Reminds me of all the upcharge bribery in Snow Crash. For only a bit more you the rent a cops will take you to the nice jail.
Show HN: Pls Fix – Hire big tech employees to appeal account suspensions
231–240 of 423 posts
Re: Show HN: Pls Fix – Hire big tech employees to appeal account suspensions
#232Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yep, it feels like them being a monopoly effectively kills every incentive for them to try harder. It's reminiscent of bureaucracy in third world countries where you will not get your passport issued or renewed until you grease enough palms of the right people who feel entitled to a certain level of corruption for their respective role.
> until you grease enough palms of the right people who feel entitled to a certain level of corruption for their respective role. The capitalist way of looking at that would be they maximally decreased the market price of their service, and the bribery is simply accounting for externalities that you weren't paying for in that market price. Or in other words, bribery is their support-funding model.
The model involves artificial scarcity and setting examples. You don't give a passport to 1000 people, charge $5 and you have $5000 charge $500 and you have $50 000, charge $5000 and you have $100 000, charge $20 000 and you have $200 000. I know one story where a prison charged 1 million for release. If extended family is not extremely poor they should really put their 3-50 k into the bag each to avoid all kinds of free services like torturing the victim and getting abducted themselves.
If you [say] didn't buy the passport it is only fair to put you in prison? $20 000 is much more value for money than you think!
Re: Show HN: Pls Fix – Hire big tech employees to appeal account suspensions
#233I 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.
Came here to say this. Seems like a slam dunk to me.
Re: Show HN: Pls Fix – Hire big tech employees to appeal account suspensions
#234Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, as someone who works for one of these companies, no fucking way would it be worth the risk to me.
Here's my question not to you specifically but the royal you of any bigTech employees reading this forum or similar: why do the employees not stand up at all hands meetings and raise this issue as a serious problem. Of course I know the answer in they just don't care and their personal paychecks are too high for them to risk becoming a squeaky wheel. However, it is obvious that management does not intend to fix this…
> to risk becoming a squeaky wheel.
One of my previous managers told me that they kept me exactly because "I am not a sheep," i.e. because it required non-zero effort to convince me to do anything, and I always tried to poke holes in any proposals. So, in a healthy organization, this would not be a risk.
Re: Show HN: Pls Fix – Hire big tech employees to appeal account suspensions
#235Earlier quoted context omitted.
> No company is going to fire you because you were trying to help. This absolutely happens. As an example: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/man-fired-stop-kidnapping/ "You were employed by The Home Depot until June 19, 2017 when you were fired because you assisted the police in preventing a kidnapping."
Being told not to physically intervene in a dangerous situation and then being fired when you disobey company policy is unsurprising. Filling out a form to request another team review an account is entirely different. No one is physically interacting, and the company clearly has a sanctioned happy path for this request.
I think it's the getting paid to do it part that will get people fired.
Re: Show HN: Pls Fix – Hire big tech employees to appeal account suspensions
#236I 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…
My employment contracts have all required at minimum that I inform them of any commercial work I am doing outside my employment for them, and sometimes required that I get approval from them before beginning. Having some undisclosed second employment would definitely be grounds for firing, if they wanted.
My employment contracts have never specified anything of the kind. I suspect it’s just illegal where I live.
Re: Show HN: Pls Fix – Hire big tech employees to appeal account suspensions
#237Seems insane. Surely every single company would fire you for doing that. If you put this in its proper term it is "corruption" and you should definitely worry about the legal implications of doing this.
It'd be too easy to catch the participating employees. Just would have to ask for help and watch logs to see who bites.
Re: Show HN: Pls Fix – Hire big tech employees to appeal account suspensions
#238Seems insane. Surely every single company would fire you for doing that. If you put this in its proper term it is "corruption" and you should definitely worry about the legal implications of doing this.
So it’s fine if you do it for free, but not if you take the same action for payment?
Re: Show HN: Pls Fix – Hire big tech employees to appeal account suspensions
#239Earlier quoted context omitted.
> fire you for doing that No, a good company would realize that AI-based false positive account suspensions is a problem, is killing small businesses and creators in droves, and should hire more human paid employees people to take care of account suspension appeals and help reduce the false positives of the AI algorithms. Hand an additional bonus to the employees who were willing to be the first iteration of this add…
However, they had the opportunity to fix the issue already and didn't, so assuming they would suddenly see the light rather than taking the approach you quoted seems rather optimistic.
yes, how dare you customer service.
Re: Show HN: Pls Fix – Hire big tech employees to appeal account suspensions
#240I 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…
My employment contracts have all required at minimum that I inform them of any commercial work I am doing outside my employment for them, and sometimes required that I get approval from them before beginning. Having some undisclosed second employment would definitely be grounds for firing, if they wanted.
Apropos of all the valid concerns with this, I don't think "being asked by someone outside the company to do something at the company you currently work for" would ever be described as "undisclosed second employment".