On the flip side I'd pay for this.
My Twitter account was suspended last year for no reason I can fathom. I wasn't abusive, I wasn't hacking/abusing the platform etc. Just one day I posted a comment and was then told "Your account is blocked"
I'd really love to get it back as it's a 3 letter handle. Alas, despite submitting upwards of 100 appeals I hear nothing back (I guess since Elon took over there's no support staff anymore)
Anyway, I can see there would be a market for this, however unethical/risky it would be for employees to participate in.
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
#82Please stop.. I’m pretty sure people will be fired for doing this. Talk about misaligned incentives. What’s stopping employees from intentionally messing with accounts to get paid to fix them.
The old cobra bounty problem
Re: Show HN: Pls Fix – Hire big tech employees to appeal account suspensions
#83This site is bad, but what's worse is it may be the only way to get your problem solved!
Yeah I almost feel like it is tongue in cheek / a joke.
Doesn't seem like a real service, what employee would risk their job for a few hundred dollars.
Maybe it is a dig at how the customer support for these huge companies is so poor that this seems like a real thing.
Re: Show HN: Pls Fix – Hire big tech employees to appeal account suspensions
#84Seems 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 employee is using their authority to let in randos. If the company is smart, they mark accounts that have been lifted by internal employees, so they will discover the first time it happens.
The best probable scenario for this is that said employee gets fired. Presumably, the company trusts said employee knows who they are vetting because they are risking their job; and I'm confident they would not be happy knowing they are using this service. But the worst is that the company stops allowing all internal employees from filling out forms for anyone.
At the very least, if this site is a joke, it should put up a disclaimer that indicates such. Not just a disclaimer to vet the rando, because I doubt an internal employee can do so any better than the customer support can. It should actively remove functionality like sending or publicing emails so that posters and developers can't actually use it to contact each other and exchange money.
Re: Show HN: Pls Fix – Hire big tech employees to appeal account suspensions
#85It's kinda telling that there's enough demand for freelance tech support that this could exist. Imagine what would happen is Google et al actually did provide support.
I'm not sure this is the win for malicious actors that people claim it is. It's gotta be cheaper to buy/make a new account that pay to recover an existing one.
Re: Show HN: Pls Fix – Hire big tech employees to appeal account suspensions
#86Earlier quoted context omitted.
For meta/facebook at least it’s long been an open secret that the fastest way to get something done on the platform is to have a connection that works at meta.
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?
Re: Show HN: Pls Fix – Hire big tech employees to appeal account suspensions
#87If this makes money, big tech could open a lucrative market for themselves, suspending more and more accounts, and requesting higher and higher "priority fees" to unsuspend them. (Hmm... somehow reminds me of organised crime...)
Facebook doesn't need the money. Twitter on the other hand...
Re: Show HN: Pls Fix – Hire big tech employees to appeal account suspensions
#88I had to check if it was April Fools' Day. This is one of the most disturbing posts I've seen in a while. I sincerely hope that people who profit off of this will get fired at the very least.
The concept seems like… performance art protest or something. Building a platform to bribe your way through the opaque customer non-service system of these companies is either low corruption or high art.
I love this theory.
Society at the mercy of customer service so bad that we revert to bribes.
And the techbro answer is an upstart third-party for-profit service to facilitate the bribery, complete with a launch on HN.
And it's a marketplace, with offers, for libertarian bonus points.
Re: Show HN: Pls Fix – Hire big tech employees to appeal account suspensions
#89On 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.
Yeah, as someone who works for one of these companies, no fucking way would it be worth the risk to me.
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 issue. They clearly do not feel the negative comments on some techy nerdcentric boards or twitter followers amounts to enough to cause a negative impact on the bottom line. So instead, people with respect lose respect for those "yous" that work at bigTech.
Re: Show HN: Pls Fix – Hire big tech employees to appeal account suspensions
#90Earlier quoted context omitted.
But the person said they could "sue this guy". I can see how they would have a beef with their employee doing this, but don't see what grounds to sue "this guy"? Mind you, I know little of the US legal system outside Suits and other probably as incorrect shows.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tortious_interference perhaps?
somebody been watching Suits recently?