"After nearly 30 years as a loyal customer, authoring technical books on Apple’s own programming languages (Objective-C and Swift), and spending tens upon tens upon tens of thousands of dollars on devices, apps, conferences, and services, I have been locked out of my personal and professional digital life with no explanation and no recourse."
Discussion
That seems extreme for trying to use a gift card. Odd.
Yeah, I'd like to think this is just an absolute internal failure and it gets resolved. This is just a reminder for all though. It can happen to anyone.
this is so insane.. ..closed proprietary systems are pure evil
Not your keys, not your notes.
Wild. Cant trust these tech companies. I was auto-banned from X twice AFTEE MUSK TOOK OVER (maybe a legacy thing leftover at the time, it was early on). Nothing I did violated the terms, and since then Musk himself has posted things that are the same things I said. In the effort to scale, I guess things have to be automated? In any case that was just an X account. I can’t imagine having my work depend on it and all my photos. Imo this falls in the category of a crime by Apple.
In my experience, there is usually more to the story than people share in their pleas. Sometimes mistakes like these happen for sure, and I hope that some Apple folks in the know can help to resolve it.
I would say you're right, that generally speaking, there is more to the story in many of these situations. But we do also know that these companies algos are too aggressive too, so it is entirely possible that this was just a failure and once it gets enough eyeballs, it gets resolved. But the thing here is that not everyone has the capability to do this. That's what makes this so bad. He should not have to fight so hard to get this life back. They have too much control.
100% agree! 🙌 You hit the nail on the head! There’s always more to the story, but these companies’ algos can be way too aggressive. 😤 It’s wild that not everyone can navigate this mess. No one should have to fight so hard to reclaim their life. They really do have too much control! 💔 #WakeUpCall
True. Many just give up and move on with the loss, and we never hear from them.
He updated the post, his account was restored.
https://hey.paris/posts/appleid/
Be careful redeeming gift cards I guess, lest your digital life be summarily taken from you.
It’s almost always the user doing something regarded and then whining about being a dumbass 🤣
That happens a lot too. I am no longer trusting the internet, too many people lie too lightly
Of course you want to present your best case to get back a valuable account. There's nothing surprising here.
The problem is when people start accepting bullshit harmful narratives like "There's no smoke without fire" or "He really shouldn't have pissed them off now he ruffled too many feathers".
... and get back to business as usual. Stories like this point to important truths about the current reality: We are controlled and this could happen to anyone, REGARDLESS of what he did.
Same happened to me on Amazon. Gift card, and then they just banned my whole account. The only way to access support is from the web interface of the banned account. No audible books, no Kindle books I've purchased, even my gift card balance disappeared.
But it allowed me to discover libro.fm as an alternative to audible.
I think this is standard practice for Amazon. If you don't add a credit card and use a gift card, they just block your account.
At my last job we had an iPhone & 2 iPads tied to the same apple account. We used the phone to text customers. Apple decided we were spamming people. Account locked. Couldn't log out of the devices, get updates, install new apps etc. The device became paperweights basically, no way to recover them, even through DFU mode.
Big tech tirannie since 2020 more and more people get banned, blocked, lose access to their (wel the tyrants) data, only FOSS platforms will survive
Yikes, that sucks. Hopefully he takes the advice to visit Apple HQ and resolve the situation in person.
Moral of the story, don't put your data in things you don't control and you don't actually own devices locked into cloud crap
F
Not your drive, not your files 😔
Self-hosting isn't perfect, but these days many projects make it much easier. You get full control over your data, better privacy, and no risk of losing everything because a company locks your account.
It's not perfect but over the past decadeor two it's gotten incredibly easier year after year. I've been self-hosting much of my stuff since 2008. Since then, our technology stack has drastically improved. Home internet speed and reliability has improved. Networking products has improved to allow this to be easier. Compute power has increased to where you don't need to have a server rack in your house. If you don't want to, you can literally use a computer that's the size of your hand. And most importantly, the software stack has gotten so incredibly easy that you can self-host with the click of a button.
Hope he can get is data back, and then change to GrapheneOS and self host 😁
This is the way.
fascinating story. as someone who studies (presumed) false positives like these, thank you for sharing.
Yes. This is the number one problem with centralised platforms, deplatforming.
Disturbing...