Man, I miss the good old days when we had some communities and places where we could meet up with people from our neighborhood or whatever. Everything in the world became so much poisonous, most individuals are brain washed and all they care about is “self”. Hell, they even commercialized meeting up with that meetup website.

I literally sat down and thought about this very same topic today: What are we supposed to do when we’re not at work or commuting? Try to form a band? Everybody wants to play a very specific “self” music. Join in a hobby class? No thanks capitalism. Volunteer? I don’t even feel like my time is appreciated there anymore, like on purpose I’m being felt into thinking “you’re doing a free labour for us!!!”

I really miss the times when we could simply meetup and talk about whatever. People had a lot more empathy, and there was a social code that would punish you if you’re being selfish and rude, now it feels the opposite.

Using regulatory bodies to fine these companies is exactly what I meant in my previous comment if it was not clear. I was able to get some positive results on the way, through the FTC, CFPB, and DFPI just to name a few, and discovered many others who blatantly break the law, including government/political organs such as the European Parliament’s ASK EP unit, and the European Banking Authority, SOLVIT not reading complaints properly, etc. If there is a demand, I can make a huge list of regulatory bodies, how to contact them, how to write your complaint legally by citing the law so your complaints are actually taken seriously, and so on. These methods are all free to do and take 10 minutes to fill out per body.

I hope this doesn’t come off as rude, but my issue with comments like yours is stating, ‘Yeah, we should do something, take the regulatory way!’ but it only stays in theory. It never explains the practical steps a user can take. My direct question for you would be: What is a practical step that anyone, or at least most of us, can do as of now?

Most people are screaming into the void. There are countless complaints about PayPal freezing people’s accounts without any legal justification, and Google locking people out of their accounts due to 2FA. These are all illegal. For instance, if you are in the EU, you can file a complaint against PayPal through the Central Bank of Ireland, since that’s where they hold their license, and with enough volume, you can get their license revoked.

The FTC and consumer protection laws explicitly state that you cannot force a user to prove ownership of their account using only one method. Yet, Google does it. If you lose access to your Patreon account, they ask you weird questions like, ‘When was the last time you withdrew your Patreon funds to your PayPal?’ Who the heck takes a note of that? If you lose access to your Outlook, Microsoft sends you a form asking for the exact IP address you used to connect to your account.

These are all administrative, illegal barriers. You could be mute, you could be deaf, you are legally not obligated to buy a phone and a SIM card, or maybe you just don’t want to talk on the phone, or you have social anxiety. There are solutions out there, and I have gotten results through regulatory complaints many times. Some took a short time, some are still in progress, and I am well aware that for some, I will need to take their asses to court.

Regardless, we need unification, because as I said before, take Irish law for example: if you make a confidential complaint, and unfortunately, filing a complaint against PayPal through Irish regulatory channels falls under this category (I won’t dive into the technical details), they can literally say to your face, ‘We got your complaint, but cannot share anything further with you.’ How is a citizen supposed to know that they actually took action?

The European Parliament is blatantly breaking their own transparency laws. For example, during formal correspondences, their personnel never give out their name to avoid individual liability. I made a post about this today. You can start a petition against this directly inside the EP (This can be done online too! For free!), and take this matter to the ECJ (this one is a bit tricky, because you need a literal lawyer for this). You wrote to Amnesty, who claims to defend human rights, and didn’t get a response from them? There are government bodies investigating this shit, but the information is not easily accessible. At best, it is written in such a way that it is very easy to get confused about how to file the complaint. If government is not making it easy for us to access these info, we MUST make it easy for others depending on our knowledge, so everyone knows they have places to go and file complaints and their voices to be heard. Practical steps.

Complaining anywhere, be it on Lemmy or another social media platform, will not change anything. At least not with 200 people. People need to get their asses off the couch and start filing legal complaints, and protest if necessary; flood social media one by one against whoever is breaking the law, EVERY SINGLE GOD DAMN THEY until we get the results, so that big tech cannot even censor this shit even if they wanted to. The issue always relies on people being unhappy but not taking action, even if it means filling out a simple form.

I do understand that we are constantly pumped with, ‘Ah, nothing is gonna change even if I complain.’ The thing is, yeah, it will not if we scream into the void. We gotta complain legally by directly citing the law, which I can help with and create guidelines for, since all of these companies break very specific laws every single time. For example, Epic Games, Bandcamp support, Patreon, Ubisoft, any gamer knows about these companies, and these are all breaking transparency laws by not sharing personnel names with you, the moment you contact their support channels. They also force you to use webforms, so they can get rid of that paper trail, if you decide to file a complaint against them later, just to name a few.

If there is a demand, I wouldn’t mind sitting down all day and creating a detailed guide on which regulatory body you can go to, how to file your complaint, and how to do it. What would you suggest doing practically, for example? Any ideas are welcome, we can always iterate, and someone else can come up with something better, but we do need to start taking action at this point.

We gotta start taking these actions in volume, not just a few people.

A bit of background story on how I got involved in all of this, if you are wondering: I was living in Mannheim, Germany previously, and was kidnapped and assaulted by the Polizeirevier Neckarstadt-Mannheim police department, who literally dumped me onto the street after the kidnapping with nothing. No IDs, no glasses, no shoes, no underwear, no keys, nothing. I got my official assault report, literally stating everything I say here is correct; medical personnel called the police station, confirmed I was there, and put it on the official assault report that I was indeed dumped onto the street without my glasses or shoes.

When I was in the cell, these police officers forced me to sign a paper, which I did not, and they threatened me that they would come to my home again, which they did. I recorded where they could not show any IDs, could not state any legal grounds for why they were in my bedroom, and so on. You know what happened when I tried to take this matter to court? NOTHING. German judges did not even start the court case. These same police officers stole my phone on the first day where I recorded all of their hate crimes, which I proved with GPS logs and direct satellite recordings, but nothing has happened. These things happened on June 26 and 27, 2026. No investigation, no nothing.

I am coming from a military background, so I know my rights and I knew what to do in a stressful situation like this. But what about other immigrants? When you share these stories, people look at you like you’re an alien, or when you complain about how PayPal isn’t giving you your own money, they immediately switch to, ‘Forget about that money, you’ll never get it back,’ which honestly disappoints me, seeing how easily people can be tricked by the government.

There is so much we can do. There are many people here from so many different fields and areas of expertise; we could really ignite something that could lead to something big. Nobody needs to go through what I went through, and I bet you also went through some shitty situations where you knew you were wronged, but the system left you alone, or wasn’t there as much as it actually could be. I don’t want anyone to feel this way.

I think it’s time to start discussing what steps we can take from this point onward. People are, including myself are tired of being treated like a fucking worm in this system and all I see is unify, let’s unify, it’s time that we unify… What are the steps we can actually take? I wrote in another topic I can teach people how to go after PayPal and other big tech hypocrites through regulatory bodies that I got positive results from. Let’s discuss what we can do destroy the public image of these two faced criminals. They can always earn more money, but you can’t buy public image with your money, remember guys.

I’ll give you one even better, my phone was stolen in Mannheim by the German police (yeap, the police, I’ll even give you the station name: Polizeirevier-Neckarstadt-Mannheim), we ofc contacted every single God damn company on earth to unlink our associated Gmail accounts (since 2fa locks you out and google has zero human monitored channels to contact them in addition to deploying catch-22) openai’s response was we should contact a medical personnel to arrange a therapy session lol

You would be shocked to find out how racists modern Germany still is, carrying the exact mindset of WW1 and WW2: Germans vs others. I wouldn’t be surprised to find out this picture is real.

I was fucking assaulted in my own bedroom and abducted by the Polizeirevier-Neckarstadt-Police officers in Mannheim, on June 26 2026, they then forced me to sign a paper which I did not, then they threatened me then we’ll come again tomorrow, which they do on 27 June 2026, all of these are on the video, directly supported by the official medical assault report issued by Theresien Hospital, explicitly stating the assault, how they left me on the street without my glasses, keys, IDs, shoes and so on.

You know what happened after that? German judges from Karlsruhe issued on an official paper that they have no obligation to investigate a case like this :D Sparkasse Rhein Neckar Nord frooze my financial assets, bafin personnel (supposedly the banking regulatory body) blatantly confessed on an official document they sanitized the evidence of the crimes and so on, no court order, no investigation, no nothing. They’re all on active duty. If you don’t believe this shit, send me a message, I’ll send the direct video links of the exposed so called police officers commiting these crimes, that I’m hosting on Rumble. Medical assault reports and all of the official replies with wet inked signature that I received from neo Nazi judges on teletype.

Germans have this “the state makes no mistakes!!!” mindset. You just can not break that wall whatever you do. They’re so blind to racism, since it doesn’t happen to them in their own country. That’s the logic of Germans.

Man, the whole internet became progressively “Well, we fucked up this platform, so let’s put the burden on the users instead of dealing with the core issues”.

It’s nothing but putting a fake ass band aid over a whole body that bleeds so they can claim "yo we’re doing our part to prevent online bully/exposure/whatever :)) Every single system these companies come up with will give birth to more problems in the long run.

I don’t mean Steam only, Electronic Arts has no public, easily accessible channels on their website at all. If you lose access to your account, well, good luck getting support because you need to be logged into your account for that. Ubisoft conceals their support agents’ name, to avoid individual liability. Epic games owns artstation, which has zero support channels that do not lead to a “uh oh this page doesn’t exist”. I can just go on. These companies are breaking consumer protection laws so blatantly, every single day I’m filing another complaint against them through judicial bodies. I wish more people were doing it, that was the only way I hear back from these companies and rectify their wrongdoing when they see somebody actually filed a complaint against them and they will be fucking fined for what they’re doing. If anyone interested, I can make a guideline how to file complaints against them through EU and the states organs, it’s fucking free, and doesn’t take so much time. Better than screaming at the void and expecting something to change.

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