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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

#251

Post by mr_toad »

jjmarr wrote: post #134

Professor Robert Kiltgaard said corruption = monopoly + discretion - transparency. He wrote this about political systems and bribery, but it also applies here. https://globalanticorruptionblog.com/2014/05/27/klitgaards-m... Many tech companies have a monopoly on their market, infinite discretion, and zero transparency. It's a wonder nobody has thought of a "facilitating payments" startup sooner. https://en.wikipedia.…

The only way to win is not to play. Screw social media, it’s a plague on humanity.

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

#252

Post by kelnos »

armchairhacker wrote: post #84
constantcrying wrote: post #23

Seems 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.

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…

> But the worst is that the company stops allowing all internal employees from filling out forms for anyone.

That feels like a good outcome to me. "I know a guy" should not be a reason to get preferential treatment. As much as I'm sure it absolutely sucks to lose an account on most of these services, I'd rather they stay lost for everyone, rather than get reinstated for people who happen to have connections.

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

#253

Post by thesuperbigfrog »

dylan604 wrote: post #86
8f2ab37a-ed6c wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same thing with Google Ads, often your account will get suspended for no sane reason and you need an insider to reactivate it, or you're starting from scratch. Appealing only sends you through a kafkaesque circle of hell of support staff who are unable to answer any questions or fix anything, they won't even tell you what exactly you violated or how to return into their good graces. It's effectively a black market th…

> Appealing only sends you through a kafkaesque circle of hell of support staff who are unable to answer any questions or fix anything. This is strange to me in that you're implying there is actually staff. Are you actually having a human employed by Google acting in the role of support that cannot help solve the issue?

>> Are you actually having a human employed by Google acting in the role of support that cannot help solve the issue?

That is exactly what happened to my coworker.

She bought a Pixel phone from the Google Store and it got lost in shipping. Shipment tracking showed it arriving at the carrier's hub and never leaving for a month.

She called customer service and the first tier workers followed a script that was essentially "apologize and ask the customer to check back later".

After many missed "it should start moving again by $DATE" promises, she was able to get the case escalated to Tier 2 workers. They said they had the ability to create a replacement order, but there was no available inventory in the phone color she had originally ordered. They also had no answer about how to prevent a possible replacement order from shipping the same way and potentially getting stuck.

Finally she was able to get the case escalated to Tier 3 support. The tier 3 worker created a replacement order with an upgraded phone compared to the original order and ensured it would ship from a different warehouse than the original order that got lost.

All this took six weeks and many frustrating hours on the phone for her. And this was for an order directly from the Google Store website.

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

#254

Post by Repulsion9513 »

lesuorac wrote: post #227
Repulsion9513 wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

Is government a corporation?

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

#256

Post by KennyBlanken »

tgsovlerkhgsel wrote: post #132
constantcrying wrote: post #23

Seems 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 is indeed a massive ethics issue, but that's actually the aspect I love the most about it: Due to the ethics/compliance/corruption aspect, it has a chance of drawing immense attention inside the companies, possibly leading to actual durable improvements on the underlying issue.

> it has a chance of drawing immense attention inside the companies, possibly leading to actual durable improvements on the underlying issue.

The underlying issue is "it costs money to have people doing this, and we don't lose any money by not having people doing it."

My guess is that the site will see a burst of activity where corporate security departments successfully bait employees into breaking the law / company policy, and word will get around pretty fast that you will get fired and possibly charged with a crime...

...and then the companies will sue the site owner, citing all the employees they baited.

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

#257

Post by pompino »

jsnell wrote: post #154
dylan604 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

So, the people complaining at an all hands are likely to be completely ignorant about the facts on the ground. They're not working on these systems or processes. They're just gullible enough to believe what they read on the internet, and take action on it. The team responsible for the account suspensions / content takedowns / etc on the other hand will have the numbers to show that they're doing a good job, and the e…

Raising complaints internally always has value in any organization. At a minimum, it highlights the fact that people outside the organization think your colleagues are doing a shit job.

The patronizing "Oh you silly plebs, we know what we're doing" line is unlikely to get any traction in a developer community where second-guessing and challenging established designs, decisions from SMEs with decades of experience is common.

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

#258

Post by dylan604 »

Repulsion9513 wrote: post #254
lesuorac wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

Is government a corporation?

Essentially, kinda. They just have different titles for similar roles. If you compare the charter for a city to a company's incorporation papers, they are very similar. Both types of papers are filed with the state. Probably not the answer you were seeking though

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

#259

Post by pompino »

crmd wrote: post #102
8f2ab37a-ed6c wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same thing with Google Ads, often your account will get suspended for no sane reason and you need an insider to reactivate it, or you're starting from scratch. Appealing only sends you through a kafkaesque circle of hell of support staff who are unable to answer any questions or fix anything, they won't even tell you what exactly you violated or how to return into their good graces. It's effectively a black market th…

I like to imagine how insanely good Google’s customer service would be if no company including them captured more than 5-10% of market share.

There is no market incentive for this to be the steady state. All companies only want to pay lip service to competition, but in reality, they do everything in their power to prevent competition and monopolize the market. Product tie-ins, lock-ins, exclusive contracts, etc.

For your vision to be a reality there needs to be significant tax on monopolies and no company should be allowed to become a trillion dollar company. Taxes & Regulations FTW.

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

#260

Post by kelnos »

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…

> But what actual law is being broken here? I suspect it is legally a bribe

It's called "commercial bribery", though I believe state law generally covers this sort of thing, so things will differ depending on jurisdiction. Someone else posted[0] the text of the law for California. (In CA's case, if the amount is under $250, the law doesn't apply, but there are quite a few "bounties" on OP's site that are above that level.)

> And what part of a standard employment contract is being broken here?

I'm not sure if it's standard, but many employees have signed things that say they won't accept other employment. Not sure something like this would count as "employment". But I also wouldn't be surprised if some employment contracts have broader language around this, more to the effect of "no outside paid work".

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40435890

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