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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

#261

Post by dylan604 »

thesuperbigfrog wrote: post #253
dylan604 wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 essential…

> She called customer service

of which party in this problem? seems like contacting the carrier would have been more productive. contacting Googs about a delayed package seems like the wrong direction to follow. i realize this verges on victim blaming, but just trying to suggest other methods of problem solving.

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

#262

Post by fasa99 »

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.

Plot twist 2: it's also a marketplace for big tech compliance departments, $10,000 to reveal the insider

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

#263

Post by tgsovlerkhgsel »

thih9 wrote: post #91

What’s stopping big tech from running their own plsfix pages like this and pocketing the money? In practice this would be premium plans that include some form of special treatment.

1. Bad PR and everything that comes with it (e.g. the kind of unwanted attention from politicians that's bad for business)

2. Payment fraud (which also would be a huge issue on this site if it was to ever take off).

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

#264

Post by ggm »

The idea is insanely unworkable, but the PROBLEM is entirely real.

Personally, I look to the FCC and like bodies to implement the required governance norms: if you offer freemium services to people, you have an obligation to implement real-person interaction on account suspension, and a mediated access path to your effects inside the locked-down digital store.

These identities now fuel our access to governments, and public services. If you can't access your google account you can be blocked from legal documents.

I know "caveat emptor" and all that.

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

#265

Post by kelnos »

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…

> 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

I think it should be evident by the number of cases we see posted about on HN alone that they are not doing a good job. Or, I guess maybe they're doing a good job based on the metrics they were given, but I wouldn't consider it a good job in the sense of living in a fair society where negative actions taken against people (by governments or by private entities) should have a reasonable appeal process involving real humans.

My view is that if even one person loses an account who shouldn't have, and there is either no process to appeal and fix it, or the process ends up not giving that person their account back, they're not doing a good job, full stop. I know that's an incredibly high bar, but I don't care. The loss of many of these types of accounts can cause real financial and emotional harm to people, and that's just not ok.

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

#266

Post by TylerE »

tgsovlerkhgsel wrote: post #200
bragr wrote: post #198

This is commercial bribery in most places. >California Code, Penal Code - PEN § 641.3 >(a) Any employee who solicits, accepts, or agrees to accept money or any thing of value from a person other than his or her employer, other than in trust for the employer, corruptly and without the knowledge or consent of the employer, in return for using or agreeing to use his or her position for the benefit of that other person,…

Sounds like the law already provides a convenient solution (in the form of a "<=250" constraint on the bid field).

Value != price. There is a long legal tradition of the difference, and judges tend to not look favorably on such tactics.

Even if the price is less than 250, I don’t think it’s hard to argue that a long-extant social account with many followers is worth far more

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

#267

Post by kelnos »

TulliusCicero wrote: post #176
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…

If they were torturing puppies then sure, but the context of this discussion is bad customer service. Having subpar customer service seems to be typical for corporations (and governments) in general, so no, it doesn't trigger my instinct to leave. Especially when the issue is providing customer support at scale to millions, if not billions of users (many of whom don't actually directly pay anything). I wouldn't leave…

> (many of whom don't actually directly pay anything)

They are paying, though, with their habits and user data. That's not direct payment, but I don't think the distinction matters. Someone with a Google or Facebook account does pay. Not in currency, certainly, but having those people on the platform is certainly valuable to Google and Facebook, because they monetize their presence in other ways.

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

#268

Post by chinchilla2020 »

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.

This seems really really easy to honeypot for a security team at one of these companies

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

#269

Post by grayhatter »

pompino wrote: post #257
jsnell wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>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.

Sounds like you need to start working with smarter people. I used to think this way, until I started working with smart people.

Now I still question every decision, but I have experts that I believe will have answers worth listening to.

The answers these days are rarely, we know what we're doing, and much more common to be; we tried that but it didn't work because [reason]. Complaints without suggestions or requests are normally ignored.

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

#270

Post by kelnos »

dkarras wrote: post #153
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

100% - I see lots of comments saying things like "Don't you know companies would fire you for this??" which to me sounds a little bit like "Don't you know you shouldn't eat babies??" after reading A Modest Proposal. On the other hand, I guess life does imitate art sometimes...

Yeah, my initial response was: this is wrong on so many levels, and I love that it is out there for public to see 100 art points.

Right, my reaction was initially to be a bit horrified, but then I kinda smiled a bit. It's absurd, and awful, but so funny.
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