You're talking about a service that this company provides at no charge. No one is forcing anyone to use these services.
If you don't like that, go somewhere else. No one is holding a gun to your head and going "RUN JS OR I SHOOT!".
Why do you assume that you, and the people you claim to be advocating for, are able to compel this entirely separate entity, making a decision it believes is best for the majority of it's customers, to do something that benefits you - a user of a service provided at no charge, and with absolutely no binding contract?
Additionally if you pay for it you're a customer, and it's still not your community, you still accepted a contract that probably allows the company to do pretty much anything, and they can pull the rug at any point.
There is plenty they can do and that they're already doing. The inability to enter contracts with someone doesn't mean they need to get banned for life from the service.
You can just read the terms and choose whether or not to pay for the service. Unless they're omitting these things from their terms, I don't see the problem. They're telling you what you can do, and you're choosing whether to pay for it.
You can't compel a company to provide you with a service. That's a little too close to slavery for society's taste. If a company doesn't provide you with a service you agreed to, you can get damages from a court, but you have to use such services as your contract agreed.
It stinks to end up on the wrong end, but that's part of the cost of getting such massive benefits for free. If you want something more reliable or with better customer service, you have to pay for it.
You don't own phone numbers, emails, names, PO boxes, or addresses. You have them within a legal framework, and you can lose them in that framework. Software products may treat them as unalterable identifiers, but none of them are. Things should always be able to be changed.
It's their service, they're bearing the weight of being your "straw person," they can do what they want. I see nothing wrong with them writing their terms of service to reflect their values, and conveying them it in a cheeky manner like this.
Much of the crap put into terms of service is null and void. It can't restrict your legal rights. As an example, they can't force you into arbitration if you want to sue them.
You have the right not to pay money to companies that won't give you the guarantee of ownership and access that you want.
But if the lack of that guarantee is right there in the company's terms of service, and you pay them money anyway, you don't have the right to insist that they change the terms you signed up to when you paid them just because you don't like the consequences.
They don't need to get legality involved. Their terms of service also give them the right to kick you off the service - as they please. If you don't follow them - you don't get to use the nice things. It's pretty simple - whether we agree or not :)
I haven't read their terms of service, but I would be willing to bet that their terms leave it up to their own judgement, which is fine, because you have the option of agreeing to that or not.
I hate that any online company can set arbitrary Terms of Service which they know for a FACT I have not read (I didn't click) and then decide to pull the rug out from me at any time because of that.
These companies are seriously important in our lives. If you take away my payment source or my email or whatever you are potentially setting me on a path to ruin.
I don't know what the answer is but I do think these companies should be required to have an appeal process of some kind that's regulated. They have so much power.
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