Permanent Ban, No Due Process, Toxic Leadership
My experience with Handshake AI was one of the most abrupt, harmful, and professionally disturbing experiences I have had with any company.
Handshake AI permanently terminated my account over alleged LLM use and treated the decision as final. The issue was not only the accusation itself, but the complete lack of fair process. While I was actively working on tasks, my access to projects, Slack, company email, and the platform was suddenly removed without notice, warning, meaningful explanation, or any real opportunity to clarify, respond, or correct anything. I was also removed from multiple projects at once, including one I had not recently worked on, which made the decision feel arbitrary and disproportionate.
I explained in detail that my workflow involved using textbooks, math references, forums, search engines, and software only to verify originality, avoid duplication, ensure accuracy, and gather ideas before writing my own original prompts and solutions. I also explained that this general approach had been discussed in meetings and Slack and was, to the best of my understanding, considered acceptable. That explanation was never meaningfully addressed.
The deeper problem was the environment behind the decision. Over months, I experienced what I viewed as selective enforcement, double standards, favoritism, and deeply unprofessional conduct from parts of the Math Lead structure. Some lead members were dismissive or unresponsive when clarification was needed. One lead member repeatedly communicated with me in an interrogatory and accusatory way while refusing to answer my own legitimate questions. I also described seeing the same type of conduct later alleged against me committed by a close friend of a lead member, yet that person continued working without termination. In my view, that is not fair policy enforcement. That is selective enforcement based on personal preference.
I also observed serious integrity problems in the task and review process itself. Repetitive low-quality prompts appeared to continue without consequence, weak one-line reviews were treated as acceptable, and what looked like collusive behavior in task creation and claiming seemed to deprive others of fair access. When batches of tasks are created and then claimed within seconds by friends on the lead team, it becomes very difficult to believe the process is impartial.
The harm was not only professional. The sudden termination caused emotional, moral, professional, and financial harm to me and my family. Handshake AI had become my main source of income, and my access was cut while work was still active. Submitted work and partially completed tasks were left unresolved. After termination, I felt ignored rather than treated with professionalism or basic respect. Requests for clarification were not meaningfully answered.
What made the experience even worse is that this did not feel isolated. Friends of mine at Handshake AI reported similar concerns about discrimination, selective treatment, weak leadership culture, and unfair handling of specialists.
I brought years of university teaching, tutoring, and academic content experience to Handshake AI and invested serious effort into both task creation and review. Instead of fair treatment, I was left with the impression that specialists can be permanently banned without meaningful due process, based on the judgment of leadership whose fairness, consistency, and integrity are, in my view, open to serious question.
In my view, the only meaningful way to begin addressing these concerns would be for Handshake AI to reverse the unfair permanent ban on my account and issue a written apology for the moral, emotional, professional, and financial harm caused to me and my family. Based on my experience, I cannot recommend Handshake AI to specialists who expect transparency, consistency, due process, and professional respect.
