There are new ones every few weeks. Or more often. Google. Stripe. Facebook. PayPal.
I'm glad that they're allowed on HN, because at least there's some visibly bought to the issue.
But we need better solutions for this.
If we have issues with governments, we can get lawyers. But if we have issues with digital governments, we need to make a post on HN and hope that an employee sees it?
I'm going to stop you right there. PayPal is not a digital government: they are subject to the same laws as Facebook or Google or Apple. If you use this hyperbole to make your argument, I'm not sure many people will take you seriously.
We fix this with regulation and consumer protections. When a company repeats a behavior that is customer-adverse, we have the regulatory authority to fix it.
Problem is, people keep signing up for stupid EULAs that include "we can delete all your data" clauses.
> But we need better solutions for this.
Stop taking free services for granted?
No full solution, but one reasonable thing to do is to never ever use the "log in here with X" SSO like logins. Always have separate logins for each service. At least that way if one jams up, all the rest should not simultaneously jam up because of that one.
> But we need better solutions for this.
Correct. But sadly, until it either happens to enough people, who then complain to their law makers, for the law makers to notice, or happens to a lawmaker themselves and they go on a warpath, little will change.