justice unless you are a famous person from a well known western country.

Those countries are North Korea, Iran, Russia, Google and Apple.

Well the US can do it with CBP/ICE, but not for life. I was placed in a jail without being arrested or being accused of a crime and they were very clear at all times I was not even arrested, nor did a federal criminal history search show any record of arrest. No access to lawyer either.

US Citizen. Contacted lawyers, all informed me they'd given up trying to sue for these things because it's hopeless.

Founding fathers rolling in their graves.

how long were you in jail? How did you get out?

Very true. They are effectively a new type of non-territorial state with absolutely no separation of powers or rule of law or principle of proportionality.

What makes this difficult though is that they are under constant attack from highly organised and automated criminal operations that create and exploit accounts en masse.

Any solution to the tyrannical state of affairs we are subjected to (even more so as developers) needs to balance better protections for real people (including as you say for people who have committed some transgressions) with fighting organised crime.

~12 hours in jail, a few hours shackled in prisoner transport vans, and then ~12 hours in cuffs at a couple different hospitals hospital (where I was touched by health care professionals without my consent and without a warrant) while they waited for signs of non-existent "drugs." Shortly before I was released they served me retroactive search warrant, signed by a judge after it happened, using made-up PC that did not even state the name of the person or animal they claim prompted it.

I was released after an HSI guy showed up, took a quick look at me, decided I wasn't a terrorist or whatever, served me the retroactive warrant, and then I was sent on a prisoner transport van to be dumped at the border with my all my shit (including my shoelaces) in a plastic bag.

For the hospital part I was sent a ~$1k bill, which is still in collections.

It's also used by the actual territorial state to project power through corporations, by influencing them to project their policies. I'm reminded of the story of the guy that had his google account shut down for "CSAM" because they took explicit medical pictures of their child at the directions of physicians, that were only privately shared solely for the purpose of aiding diagnosis. Apparently google works with the government to create these systems to scan your cloud images in the background.

Yes, I think governments love centralisation of control in very few hands. It gives them far greater powers than they would otherwise have, both technically and legally.

"Harmful" content has significant overlap with freedom of speech, so governments find it hard to ban directly. But when there's a big corporation facilitating access to that content, then it becomes a clear case of "evil capitalist profiting from harmful content - corporations need to take responsibility!".

When a government doesn't like end-to-end encrypted photos and cloud drives, all they have to do is issue a secret order telling Apple to disable it.

And when people find workarounds for intrusive and insecure age verification methods, what's better than a total sideloading ban to regain control?

if you're telling a real story and not just AI generating bullshit for karma you should go to the PRESS. this story, if it's real, should be something the press would eat up.

screw the lawyers. go public and name names

Assuming what you're saying is true, this is the kind of thing 2A was written for. I don't mean for you personally, but for society it's really the last line of defense against a rogue government. But, even if your story is totally made up it's completely believable. Scary times.

You should contact IJ. They recently took up a case like this.

https://ij.org/press-release/us-citizen-and-army-veteran-sub...

The press did an almost identical story for Ashley Cervantes, who had almost the same thing happen, except she was digitally (finger) raped by doctors as part of the process and was a young barely adult ~poor woman vulnerable minority so way way more public sympathy for her vs me (I'm a middle class white native English speaking boring white boy with a hick accent so basically at the bottom of the interest at ACLU, they do occasionally feature some people that have had it happen if they have sympathetic backgrounds).

Nothing changed. Same port of entry, same hospital network, same everything (I don't think she was jailed like me though). Lawsuit failed and public press did nothing. Later the ACLU won some kind of suit that forced all involved parties to be warned, which they promptly ignored, and that was the end of it.

https://www.southernborder.org/woman-suing-border-patrol-ove...

https://www.kgun9.com/news/local-news/woman-sues-cbp-over-bo...

Looks like the statute of limitations has ran out.

I typed up a ~100 page document with very thorough records of the retroactive warrant, what happened, and medical records to try and hold at least the "medical care providers" accountable but the board determined that the medical care providers were performing a (warrantless) law enforcement search and not medical care so their license wasn't in jeapordy. Not sure how they determined this since they were in no way deputized nor were they employed by the government, and in fact I was personally being billed for it.

The CBP argued the opposite, that medical care was rendered and not a search so CBP was not liable for extending the ~12 hours during which they "detained" me with no evidence. CBP argued they held me for my own safety because I could die of non-existent drugs.

The challenges to this have all failed (see Ashley Cervantes, basically identical legal facts) so it seems the courts are pretty satisfied with the catch-22 of any challenges of the criminal aspect to be ruled as medical care (thus unchallengables) and then any challenge of the medical care to be ruled as a detainment for a criminal search (thus unchallengable).

Say, if you're blacklisted by a fascist government, for example. Tim Cook's pledge of loyalty was disturbing on many levels.

> governments love centralisation of control in very few hands

Honestly, that was one of the things that shocked me about the Digital Markets Act in the EU. It gives them less power over their citizens, not more. (Of course, they also passed the Digital Services Act around the same time, and now they're looking at age verification and breaking E2EE, so I guess they figured they had to balance things out...)

I think these are separate initiatives by different parts of EU agencies and national governments. The markets and competition crowd does not coordinate at all with the law enforcement and security people.

I don't mind this being a bit chaotic. At least it shows that there are trade-offs.

Let's hope people remember this and don't cheer the precedent when it's set against "undesirable" like it was with Alex Jones.

It always starts like that.

> I'm a middle class white native English speaking boring white boy with a hick accent so basically at the bottom of the interest at ACLU

This in itself should be shocking to us

>to be dumped at the border

does this mean you were originally on your way into the US and that's where they nabbed you, and then when they finished with you they took you back to where they picked you up?

i'm not here to debate or defend in either direction, i don't know enough about any of it, but i believe that i have heard from a lawyer podcast that whether you are a US citizen who is entitled to enter or not, the rules (including your bill of rights status) are different "at the border" because you are not in the US yet

Very similar stuff has been in the press often this year. Everyone mostly forgets each case after a couple of weeks (did that end up being a real gang tattoo or not?, etc.).

I think my case might have gotten picked up by someone if it happened under Trump or close enough it would have still been under the statute of limitations. There wasn't much interest in immigration law under Biden, lately IJ and others have become interested in defending CBP/ICE overreach.

Not if the supreme court wouldn't enforce it!

2A might have been written hundreds of years ago but it is now an instrument to sell guns. no amount of guns you buy will help you against rogue government

I think this is the thing we need to change most. These big companies effectively have as much power as courts to break your life, but no transparency, oversight, appeals process or even a clear process in some cases. They can destroy a person or a small business without even noticing.

Hard disagree. Guerilla resistance has proven itself surprisingly effective against modern militaries. Multiply that by a military which would be going to war against its own citizens and you have a very uncertain situation.

Yes, if the military was targeting you individually you'd almost certainly be fucked. But a guerilla resistance spread out over a continent would be very difficult to eradicate. Just look at Afghanistan.

It's esentially boolean social scoring, just think about it.

I think there are enough stories of armed religious groups raided by three letter agencies to prove otherwise.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waco_siege

lol, rebuttal https://youtu.be/WOSqCjMRXWA

Apples and elephants. I'm talking about a double digit percentage of the population fighting a guerilla resistance against a rogue state and you link me to like 50 guys in a house that's surrounded.

This happens already in dating apps. https://www.vice.com/en/article/banned-from-dating-apps/

Date didn't go as well as the other person was hoping? They can report you to the app, some tired and overworked support person in an emerging market bans you, they keep whatever cash you already spent on bonus likes and your multi-month subscription, no refunds.

And you can never sign up from the same Google/Apple account, the same phone, and with the same face, because of course now you have to verify your biometric information with some of these apps (Bumble is introducing submitting your id or taking verification photos).

Or their AI misfires and deems you as having said something inappropriate, again, off you go. You have no recourse, hope you know someone who works at that company who can flip the bit in their database.

Want to know the reason why they banned you? Sorry, that's sensitive information, you will never know, only that you "violated the terms of service". Which one? Sorry, we can't tell you, goodbye.

Oh, now 60% of society meets through datings apps? Too bad, you don't get to anymore, shouldn't have violated our terms of service. Oh, and most of these apps are run by the same company, so you get banned on one, you likely get banned from all on them at once. Have fun.

> Just look at Afghanistan.

I have to unlock my apple id on a daily basis "To continue to use facetime"

The US has done just that to Abrego Garcia, and is now giving him the choice between confessing to a crime that he hasn't been convicted of (and likely didn't commit) and deportation to a country he has never been in.

from an incredibly trivial perspective I was thinking about this recently when I discovered all games operate as saas products now, if for whatever reason you're banned then you can no longer play the product you purchased, what happened to third party mplayer servers?

US citizen, re-read the previous post. But great that we're now assuming "well they must have good reason for violating due process."

But that's the whole damn reason for due process. This shot.

Try abrego garcia. Illegally detained. Now he's got a whole criminal conspiracy built around him with no independently verifiable evidence.

> Even more worrying

This is untrue.

It's a case of A leads to B and B requires A.

The most common antidote to anti-consumer behavior like this, is for the established parties to pull a dumb stunt and for competitor to eat their lunch.

If you can't bank without Google or Apple, all competition is dead on arrival.

If we have to politik the deplatforming rules of companies because they've taken complete control of the gates, we're doing the wrong politiking at the wrong place.

First of all - add Israel. If you're a Gazan than this goes without saying, but even if you're a citizen, then - the General Security Service can and does people into custody without a warrant; often does not publicly disclose or admit said custody; and has "secret" detention facilities to hold such people (example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camp_1391)

I also wonder about the US: What about the secret imprisonment mechanisms it set up after the 2001 attacks on the twin towers (9/11)? Were those ever dis-established?

And just think, how people could stop using so many of their services. Say, not use GMail mailboxes and go for other providers. It's like most of us are actively putting ourselves in their prisons every day.

the only thing you might get double digit percentage of population to do is like a picture on insta :)

The only solution I see is some decentralized way of governing. And even if this gains mass support, I still forsee some centralized way of how rules are enforced that can also cut off your relationship as well. Efficiency v.s privacy tradeoff I guess.

Yes, I am feeling like technology is being used as a authoritarian trap.

Can you explain a bit more? As far as I was aware, Alex Jones was found guilty by a court of law.

I didn't really follow his case or anything about him though. Did he get banned from Google/Apple for no reason?

Abrego Garcia has attorneys working his case through the US justice system. That is a key factor that the other entities lack.

I looked at the final motion to dismiss document and boy did she get bad legal advice. The lawyer tried a Bivens case against the hospital... which any lawyer will tell you is an impossibility. Bivens cases are just about impossible to win under any circumstances, but trying to do a Bivens against a non-federal officer is a guaranteed loss.

To have won this case against the agents would have required piercing qualified immunity which is very tough (you have to prove intentional misconduct... just being incompetent isn't enough in most cases).

She would have been better off pursuing a medical malpractice case against the hospital and/or doctor to be able to get any kind of relief.

The 100 miles "border zone" is where all this can occur. It's a very contentious issue (considering 2/3rds of the pouplation and cities are within the zone).

The ACLU is very interested in this issue on 4th Amendment grounds but they have not had much luck with it in the last decade. Lots of cases but it's still not a settled issue.

https://www.aclu.org/know-your-rights/border-zone

The Supreme Court does not enforce laws.

Always has been... pertinent example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust

He has already been illegally disappeared to El Salvador, despite theoretically having access to a lawyer. It took a national story for him to be brought back, only to get threatened by the exact same thing.

Lawyers only matter if the people with the guns think they should be bound by the law.

> I'm a middle class white native English speaking boring white boy with a hick accent so basically at the bottom of the interest at ACLU

I would assume they would be jumping at a few of these cases too, as a) it may be easier to bypass any ingrained bias in the system if you aren't necessarily matching people there may be bias against, and b) establishing case law is important for changing ambiguous legal situations.

Are you assuming they wouldn't be interested or did they communicate that they weren't interested?

He was a high profile case of social media coordinated banning. Not just one platform but many and it wasn't about court orders at the time but simply the vague "policy" which we know gets applied selectively.

The particularly interesting thing was that the sentiment of unpersoning someone online and "one service banning you" being a good reason for others to do so, was used by politicians later on to suggest more proactive unpersoning of different government critics which, they obviously called conspiracy theorists. Obviously different politicians call for the ban of people from opposing political parties, so it's not something about a specific party or political compass quadrant, as much as people want it to be.

This was sometime after Trump's election, when the "all out war" on the US political landscape was happening.

You could probably find numerous less extreme and easier to defend cases, where people get banned from one or many linked services, with no recourse but the Jones one was one of or maybe the first high profile one across several sites.

It's very easy to think that these powers will only be used at someone we dislike or find politically abhorrent but it will always point back to us, the moment we are the nuisance, no matter if it's because we are against the new freedom (TM) war or "save the children" civil encroachment.

I would argue that social media banning is much different than Google/Apple banning. If I got banned from Facebook or reddit or even HN then I'm not really missing out on much. Of course, for people who actually do business on these platforms, like Jones, then it sucks to lose a platform, but I don't think anyone has a fundamental right to post whatever they want on these platforms.

If I got banned from Google, then almost 20 years of emails, 1TB of files on Google Drive, are gone. Many of the services I use that use email as a second factor, I'd be locked out of. (And before you ask, yes, I use an authenticator whenever I can, but for some reason some services decide to still only let me use email as a second factor). If I forgot my password at any site, can't reset it. Not to mention that I can't use my Android phone out of the box without installing custom de-Googled firmware.

I suppose the same argument could be made that I don't have a fundamental right to use Gmails mail servers, but as I pointed out above, it is more than just an inconvenience, it could actively be harmful to my digital life, because Google has its hands on almost all things digital.

I don't understand : in my experience it's still much easier to set up another email account than to deal with authenticator requirements, where you might be forced to use Google's Authenticator ?

Not all games. The options are ridiculously more diverse there than for smartphone OSes or even for social media.

If Gmail blocks me from making an account, I could use Yahoo mail or whatever, for email. But Gmail is more than just email. It's an entire identity. I can't use an android phone out of the box without a Google account. I ~bought~ licensed some movies from YouTube and those would just go poof. All the sites I used Sign in With Google would essentially be lost to me since I can't use that Google account.

The logical answer might be to just not use Sign in with Google but some services don't even let you use username/PW, it's sign in with Google/apple/Github etc.

Well yes, but that's partially on you − I might understand your average person not being wary about these issues, but we're on Hacker News here, these issues have been discussed for decades.

The sites also shouldn't be 'lost', don't they have a way to register another kind of login from the same one ? And you can always make a new, platform-free account − better do that sooner than later !

Please name and shame the websites (like Advent of Code and Rebble) that only allow a login through platforms. And services that only allow Google Authenticator.

You're missing the point. You get banned in coordination.

> I don't think anyone has a fundamental right to post whatever they want on these platforms.

You don't have a right to anything if you fall for the bullshit of "they are private companies".

These private companies exert tremendous power and are also an arm of the government when the government wants it. The government uses them to censor things and hides the hand. It was very obvious before different US elections and during covid policies authoritianismathon.

> I suppose the same argument could be made that I don't have a fundamental right to use Gmails mail servers, but as I pointed out above, it is more than just an inconvenience, it could actively be harmful to my digital life, because Google has its hands on almost all things digital.

So you get my point but want to hiper focus on your exact circumstances. There's no need. Think of the worst case scenario and fight to protect yourself and others from that. Don't support it when it's "the bad guy getting the stick".

IBM in Nazi Germany was no different from other German owned companies in being conscripted to do what the Third Reich ordered them to; the headquarters in the US obviously had no control over them during WW2.

Plus it's ridiculous to apply collective guilt in any form by blaming later IBM management, given that anyone involved with 1940s German IBM is long dead by now.

I was insta shadowbanned on Tinder after I went through the registration on my network which exits via VPN and blocks spyware domains via adguard.

"Alex Jones"

Lol.

The original post is about technology being used for authoritarian purposes. I used Dehomag (IBMs German subsidiary) as an example of how technology has been used to support that supposition as a historical example (I could have picked many).

Your post does not repudiate the parent post, nor my post.