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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

#321

Post by smrq »

naasking wrote: post #310
margalabargala wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Sounds like pure speculation based, once again, on the assumption that this will be misused.

Sounds like a safe assumption. The only realistic assumption, really.

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

#322

Post by johnnyanmac »

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.

>Dishonest or fraudulent conduct by those in power, typically involving bribery.

Don't see much dishonest. And honestly, it may fall under a bribe, but bribe implies the person in power was the one who affected you. Which clearly isn't the case here.

In my eyes, this is just making a public service of something we 100% know people who make tech companies profitable already have access to.

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

#324

Post by devbent »

8f2ab37a-ed6c wrote: post #109
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.

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.

> Yep, it feels like them being a monopoly effectively kills every incentive for them to try harder.

Microsoft at its worst had insanely good enterprise level support.

Even small business owners had access to paid premium support options, and if the issue you reported turned out to be a product bug, the support costs were refunded.

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

#325

Post by NegativeLatency »

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.

400k for one offer right now

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

#326

Post by TulliusCicero »

kelnos wrote: post #267
TulliusCicero wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Correct, they're still a source of revenue, they're a customer. But legitimately good customer service is expensive, and it may not be viable to provide it even for marginal customers

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

#328

Post by onthedole »

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.…

So it's ok for you to use your contacts to get avert 'extinction-level disasters' but it's questionable ethics if others try to do the same?

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

#329

Post by TulliusCicero »

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?

Not necessarily, but the same principle applies. You can express discontent by voting with your feet and going somewhere else. And many millions, if not billions of people have done exactly this.

And yet, it's also extremely common to implicitly tolerate bad behavior by government, and part of that is that governments do a lot of things and probably all of them fuck up somewhere. If you tried to avoid local governments in the US with "NIMBY" tendencies, you'd rapidly go insane.

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

#330

Post by jrockway »

ceejayoz wrote: post #144
jrockway wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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."

> "Our leadership team wasn't aware of the termination when it occurred. Once they found out and looked at the circumstances, they quickly reversed the decision."

So yes, they got fired, but it was a mistake. Certainly drawing attention to yourself may attract more mistakes than blending in, but it works out in the end. (The difference, probably, is that FAANG employees have a little more breathing room than Home Depot employees after not getting a week's worth of pay.)

Come to think of it, a friend of mine got mistakenly fired recently. They totaled her vacation hours wrong, saw that it was over some limit, and just fired her on the spot. I told her to call HR and appeal and they admitted the mistake and rehired her. She then got a higher paying job at a competitor since she was free for interviews for a couple days. So... it happens all the time.

If someone is being kidnapped and you can help safely, take the chance!

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