Essentially, it's highly regulated labor exchange, with centralised authority. They CAN instantly ruin your career, or at least incapacitate it for a long time by just banning you and forbid to create another account. May be they will explain this, may they'll just ignore you. Of course, this is not necessary because they are "evil", but because they are just an instance of totalitarian hypocrisy in the internet. They create bunch of regulations, that make it very easy for scummer-type clients to blackmail you and ruin your profile. Why is it okay for so many people?
Can freelance be unregulated? With clients and freelancers dealing with each other without oversight?I was on both sides: as a freelancer and as a client on upwork. I was kicked off by upwork years ago, when i was just a beginner JS developer, i was dependant on them and it was really hard to keep going on. Since then I worked with many clients and even started my own development shop, which, i think, characterises me as capable and responsible person. Upwork's regulations never helped me. I've proven to support that client explicitly blackmailing me with negative review - they unsuspended my account but didn't delete the review, because it's against their regulations. Well, you know what is happening with profile, once it got 1 star review from the beginning. Since then i dealt with clients without any regulations. It was reasonably easy to spot scammers and avoid dealing with them: you can just do small part of the job, get paid and grow amounts of client-to-freelancer debt gradually along with trust. That was years ago, but still, when i hear again and again what is going on there, i feel sorry for all of the good freelancers who have been damaged by Upwork.
What do you think? Can freelance exist on scale without regulations?
