Actually you're right, it is possible, but it's also not remotely worth it. I've been working with online communities for decades, and every person who hasn't done so has wanted to provide reasons, to provide explanations, and I will tell you in exactly every single interaction I've had when someone's account on whatever platform had to be terminated, that all they do is argue.
I didn't do that. It wasn't that bad. But I didn't mean it. But this wording. But that rule is unfair. On and on and on. And yeah, once in a blue fucking moon, we get someone who understands they messed up, knows why, and wants us to bend the rules just for them this one time because they super super promise they won't do it again. NO.
You're totally mischaracterizing the relationship between Apple and the community.
The Apple app store isn't free. I've paid thousands of dollars to Apple for Apple products. They brand themselves as a premium outlet. It's not just some free web service or ad driven where you can leave and go to some other community with no cost.
They're being paid, a lot of money. Being able to talk to a human being is not a big ask; it's perfectly reasonable and they can afford it. The Apple store has tons of retail employees who are willing to spend half an hour addressing the concerns of any customer (and retail customers can be the worst), they should be able to do the same for the app store as well.
Moderating an app marketplace is not the same as moderating an online community. When you start applying the same strategies that you would for an online community to a business owned marketplace, you end up with consumer unfriendly practices.
When you rule by fist and swathing generalizations in an app marketplace, developers (and their incomes) become casualties.
The stakes are a little bit higher than being banned from an internet website. Business owners should be held to a higher standard than online community moderators.
It's different to be sure, but there are a LOT of parallels. Pretty much every instance where you have a given entity providing a platform you'll run into these kinds of issues, because rules exist, are enforced, and inevitably in that subgroup you'll have people who believe they were enforced wrong.
And sometimes they're right, but it's such a vanishingly small number that you'd be forgiven for mistaking it as a rounding error.
> When you rule by fist and swathing generalizations in an app marketplace, developers (and their incomes) become casualties.
Is it a vanishingly small number or is it one that you can't honestly track because you're not actually investigating on a per case basis?
The alternative is to... maybe not be super unfriendly and unhelpful when your account gets terminated? Maybe issue a warning first stating when and how you're violating a rule so you have a chance to correct it?
> Is it a vanishingly small number or is it one that you can't honestly track because you're not actually investigating on a per case basis?
The problem is this data is not tracked. Internally, an organization would say: Moderation was performed > Moderation was Investigated > $outcome, being either: Correct/Incorrect. But because of the he said/she said factor, if it was wrong, the person is reinstated, and they wouldn't be complaining about it. If it wasn't, that person would then, as is the case of the OP, be posting on their own blog or whatever complaining about it. The point being: those complaining about being kicked out are a self-selected group of people who were kicked out who believe Apple was incorrect in their decision. The others aren't talking about it because it's already resolved for them.
Who's right? Who knows. Even the GP comment we're all replying to conveys information, relevant, that the poster of the blog post decided to omit from their recounting of the events. Information which would prove Apple's actions correct. I don't know if Apple was right to ban him, but the fact that the first reply makes mention of documented instances of the developer breaking the ToS is interesting, since said developer made no mention of it themselves. It certainly dings their credibility as far as I'm concerned.
> The alternative is to... maybe not be super unfriendly and unhelpful when your account gets terminated? Maybe issue a warning first stating when and how you're violating a rule so you have a chance to correct it?
You do. Failing an app review, for example, does not lead to account termination. You're given explicit notes on what's wrong with the app, what you're doing that Apple doesn't like, and the only "consequence" of that is that your new code doesn't go live yet. You're given exactly that: time to fix it.
In the case of the GP though, if we assume this is correct and this person was using their developer access to publish information about upcoming Apple products ahead of their release curve, which is indeed against the ToS, then there's no way to have them "fix" that. They're abusing their privileged access in a way Apple doesn't want. Therefore, revoking that access is the logical next step.
Basically my thinking is this: If you agree to be bound by terms of use, and then do one of the things explicitly disallowed in those terms of use, you forfeit your right to whatever agreeing to those terms of use enabled you to do: in this case, developer account access.
But in how many cases is there no actual wrongdoing/misuse/rulebreaking, but an internal mistake, blind application of filtering that catches someone inadvertently, or a vindictive employee cutting someone off for <reasons>, and no one can tell the difference because of that no transparency?
I get the little guy means nothing, so why bother, but some level of "Yep, that was a goof, you're back, sorry" would go a long way.
> I have no doubt you have been tricked by a multibillion dollar company to moderate their site in your free time for 0 compensation.
Wrong. Haven't in years. Gave it up because it's thankless work.
> And it doesn't surprise anyone here than you don't work with the community, you just enforce the rules as strictly as you possibly can.
You don't know a thing about where I worked or the rules I enforced. You're swinging blindly in an attempt to bruise my ego. It will not work.
> I'm sorry your life has divulged into trying to flex the insignificant "power" you unknowingly sacrificed your free time for on any mere user who dare break an online community rule around THE FussyZeus.
I don't regret a thing. It wasn't about being above other people, it was about making sure the community at large had the best experience possible because every dingle who came along and thought the rules didn't apply to them harmed that experience.
I enjoyed the communities I moderated. I still do, though I don't moderate anymore. This attitude is precisely why I quit after decades of doing it. Everyone wants moderation but nobody wants moderators. Everybody wants content policed, controlled, and curated but everybody hates the people who do it. Everyone wants the community rules enforced but not against them, their friends, or the people they like in the community.
I did it for a long time, and if my feedback is to believed, I did a damn good job. But I never once got a thank you until I announced I was leaving. Every day I worked through an inbox full of abuse, insults, mud slinging, questioning of my masculinity, my sexual orientation, my race, my gender, much like what you've done right here: dismissing me as some loser who has nothing better to do, who is powerless and so sought out a role that gave me power.
I think people are a little frustrated with your replies in this thread because it seems like you're pushing back hard against even relatively mild criticisms of Apple's behavior like "they should at least be clear about the reasons for the suspension." Assuming Rambo's describing what's happened here correctly, Apple isn't even being clear about whether the account is suspended at all, they're just saying "we'll look into it and get back to you," and then failing to do so.
When you had to take a moderation action against someone, you didn't just lock them out of their account with no explanation as to why and ignore any request for clarification, right?
> When you had to take a moderation action against someone, you didn't just lock them out of their account with no explanation as to why and ignore any request for clarification, right?
We did that all the time, for the reasons I've outlined above. If I consider all the years I spent working on this sort of stuff, I could count on two hands the number of people who, when confronted with clear and unambiguous proof that they had broken rules, simply owned it and left it at that. And I was never policing something even remotely approaching something the size of the Apple developer community.
Yes, I could've explained it to each other person. I could've exchanged a number of emails back and forth, trying to make them understand. But I come back to the simple problem that 99% of people will never interact with moderation staff of any kind, because they follow rules. They don't bend them, they don't look for loopholes, they don't push envelopes. They're fine. We'll never talk. That 1% however, we talk all the time because they're constantly pushing buttons, trying wording, looking for exceptions, looking for ways to get around things.
Why? I don't know. It seems to be just a thing humans like doing. And after you've entered your roughly 500th conversation with someone who knows they got busted and doesn't want to own up to it, or wants it excused, or wants to plead ignorance or whatever, it just all starts to sound the same. The same excuses, the same pleas, the same insults.
I was always open to check something out that another mod had done. Review is never a bad thing, and sure, we reversed a few. And other mods I'm sure reviewed me all the time, too. But again, the vast, vast majority of situations were just people who broke rules they disagreed with. And once we verify that, you go in the bin. Further discussion is not warranted.
I didn't suggest you had to "exchange a number of emails back and forth"; I suppose I've never been in any community that I'm aware of where users were banned without even a simple "You were banned because [fill in reason]" message. I haven't moderated any community like that before, either, and I've been a moderator in several communities over the past few years. (To clarify, by "few years" I mean "about twenty.")
In any case, we're not talking about a community forum, we're talking about an account that's necessary for Rambo's business. I suppose you may sincerely believe that it would be absolutely fine if your employer or your bank or the sole source of a component that you need for a business suddenly stopped doing business with you and didn't bother to ever explain why. But I hope you understand why a lot of us think that's maybe not the best possible approach.
Sure, maybe everyone is an ungrateful SOB who doesn't appreciate you. Or, maybe you personally are a very unpleasant person to have in any position of power, and that's why moderation was so very unpleasant for you that you quit. I don't need to know much about you to know which alternative is more likely.
I didn't do that. It wasn't that bad. But I didn't mean it. But this wording. But that rule is unfair. On and on and on. And yeah, once in a blue fucking moon, we get someone who understands they messed up, knows why, and wants us to bend the rules just for them this one time because they super super promise they won't do it again. NO.