Private companies can do what they want ... right?! Terms of service ... right?!

[UCFBS]

I'm sorry, but even as a Libertarian, I have a serious problem with this. We seriously need a Digital Bill of Rights. Because it's not what they did.

It's the regular fraud Big Tech commits, without care. That is a fraudulent statement, and they know it. But they're used to doing it, and getting away with it.

Terms of service do not excuse fraud.

QUOTE: _'In 2012, she had started an Instagram account with the handle @metaverse, a name she used in her creative work ... Facebook, the parent company of Instagram, announced on Oct. 28 that it was changing its name ... Meta, a reflection of its focus on the metaverse, a virtual world it sees as the future of the internet. In the days before, as word leaked out, Ms. Baumann began receiving messages from strangers offering to buy her Instagram handle. "You are now a millionaire," one person wrote on her account. Another warned: "fb isn't gonna buy it, they're gonna take it." On Nov. 2, exactly that happened ... Early that morning, when she tried to log in to Instagram, she found that the account had been disabled. A message on the screen read: "Your account has been blocked for pretending to be someone else." Whom, she wondered, was she now supposedly impersonating after nine years? She tried to verify her identity with Instagram, but weeks passed with no response, she said. She talked to an intellectual property lawyer but could afford only a review of Instagram's terms of service. "This account is a decade of my life and work. I didn't want my contribution to the metaverse to be wiped from the internet"'_​

Her Instagram Handle Was ‘Metaverse.’ Last Month, It Vanished.

Five days after Facebook changed its name to Meta, an Australian artist found herself blocked, with seemingly no recourse, from an account documenting nearly a decade of her life and work.

www.nytimes.com

 

[Crazyhole]

8 years seems like enough time to consider that to be her intellectual property. Not that it matters because Facebook can afford more lawyers than her, so they can just take it.

 

[Nautiknight]

Well I watched the Social Network abd Zuckerberg appears to be snake from the movies. 😆 Why am I not surprised. Seriously though one would think they have case and sue them. I don't want Congress injecting itself into the last bastion of free markets any more than necessary. With that said it seems there needs to be a lot to address with social media . I can't stand Facebook and Twitter in part they do censor people and those platforms are loaded with bullies of woke culture . It's a cesspool ,but I digress . I agree we need an online Bill of Rights and free expression needs to be central to it .

 

[UCFBS]

Well I watched the Social Network abd Zuckerberg appears to be snake from the movies. 😆 Why am I not surprised. Seriously though one would think they have case and sue them. I don't want Congress injecting itself into the last bastion of free markets any more than necessary. With that said it seems there needs to be a lot to address with social media . I can't stand Facebook and Twitter in part they do censor people and those platforms are loaded with bullies of woke culture . It's a cesspool ,but I digress . I agree we need an online Bill of Rights and free expression needs to be central to it .

Private entities cannot commit fraud, and I don't think people understand that. Being a private, non-utility, with a click-thru 'Term of Service' does not allow them to make fraudulent statements. Twitter repeatedly ran into this, and kept 'changing the reason,' when it banned the entire NY Post. Twitter quickly found itself not only in legal trouble with them, but likely criminal liability, especially given the NY Post could easily prove they were acting within journalistic integrity, and to the same level as the NY Times. Ironically the story later turned out to be true too.

I had this same argument when working with Best Buy. They used to setup their kiosks in their store to fradulently show a higher price at BestBuy.COM, from their browsers in-store, than if one hit them from the Internet at home. This was before the common age of spare phones. That's so their salespeople could say it wasn't cheaper to order on-line. Now understand BestBuy.COM can offer a cheaper price than what is offered in-store, that is their right. Again, it's fraud to show a higher price on the web browsers in the store, than the web browsers at home, to get the customer to buy in-store.

I warned them, and they ignored it ... until they ran afoul of state AGs, just like I said they would. (no I didn't whistleblow)

Fraud is fraud. It's not covered by a private entities right to changes the terms of service either.

 

[Crazyhole]

I dont know how they can skirt the definition of being a publisher when their terms of service now dictate what can and cannot be said on their site.

 

[goodknightfl]

Twitter is the devil Bobby.