alt Hacker NewsI feel like all these articles are writing about the wrong thing. Yeah, it sucks that the guy's account got banned, and yeah, maybe we can't trust gift cards.
But the truly troublesome issue is how an entire ecosystem of (very expensive) hardware is allowed to be tied to an identity controlled by a giant black box of a corporation.
What I mean is: you can spend thousands and thousands on devices and configure them to be almost invaluable to your everyday life, but you are ultimately completely beholden to Apple. You require their ongoing permission to continue using those devices. You are completely at their mercy.
And sure, you can argue that people willingly sign up for that kind of agreement when they make the decision to purchase Apple/Google products but that's also missing the point. Phones are now essential utilities. Accessing vital services sometimes requires an iOS or Android device.
Permitting giant, uncontactable, merciless tech corporations to control the digital lives of virtually everyone on the planet is absolute insanity.
The scenario described in the OP's article should simply never be allowed to happen.
This is something governments should really try to tackle, but I'm afraid that their solution would be a government ID rather than proper guidance and rules for these behemoths.
The way I see it resolved is for Google and Apple to link the accounts to a physical person via government ID so that if you want issues to be resolved you'd have to verify yourself. This would also limit abuse by bad parties.
Now, do you want all of your web accounts be linked to your government ID?