> for the benefit of that other person What if I route the payment through a third party like my lawyer Mr. Cohen
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40435890 and marked it offtopic.
Show HN: Pls Fix – Hire big tech employees to appeal account suspensions
351–360 of 423 posts
Re: Show HN: Pls Fix – Hire big tech employees to appeal account suspensions
#352Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Why would that be the case?
The existing problem is that moderators aren't given enough time to investigate whether suspensions are legitimate, so there are enormous false positives. You can't expect much accuracy out of a decision made under excessive time pressure.
If someone is instead receiving e.g. hundreds of dollars, they can spend more time to get it right. Meanwhile getting it wrong could get them in trouble at work, so they have the incentive to be careful.
Companies could do this themselves -- charge a fee for appeals -- except that it would be bad PR to make innocent people pay a non-trivial sum of money to fix the company's mistake.
This would give the company a way to launder the fee through a third party while still reducing their other PR problem when they ruin peoples' lives through false positives.
Re: Show HN: Pls Fix – Hire big tech employees to appeal account suspensions
#353Earlier quoted context omitted.
It’s just you. The ineffectiveness is the point. This service is a joke, it’s surely illegal. Everyone knows it’s a “failing” system, you can’t scale free customer service forever. The legitimacy of the need for this service proves the value of these accounts. I predict that tech companies will get in on it, and within a few years will offer paid customer service the way enterprises get today. You can already pay for…
Customer service is a profit center sometimes. Person calls in, and sell them antivirus and pc cleaner subscription.
I'm not sure the 'You deleted my YouTube account because I got 3 false copyright claims in 1 hour' to 'I've installed Google(TM) YouTube(R) Antivirus Subscription' pipeline is a strong one.
Re: Show HN: Pls Fix – Hire big tech employees to appeal account suspensions
#354The 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…
> 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.
Yes, very well stated, this exactly. If you have a hold over how people interact with others or organize their lives or do business, you should offer reasonable processes for addressing issues e.g. lockouts that could impact them seriously. It's the sort of process that should exist: if your email account got shut, what if the helpdesk refused to ever tell you why or how it could be reopened? It's too late to move (social media) providers by then.
Re: Show HN: Pls Fix – Hire big tech employees to appeal account suspensions
#355Earlier 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…
> There is no market incentive for this to be the steady state.
The market incentive is that everyone other than the monopolist will want to take the monopolist's market share. The monopolist, in turn, captures the government and uses "Taxes & Regulations" to ensure that random small businesses can't enter the market and take their market share.
Re: Show HN: Pls Fix – Hire big tech employees to appeal account suspensions
#356Earlier quoted context omitted.
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, th…
> 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.
Your assumption is that companies can be destroyed but not created, which isn't true. The way prevent monopolies, then, is to make it as easy as possible to create new companies. There is no monopoly if five new companies are created for every two the incumbent buys or destroys.
> Limiting personal wealth to 10-100 million dollars, even "on paper", might prevent this
This has really nothing to do with it. Google is a public company. It could easily be just as big without any single individual owning more than $10M in shares.
Re: Show HN: Pls Fix – Hire big tech employees to appeal account suspensions
#357Earlier quoted context omitted.
How is that bribery?
It's true. Bribery is for super pacs with much higher caps. Or was it, pacs have caps but super pacs don't? I forget how those work. Point is, when you go to a meeting with especially wealthy donors that fund your campaign through super pacs, then ensure the dialog from those meetings is never made public, I think its reasonable to assume some form of bribery has occurred, if not strictly within the legal definition.
Superpacs have no caps due to 1A.
Re: Show HN: Pls Fix – Hire big tech employees to appeal account suspensions
#358Showed up late and the site is filled with garbage content.
Re: Show HN: Pls Fix – Hire big tech employees to appeal account suspensions
#359I badly need something like this because Big Tech sites are awful.
I tried to submit a request, but it gave me an error about sendgrid credits. I guess the site is already a huge success.
Re: Show HN: Pls Fix – Hire big tech employees to appeal account suspensions
#360This 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,…
Is bribery a bad thing if there is no other recourse? That's the real issue here. If Big Tech companies cared, they would have some sort of customer support. They don't, and so the market is forming its own solution.