Telling users why their content was removed reduces future issues [pdf] • Hacker News Board

Re: Telling users why their content was removed reduces future issues [pdf]

#101

Post by shantly » Tue, Nov 12, 2019, 8:03 PM UTC

turc1656 wrote: post #45

Ididntdothis wrote: post #7

There seems to be a general trend to avoid explanations in a lot of areas. For example, you often get no feedback after job interviews. Google just canceled my Drive subscription after 10 years without telling why but they offered me to sign up again. No idea why and support wouldn’t tell. How are people supposed to learn and improve without knowing told what they did wrong?

With interviewing I think it's a bit different. At least in my mind it is. As someone who has interviewed people over the years, I don't give feedback because of the way nearly all human beings operate. Specifically, if I were to tell someone, for example, that they came off as abrasive or based on the things they said in the interview it sounded like they were a bit too controlling or possibly micromanaged previous…

Risk of having a statement misconstrued or taken as a much bigger deal than it is is why people (who want to actually land a job) are so fake in interviews to begin with. It ends up mostly being a test of whether you can put on your "interview face" without letting it slip (any slip must be the tip of some awful iceberg, surely!) for the desired amount of time. Which is why the "slick" folks who aren't good get through while the non-slick but good person who slipped up and let something genuine and not-at-all-a-big-deal-actually get through is lumped in with the "abrasive" folks (any hint of something is taken—not entirely unreasonably, to be clear!—as proof of a problem) and doesn't get an offer.

The actually-good end up having to do precisely the covering-up you mention, because genuine and entirely fine attitudes and behaviors are, in interviewers' imaginations, often magnified to their worst possible extremes. It's very valuable information for a good employee to have that they need to cover up or avoid certain things in interviews that aren't actually a problem, because they do need to do that, and they may not realize how things that they think aren't a big deal and in fact are not are coming across in an interview context.

I write this as someone who is, I gather from feedback, pretty decent at that part of interviewing. Doesn't make it less gross-feeling and stressful.

Re: Telling users why their content was removed reduces future issues [pdf]

#102

Post by wongarsu » Tue, Nov 12, 2019, 8:03 PM UTC

Ididntdothis wrote: post #18

saagarjha wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the reasons nobody tells you anything anymore is because doing so would open you up to liability. It’s probably a similar thing to why you’re not told the reasons for not getting a job, even though it’s somewhat unfortunate that it means useful context is lost…

I am not so sure it’s only about liability. Maybe with job interviews but in other areas it’s just cheaper to have automated systems that do the rejections and cancellations. Having support staff that can explain and even override decisions costs money This is undesirable so it’s better to lose a few customers. I think we’re at risk of building up the ultimate faceless and inhumane bureaucracy that works well in most…

An automated system can still explain why it's making this decision. Sure, for machine learning that's an open research question, but for most systems you actually find in charge of these tasks it's trivial to give useful information. "Your account was terminated because of unpaid invoices"; "Your application was automatically rejected because you failed to meet our education standards"; "You have to reset your password because your company's admin changed the password requirements"; "Your order was canceled because you didn't pass our credit check"

Re: Telling users why their content was removed reduces future issues [pdf]

#103

Post by shantly » Tue, Nov 12, 2019, 8:05 PM UTC

msla wrote: post #93

Ididntdothis wrote: post #7

There seems to be a general trend to avoid explanations in a lot of areas. For example, you often get no feedback after job interviews. Google just canceled my Drive subscription after 10 years without telling why but they offered me to sign up again. No idea why and support wouldn’t tell. How are people supposed to learn and improve without knowing told what they did wrong?

> For example, you often get no feedback after job interviews. Because sometimes you're not hired because the person interviewing you can't imagine spending eight hours a day sitting across from someone who laughs like you do. We have increasingly open offices and then pretend that jobs are won and lost based on depersonalized notions of merit, completely without reference to the individuals who have the merit. Since…

Can confirm, have seen that exact thing happen.

Re: Telling users why their content was removed reduces future issues [pdf]

#104

Post by pmiller2 » Tue, Nov 12, 2019, 8:07 PM UTC

Ididntdothis wrote: post #18

saagarjha wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the reasons nobody tells you anything anymore is because doing so would open you up to liability. It’s probably a similar thing to why you’re not told the reasons for not getting a job, even though it’s somewhat unfortunate that it means useful context is lost…

I am not so sure it’s only about liability. Maybe with job interviews but in other areas it’s just cheaper to have automated systems that do the rejections and cancellations. Having support staff that can explain and even override decisions costs money This is undesirable so it’s better to lose a few customers. I think we’re at risk of building up the ultimate faceless and inhumane bureaucracy that works well in most…

Even for job interviews, liability isn't really the reason.

As a general principle, conveying true information does not incur liability. In the specific case of job interviews, as long as the feedback is true and not of a legally discriminatory nature, there are no grounds to sue, and such a case would be thrown out by summary judgement. Any employment lawyer would laugh someone out of their office who came to them with a "case" like this.

I'm inclined to think it's primarily for the reasons mentioned elsewhere: avoiding back and forth arguments. Frivolous lawsuits from _pro se_ plaintiffs might be a minor consideration, but, as I said, those are easy to get thrown out, provided you're telling the truth and the reason isn't related to any protected classes in employment.

Re: Telling users why their content was removed reduces future issues [pdf]

#105

Post by pmiller2 » Tue, Nov 12, 2019, 8:09 PM UTC

kd5bjo wrote: post #23

saagarjha wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the reasons nobody tells you anything anymore is because doing so would open you up to liability. It’s probably a similar thing to why you’re not told the reasons for not getting a job, even though it’s somewhat unfortunate that it means useful context is lost…

I suspect that often the reason for not getting a job is simply that there were more qualified candidates than positions. In that case, there may be no reasons to give; someone else was selected but your application wasn’t deficient in any way.

That would be totally valid feedback if it were possible for the candidate to interpret it at face value. Given that effectively no companies provide substantive feedback, even if "there was a more qualified candidate" is the reason, any reasonable candidate is going to interpret that as "sorry, we can't tell you the reason."

Re: Telling users why their content was removed reduces future issues [pdf]

#106

Post by chki » Tue, Nov 12, 2019, 8:12 PM UTC

privateSFacct wrote: post #86

saagarjha wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the reasons nobody tells you anything anymore is because doing so would open you up to liability. It’s probably a similar thing to why you’re not told the reasons for not getting a job, even though it’s somewhat unfortunate that it means useful context is lost…

The other reason is to avoid long arguments. We used to give specific details for things (ie, price is going up because x). People INTENTIONALLY misunderstand, selectively pay attention, and argue endlessly. Same thing with job interviews and hires. Imagine a potential hire for a client facing role with poor communication skills. If asked point blank about any areas of challenge in their application you might say thi…

I understand your point but don't you think there needs to be some middleground between not offering any follow-up at all and arguing endlessly about the decision?

If you send an Email with some reasons, you're not required to spend hours defending your position. But giving some feedback is beneficial to the applicant and potentially also to yourself because you're forced to think about the reasons and keep a record which might also be useful.

Re: Telling users why their content was removed reduces future issues [pdf]

#107

Post by cwkoss » Tue, Nov 12, 2019, 8:13 PM UTC

mavhc wrote: post #29

stronglikedan wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> benevolent dictatorship Regardless, it's still frustrating. Especially when they cannot tell you which "rule" you broke, so they resort to telling you they can use their discretion to ban you for any reason (which is usually some sort of agenda that becomes apparent after you've tried to have a civil discussion about why you were banned). It's what drove me away from that platform, and I'm sure I'm not the only one…

Write a bot that has the max power, run it on a cloud server, let it change its own password and have its own paypal account so no one can turn it off, just requires donations to keep running. Let it run on a set of rules, and count votes to change rules. Now you have DemocracyBot

Bitcoin, would be easy to get a paypal account shut down.

Re: Telling users why their content was removed reduces future issues [pdf]

#108

Post by Enginerrrd » Tue, Nov 12, 2019, 9:09 PM UTC

kiba wrote: post #63

saagarjha wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the reasons nobody tells you anything anymore is because doing so would open you up to liability. It’s probably a similar thing to why you’re not told the reasons for not getting a job, even though it’s somewhat unfortunate that it means useful context is lost…

People think they will be exposed to liability and think they will get more lawsuits. It doesn't mean that their current behavior actually reduce risk.

This. I've seen so many ass-backwards approaches to the liability boogeyman where companies opened themselves to much greater liability issues because they were afraid of liability. Things like insisting on using a padlock to lock an emergency exit from the outdoor patio of a pool each night even though it could only be opened from the inside if someone already jumped the fence to get in. Staff would then routinely fail to unlock the exit, but they were afraid of some convoluted scenario in which someone would jump the fence to let other people in who wouldn't otherwise just jump the fence, and then drown in the hot tub or something.

Re: Telling users why their content was removed reduces future issues [pdf]

#109

Post by inapis » Tue, Nov 12, 2019, 9:21 PM UTC

chki wrote: post #106

privateSFacct wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The other reason is to avoid long arguments. We used to give specific details for things (ie, price is going up because x). People INTENTIONALLY misunderstand, selectively pay attention, and argue endlessly. Same thing with job interviews and hires. Imagine a potential hire for a client facing role with poor communication skills. If asked point blank about any areas of challenge in their application you might say thi…

I understand your point but don't you think there needs to be some middleground between not offering any follow-up at all and arguing endlessly about the decision? If you send an Email with some reasons, you're not required to spend hours defending your position. But giving some feedback is beneficial to the applicant and potentially also to yourself because you're forced to think about the reasons and keep a record…

Tragedy of the commons. If 99 people will endlessly argue with you and 1 is rational, you'd just do a blanket ban on giving explanations. I've frequently found that you just need to get people started and their rant will probably not end. Has always been true on Internet. Has become truer in day to day life for me too. At a certain point, you just want to switch off the tap.

Re: Telling users why their content was removed reduces future issues [pdf]

#110

Post by ccsnags » Tue, Nov 12, 2019, 9:21 PM UTC

CharlesColeman wrote: post #35

Ididntdothis wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not so sure it’s only about liability. Maybe with job interviews but in other areas it’s just cheaper to have automated systems that do the rejections and cancellations. Having support staff that can explain and even override decisions costs money This is undesirable so it’s better to lose a few customers. I think we’re at risk of building up the ultimate faceless and inhumane bureaucracy that works well in most…

I think that's closer to the real reason. As a culture it seems we're more and more frequently engaging in selfish "optimizations," that are really just creating or ignoring negative externalities. Corporations are especially guilty of this, given how pathologically focused they are on shareholders. Often their cost-cutting verges on customer abuse: (e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21513556 , for an example…

Have you ever worked for a company and felt like most of your time was spent negotiating the misaligned incentives within that organization? One aspect I found in orgs like that is that they rely on a culture of isolation or conflict between departments.

The worst example of this I experienced was a purchaser buying parts that were not to the spec of the design and caused problems in the field. No one in engineering or support was told of this and it was discovered by our support team in the field. Then engineering had to step in and and say no, only to have to economically justify the increase in cost to meet the spec.

We hurt our customers, our product and lost future revenue due to a tarnished reputation. It is difficult to be proud of what you do when something like this happens. It is also unnerving to know that this could even happen in the first place.

All of this is due to short sited economics. Negative externalities be damned. Could it be better if we could measure negative externalities in dollars and cents? How does one economically measure trust?