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Show HN: Pls Fix – Hire big tech employees to appeal account suspensions

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Re: Show HN: Pls Fix – Hire big tech employees to appeal account suspensions

#221

Post by rmason »

stubish wrote: post #202

I fully understand why this is considered unethical. I fully understand that employees will get fired for taking the bounties. But what actual law is being broken here? I suspect it is legally a bribe, because it is facilitating a non-routine action. But only because of that non-routine bit. Would it be possible to prosecute this, going into court and admitting that your suspension appeals process is non-routine? And…

There is a simple fix. Just make the amount a contribution to a charity or charity's of their choice. Makes it a much harder to fire someone who is earning money for a charity, perhaps even one the company contributes to annually.

Re: Show HN: Pls Fix – Hire big tech employees to appeal account suspensions

#222

Post by margalabargala »

naasking wrote: post #189
armchairhacker wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As others pointed out, this is a huge problem in the making. Someone who genuinely deserves the suspension (e.g. posts illegal content) will use the service. They'll get their suspension lifted because the company trusts the internal employee who filled out the form. Said person will continue to post illegal content and be suspended again. Enough true negatives like this and eventually the company will discover the e…

> Someone who genuinely deserves the suspension (e.g. posts illegal content) will use the service. They'll get their suspension lifted I don't know why you think people who deserve to be suspended would be reinstated. You act as if these people have no agency or discretion as to what accounts to reinstate.

They would be at first.

"Personally knows an employee of the company" is a strong signal that a person is not a bot, and may be more likely to be a decent person, because they are capable of maintaining enough of a relationship with an employee that the employee is willing to do something for them. The employee has already been vetted as trustworthy.

So that signal will apply to the first few people applying through this service.

Then some employees will get fired, the signal/noise ratio of internal requests changes, and employees can no longer get accounts reinstated via internal forms like this.

Basically this service will cause a brief spike in illegitimate accounts being reactivated, and then we will arrive at a new status quo that is strictly worse than the current one.

Re: Show HN: Pls Fix – Hire big tech employees to appeal account suspensions

#223

Post by MerManMaid »

vineyardmike wrote: post #170
MerManMaid wrote: post #156

Perhaps its just me, but I feel like a lot of users are missing the forest for the trees here. Services such as these only pop up when legitimate solutions prove ineffective at addressing the problem. To me, these services are more indicative of "Big Tech" failing to create effective appeal processes to meet their consumer's demand... While I'm sure there isn't a lot of money in it, it'd be great for Big Tech to exam…

It’s just you. The ineffectiveness is the point. This service is a joke, it’s surely illegal. Everyone knows it’s a “failing” system, you can’t scale free customer service forever. The legitimacy of the need for this service proves the value of these accounts. I predict that tech companies will get in on it, and within a few years will offer paid customer service the way enterprises get today. You can already pay for…

>It’s just you. The ineffectiveness is the point. This service is a joke, it’s surely illegal. Everyone knows it’s a “failing” system, you can’t scale free customer service forever.

Is the spirit of this service corrupt? Absolutely. Does it undercut Big Tech's checks and balances? %100. Is it morally lacking? Personally I think so. Is it illegal though... ehhhh? It might be shocking but not every term found on a FAANG's term and services agreement is legally binding.

Services like these are inevitable so long as humans are corrupt but typically only pop into public consensus when the institution has failed so spectacularly that the average consumer has completely lost faith in them to adequately address their problem. While I'm not condoning corruption, clearly the Big Tech companies have failed in providing adequate solutions to this problem and I feel our time is better spent examining the negligence of these institutions which caused the problem rather than the malicious service looking to exploit said negligence.

Re: Show HN: Pls Fix – Hire big tech employees to appeal account suspensions

#225

Post by yieldcrv »

given the legal issues people have pontificated about, I think an prediction/assassination market is better for this

will @jpdpeters instagram account by restored by May 31st?

the person that predicts this most correctly with the largest position was the person in control of the outcome

and you can then just make a feed of these kinds of predictions to your “market” of employees

Re: Show HN: Pls Fix – Hire big tech employees to appeal account suspensions

#227

Post by lesuorac »

Repulsion9513 wrote: post #146
TulliusCicero wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> why do the employees not stand up at all hands meetings and raise this issue as a serious problem. This definitely happens for all kinds of problems at big tech companies. But you might be absolutely shocked to learn that many times, random engineers complaining about something doesn't result in management taking immediate action to fix the issue. > Of course I know the answer in they just don't care and their pers…

> I guess the more ignorant ones do? I figured it was common knowledge that when something is broken policy-wise at companies, and they're clearly avoiding fixing it, it's rarely the non-management employees that are the problem. Almost always, it's a strategic decision by management to not address the issue (or sometimes they do address it, but poorly). Yikes. I'd call that ignorant myself. By supporting the "strate…

> By supporting the "strategic decision by management" you implicitly approve of it. This is particularly true with well-paid FAANG employees who could absolutely take their expertise elsewhere.

I mean does somebody grinding down asphalt to repave a road implicitly approve of some random government policy?

Re: Show HN: Pls Fix – Hire big tech employees to appeal account suspensions

#228

Post by patrakov »

jannyfer wrote: post #141
maxrmk wrote: post #18

On one hand: an action virtually guaranteed to get you fired. On the other: $150 I used to work at FB and they have a team that tries to catch employees selling access like this. I can’t imagine risking that for what is essentially an hours pay for most tech roles there.

Plot twist: this is a honeypot marketplace designed to catch employees selling access like this.

To add: this honeypot requires the employee to sign up using their corporate account. Corporate accounts are probably monitored internally.

Re: Show HN: Pls Fix – Hire big tech employees to appeal account suspensions

#229

Post by MerManMaid »

mrWiz wrote: post #167
MerManMaid wrote: post #156

Perhaps its just me, but I feel like a lot of users are missing the forest for the trees here. Services such as these only pop up when legitimate solutions prove ineffective at addressing the problem. To me, these services are more indicative of "Big Tech" failing to create effective appeal processes to meet their consumer's demand... While I'm sure there isn't a lot of money in it, it'd be great for Big Tech to exam…

I think the majority of HN is aware of Big Tech's failure to create effective appeal processes. It's not exactly a secret. This service is still naked corruption, though.

Absolutely, I just think our time is better spent examining the source of the problem.
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