Anyone who has dealt with a suspended account on Twitch, Twitter, or any other platform can attest to the dizzying feats required to get those accounts back, that is, if you are lucky enough to get them back in the first place. Unless you manage to get some media attention, victims of this issue usually have little or no recourse against the social media sites involved.
Enter DoNotPay, an app that bills itself as “the world’s first robot lawyer.” For US$36 ($50) a month, the service will format letters to help users deal with a range of issues, from filing insurance claims and canceling gym memberships to filing claims under the Freedom of Information Act. And yes, recovering your social media account is also on the list.
“These platforms prioritize legal matters,” DoNotPay CEO Joshua Browder told Engadget. “When you just write customer service, they don’t really take it seriously.”
The idea is that a letter sent to a company’s legal department is much more likely to be noticed, even if that letter is largely written by an automated bot. It helps that as part of this appeal, DoNotPay asks you for specific details about your unfair ban and tries to “match” those details with some kind of legal precedent.
These letters include a deadline for the company to respond. If there is no response, the DoNotPay website explains that the case can escalate into lawsuit territory if necessary.
But even before your case reaches that point — or even if your appeal ultimately fails — Browder explained that the service might offer you other avenues of redress. One option is to force a platform to hand over account data, such as messages or images, that might have been wiped out by the ban. This way, even if you are unable to recover your entire account, you can at least recover enough data to get back on your feet and start over with a different username.
Ultimately though, it won’t be a service that anyone hit by a banhammer can use. As DoNotPay points out, accounts that are banned for legitimate reasons — violating a platform’s terms of service, for example, or committing some sort of illegal act on the platform — won’t get anything out of it. calling :
In the event of an appeal, you must explain your behavior and why you believe the suspension of your account was wrong, unjustified and wrong.
If the company has already provided you with a reason for banning or suspending your account and has refused to change their decision, there will be no point in appealing again as the initial response is final.
We have no idea if it will work, but if you’re really desperate, the $36 ($50) fee might be worth a try.
