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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

#271

Post by pugworthy »

pugworthy wrote: post #51

Please add… Emergency Room staff willing to get you looked at faster because you think you are “really sick” Building inspectors willing to sign off on your home house wiring because you’ve “done it for years and it’s fine” Burning Man ticketing because you swear your internet was fine but died at noon on the sale day. Dang because your downvoted comment was just misunderstood and deserves more upvotes. /s

Despite the sarcasm tag, I’d argue my first two examples are not really that different than the service advertised.

This service places no responsibility on the requester to prove they have a real case. And in some cases (like the second) there is potentially true and measurable harm if in fact the petition should in fact be unequivocally banned or blocked from a service.

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

#272

Post by johnnyanmac »

jonas21 wrote: post #207
throwaway22032 wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As long as it's less than $250 per instance that sounds fine...?

As in "not illegal, but still gonna get you fired?"

Sounds like they long left Facebook. Only danger is Meta realizing that these request all come from one source and blacklisting them. That said, Meta must received tens of thousands of appeals, so it'd be easy to lay low.

But yes, I have no clue what employee inside would agree to work on this for an extended period.

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

#274

Post by morpheuskafka »

actionfromafar wrote: post #164
MaxBarraclough wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. It's based on accepting personal payment to spend company time and resources doing something other than what the employer wants. Sounds like low-key bribery to me. I imagine they're aware of this. The FAQ section states that employees are kept anonymous, but also says they verify if it's really a Google employee by sending an email to their google.com email address, which Google can of course see.

The verification email can be intentionally vague and agreed upon in advance. "What's really your favorite band, then?" "Beatles, I guess."

The best way would be to send an email disguised as spam, and have the employee respond out of band with its contents without actually replying.

Bonus points for sending similar emails to random @company.com addresses so receiving the email alone doesn’t suggest involvement.

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

#275

Post by bilalq »

FWIW, having friends at Google and Stripe has been critical for my startup to survive potentially extinction-level disasters. Automated systems false-positive flagging us and shutting down our payment processing with no recourse happened on both. Only by having people on the inside was I able to get my case appealed by an actual human who was capable of reasoning.

I don't think I'd be okay with a platform like this. The ethics around it are questionable. But I think it's important that you don't take on a dependency unless you personally know at least a few people at senior roles at the company you'll be relying on.

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

#276

Post by johnnyanmac »

simfree wrote: post #206
ceejayoz wrote: post #144

Earlier 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.

>Being told not to physically intervene in a dangerous situation and then being fired when you disobey company policy is unsurprising.

when the situation involves the police, I'd imagine the situation is different. Hence why he was reinstated after blowback. This isn't an employee tackling a violent customer (which should be allowed, but I digress).

If "leadership" gave no reason for the termination or simply said "you left the campus on company hours (outside of break)", they would have been slightly more in the clear (unless the employee sued, of course. That would have been an interesting lawsuit).

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

#277

Post by paulgb »

TylerE wrote: post #266
tgsovlerkhgsel wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

"money or thing of value" here seems to refer to the bribe (in cases where the bribe is non-monetary), not the benefit that the briber got from the bribe.

> gives an employee money or any thing of value

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

#278

Post by stockboss »

jrockway wrote: post #100
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…

This seems unlikely to me. No company is going to fire you because you were trying to help. However, accepting money for this service seems pretty much guaranteed to result in termination even if 100% of the accounts you help with were legitimate. The side dealing is the problem.

The thing is, how would the companies know you're paid to do this, instead of perhaps just being an overzealous employee? Not like this service is going to disclose who is working for them...right?

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

#279

Post by genewitch »

pompino wrote: post #259
crmd wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 compa…

I'm actually shocked no one is arguing with you about your first two sentences. Capitalism will always have one lucky or unscrupulous company after another swallowing the smaller players.

you have 5 equal companies producing widgets. One of the companies has their building near a freeway, and one day a fully loaded truck crashes through a railing and impacts their building, causing a fire and lots of damage. Sure, they have insurance or whatever, but that company's customers don't care about that, they needed those widgets this week. Luckily one of the other four companies has them in stock and they can fill their order elsewhere. That company they filled the order with now has more capital, perhaps they hire a new employee or buy additional tools or machines. Now they can out-compete the other four, for whatever reason, QC, price, etc. The former company might be unable to keep up with the 3+1 other companies on the same playing field, so may sell to one of the other four, but only the latter company in the above example may have the money available to buy.

This is all simplified and nitpicking what i am saying is futile, because the point is - it doesn't matter how many companies are competing, nothing is in equilibrium, and this doesn't even get in to active sabotage or espionage. A lucky company will buy an unlucky company. Eventually you'll end up with 3 or fewer companies when there used to be dozens or even hundreds.

The end goal of a company is to be like Samsung, General Electric, Sony, etc - make everything, sell everything, own everything. A company being lucky for a few quarters even gets to spend money lobbying for preferential regulations that prevent further competitors from entering the market!

I don't have a solution, because there is a compelling argument to be made for huge companies being able to provide superior quality, price, whatever because of scales of economy, and it just takes one bright lawyer at a multinational to say "but if you break us up it will accelerate climate change because of x, y, z issues we have solved by fact of owning everything!"

Limiting personal wealth to 10-100 million dollars, even "on paper", might prevent this, but that would require global cooperation. I think the upside that things would gradually become more affordable would be a good selling point - if all companies are operating with the understanding the shareholders, owners, etc have a hard ceiling on how much value they can extract from the endeavor...

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

#280

Post by pylua »

bilalq wrote: post #275

FWIW, having friends at Google and Stripe has been critical for my startup to survive potentially extinction-level disasters. Automated systems false-positive flagging us and shutting down our payment processing with no recourse happened on both. Only by having people on the inside was I able to get my case appealed by an actual human who was capable of reasoning. I don't think I'd be okay with a platform like this.…

This feels like a contradiction at first glance. Violates Ethics of privilege? It would be better and more fair to have everyone pay.
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