ok let's talk about upcloud on fedi for a few minutes here

upcloud is a company that has appeared on fedi, piss-joking with the trans girls in a marketing attempt. if they actually understood the situation of the people they were marketing to, that might be ok. but they don't.

i'm a recent migrant, starting over, from scratch, with almost nothing. i'm trying to start a little business and needed some infra for it, so i tried out upcloud -- specifically bc of their fedi presence

i signed up and made some servers, did a few days of work on them. then upwork suspended my account because of supposed "Invalid personal information, address, or contact details." or "Invalid payment method information or unauthorised use of a payment method.", which is a thing i'm absolutely sick to death of hearing about my paperwork now and just isn't the case tbh. they also quoted AUP issues or multiple accounts, but these do not apply in the situation.

*they did not tell me* that they suspended my account, or reach out. my VMs just lost their connectivity. I opened a support ticket, and two days later got a response explaining what happened and making demands on what i have to do fix it.

the gotcha here is that they still have the initial credit I topped up in the account, and haven't refunded it. i have asked them to.

meanwhile, this company is taking memes (see second pictures attached) that are very much not just anti-drugs but making fun of drug users, and twisting into a marketing meme (see quote boost)

it's very much not appreciated. if, as a company, you want to be different in a way that fits into fedi culture, go for it. if not, please don't do this.

this is a company that is advertising to trans people while being totally inflexible in their identity verification process. those two things are completely at odds with each other. if you're going to sell things directly at trans folks, you NEED to be prepared for paperwork and bureacracy issues. as a trans person who has faced targeted violence before, i am not prepared to put my ID and credit card, unencrypted, into an email, and send it to them.

as far as i can tell, they're not acting any differently from any other cloud provider, except for the part where they post on fedi trying to look different.

i'm aware that the icon was made by someone on fedi and probably just never provided to whoever runs the other upcloud accounts, but having a rainbow version of your logo on fedi *and on fedi only* is really, really not a good look. i hate rainbow capitalism as much as the next person, but if you're gonna go rainbow logo for the month, just go rainbow logo. or don't. this half measure crap is somehow even more insulting.

and in the meantime, upcloud, i hope you enjoy the free money you took from trans people who don't have much. it's probably pocket change in your budget, but it wasn't to us.

i never did get access to my VMs back, all the work I put into them is just another cost to me now.

tl;dr: this is a company that took money from me during pride, did not give me any service, while i'm fleeing violence, and do not have much to work with. this was an attempt to get back on my feet, and it stings. all the work i invested getting that running is also time i wasted. during pride month.

i had hoped to get it all setup during pride month. but i had to find a new pool of infrastructure money and a new cloud provider to work with before i could do it, and i missed that target because of upcloud.

i have spent weeks starting over entirely because of this bullshittery. and in the meantime, they want to pretend they're part of the Cool Trans Piss Kink Crew on fedi.

(first image in this post is a silly reaction meme including the email i got from upcloud lol)

so now i'm trying to figure out if there's a reason the default XFCE4 background on my system says `6x9=42` on it...

is this a 69 420 joke in my XFCE???