Why would Tate, or anybody else, be owed access to their platform. Imagine if people sued every time a service banned you, a restaurant kicked you out, etc...
this post was submitted on 30 Apr 2026
35 points (92.7% liked)
Technology
84222 readers
3650 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related news or articles.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
It's much more complicated than that. Social media platforms have a TOS that binds them just as much as the user. It's literally just a contract.
The social media company also has much more limited rights to terminate such a contract than the user. At least that's the case in countries with any consumer protection.
That's how YouTubers at least in Germany have successfully forced YouTube to reinstate their channel. YouTube failed to prove a violation of their TOS, therefore the contract termination was null and void, therefore the contract is still valid.
There is no contract when you have entered a restaurant. After you ordered your food, there is a contract and you cannot be kicked out for arbitrary reasons anymore. If you are kicked out for no reason, you can sue for damages (but you cannot force the restaurant to enter any new contracts with you, e.g. another meal).
I'd argue that there are cases when people's access to a service should be legally upheld.
Say, you bought an iPhone, Apple Watch, the whole Apple entourage. Then your account gets flagged and blocked for something stupid - and bam, the hardware you just spent a few thousand dollars on is unusable, any apps/services you bought via the Apple account are inaccessible, you lost your notes, contacts, emails, cloud storage, and so on.
With Google or Samsung it's slightly less problematic as you don't HAVE to use their service accounts to use your hardware. But it is an outstanding issue where these companies have become de facto monopolies in certain market segments and can't be avoided to deal with - and it's up to their whims if you get to use certain services.
There's been actually a number of instances where this kind of issue landed near me. I'm an android engineer and had TWO previous employers who's got their Play Store accounts suspended because a developer that worked in relation with those accounts 5-7-10 years ago, ended up having their account hacked then promptly suspended once it was used for fraud - and the employer's account was "an associated account" thus it got the suspension too.
There's very little oversight over the operation of these companies, again, they do as they wish, if a slightly higher-up manager has a personal beef with you, you can find yourself banned from their services, causing financial and professional damage and so on. So no, I disagree, at times, companies do need to be legally forced to provide their services.
Mind you, the Taint case is not such a time.
This is just what these far right overgrown toddlers do. They literally are not capable of understanding anything that isn't about them.