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I was blackmailed – any YouTuber could be next

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Re: I was blackmailed – any YouTuber could be next

#191

Post by zaroth »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #180
zaroth wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> IMO, Google's profit per employee isn't an indicator of Google's obligation to increase its customer service headcount. Taken to it's logical conclusion, we should let poorly-performing companies off the hook for having awful customer service. That’s not the logical conclusion, that’s the inverse. If P (large profit per employee) then Q (should be able to spend more on customer support)... - The converse is If Q th…

>> IMO, Google's profit per employee isn't an indicator of Google's obligation to increase its customer service headcount. Taken to it's logical conclusion, we should let poorly-performing companies off the hook for having awful customer service. > That’s not the logical conclusion, that’s the inverse. Your logic is misapplied. If Google's profit is an indicator of its customer service obligations, it is logically ne…

I think you're now making a new claim that there's some continuum of customer service responsibility versus profitability. I don't think that was the original claim, and that's not what I'm claiming.

I simply wanted to point out that a statement like "Companies that are wildly profitable should not shirk customer service responsibility" is not logically equivalent to saying, "Companies that are not wildly profitable should shirk customer service responsibilities."

To argue that because you disagree with the inverse of a statement, therefore the statement itself is not valid, is faulty. The inverse of a statement need not be true for the statement itself to be true.

"No company should be let off the hook for having awful customer service" does not preclude judging one of the most profitable companies in the world more harshly for having awful customer service.

What I read from OP's statement is mainly this; we know in this case that it's not for lack of resources. So perhaps we can agree every company has the responsibility, but not all companies have the means. Is it not more reprehensible to fail to provide a service you are responsible for when you have the means to provide it than when you do not?

Or more to the point, it's certainly noteworthy that they could become one of the most profitable companies in the world despite having such widely recognized terrible customer support. One might say it's significant evidence that they are able to maintain their profitability through not entirely competitive means.

Re: I was blackmailed – any YouTuber could be next

#192

Post by verst »

greggman3 wrote: post #175
novok wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They might have 1 billion free users, but they definitely don't have 1 billion partners or 1 billion paying customers. Google's customer service is horrible even for organizations that pay them +$10k/month or make them +$10k/month for ad sales, and that is a far smaller number. You would think they could at least scale customer support properly for that much smaller number, but they don't because culturally they do n…

> Google's customer service is horrible even for organizations that pay them +$10k/month or make them +$10k/month for ad sales, and that is a far smaller number. Is this true? As a paying customer for gsuite, the 4 times I've contacted customer service I got someone immediately and they solved my problem immediately. I'm not a big customer either I have one account. I pay them $72 a year.

It's very product specific. Google Cloud Platform and GSuite have support plans and offerings distinct from other Google services for example. In a prior life I was one of the Googlers handling those support inquiries (all while also trying to scale the support operations)

Re: I was blackmailed – any YouTuber could be next

#193

Post by judge2020 »

MagnumPIG wrote: post #136
UncleMeat wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's already how it works.

How could this type of blackmail happen if someone was already reviewing the videos manually? Takedowns being automated is fundamentally at odds with free speech.

YT is legally required to accept all takedowns and takedown counter-notices to reduce liability. Not taking down something in lieu of a DMCA takedown request would put YT at risk of a lawsuit if the submitter does own said copyright.

Content ID, on the other hand, is a problem of their own making.

Re: I was blackmailed – any YouTuber could be next

#194

Post by Freeboots »

scottlawson wrote: post #4

I think this is called extortion, not blackmail.

Right?! This annoyed the hell out of me when i saw the vid on youtube. It sucks his videos are getting taken down, but to my mind he loses intergity by playing it up as blackmail. Extortion is bad enough, why not call it like it is?

Re: I was blackmailed – any YouTuber could be next

#195

Post by bryanrasmussen »

gkoberger wrote: post #12

This might not be a popular opinion, but I feel like YouTube is doing their best with a really hard problem. I see a lot of people complaining about things like this, but I also see a lot of people complaining that YouTube/Twitter/etc aren't doing enough to take down false/immoral/illegal content quick enough. [1] It really sucks when a legitimate video is taken down by mistake. But it also really sucks when revenge…

>I feel like most of the time I see posts like this, the situation is resolved favorably

a cynic might assume that is because you (and thus lots of other people) are seeing the post.

Re: I was blackmailed – any YouTuber could be next

#196

Post by bryanrasmussen »

underwater wrote: post #161
movedx wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Instead of actually trying to create the best customer service I've worked in high volume customer services. It's not easy for the agents doing the work or the companies operating them. I've worked in multiple call centers dealing with calls and tickets. I've worked in companies in which I dealt with mobile phone bill queries and hardware issues right up to Cisco networking problems and then eventually enterprise g…

> People don't scale at all. Which is fine, because Google's customer base is made up of people, so Google should be able to scale their support in a linear way.

but we are all in agreement for years now that Google's customer base is advertisers, they can scale their support for their user base but it is unlikely to have any relation to their revenue.

on edit: I don't mean that not supporting their user base is the right thing to do, although an MBA might say it were.

Re: I was blackmailed – any YouTuber could be next

#197

Post by crazygringo »

ta17711771 wrote: post #186
movedx wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Instead of actually trying to create the best customer service I've worked in high volume customer services. It's not easy for the agents doing the work or the companies operating them. I've worked in multiple call centers dealing with calls and tickets. I've worked in companies in which I dealt with mobile phone bill queries and hardware issues right up to Cisco networking problems and then eventually enterprise g…

If you can't figure out how to scale proper customer service, there's a simple solution: don't grow too large too fast. I know, blasphemy to the VC crowd.

It's not blasphemy, just elementary economics.

Customer service at scale, for many products, turns the product from profitable into a severe loss. It will go out of business no ifs ands or buts.

YouTube clearly cannot survive if its customer service costs exceed its advertising revenue.

It has absolutely nothing to do with speed of growth, and I don't know why you think it does.

Are you saying free user-generated video hosting sites shouldn't exist period? That YouTube simply shouldn't exist? Because that seems to be what you're saying.

Re: I was blackmailed – any YouTuber could be next

#198

Post by brigandish »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #184
brigandish wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> how much of an effect would the additional CSRs have on the experience of Google's customers? It would go up, probably quite a bit, and the profit would re-emerge but at a lower level per employee. The real problem is that their scale (in terms of reach, money, customers, political leverage - you name it) is so large that a company could compete or out-compete on customer service and still wouldn't win a significan…

>> How many customers would each [CSR] be handling per day? You need to answer that one before concluding that customers' experience would improve.

If we assume that each CSR can handle an average number of cases then the absolute number of cases handled by a human increase with even 1 CSR taken on. The Mythical Man Month doesn't apply as there's no time limit on it.

So no, I don't need to answer that beyond any number greater than there are now, which I already did.

Re: I was blackmailed – any YouTuber could be next

#199

Post by stopping »

zaroth wrote: post #191
thaumasiotes wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> IMO, Google's profit per employee isn't an indicator of Google's obligation to increase its customer service headcount. Taken to it's logical conclusion, we should let poorly-performing companies off the hook for having awful customer service. > That’s not the logical conclusion, that’s the inverse. Your logic is misapplied. If Google's profit is an indicator of its customer service obligations, it is logically ne…

I think you're now making a new claim that there's some continuum of customer service responsibility versus profitability. I don't think that was the original claim, and that's not what I'm claiming. I simply wanted to point out that a statement like "Companies that are wildly profitable should not shirk customer service responsibility" is not logically equivalent to saying, "Companies that are not wildly profitable…

Yeah, your original point was very fair; GP probably didn't mean for his statement to be interpreted as its inverse, which I jumped the gun on. My reasoning was that if the inverse wasn't implied, then the overall conclusion should simply be "all companies should provide exceptional customer service".

I also probably should have more charitably interpreted GP as "companies in a strong position have a better ability to provide good customer service."

Re: I was blackmailed – any YouTuber could be next

#200

Post by vorpalhex »

NoPicklez wrote: post #109
donmcronald wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There has to be something between the best customer service and things like letting shitty "AI" ban accounts without any human intervention. How hard can it be to augment crowd sourcing and "AI" with some actual humans? If the "AI" is so crappy that it can't figure out an established, popular account is worthy of human support, what problems can it actually solve? I also wonder why we can't just pay $X to get a human…

It's easy to say "there has to be something between the best customer service and things like letting shitting "AI" ban accounts" as an armchair hackernews user. But maybe, there isn't, currently. Maybe there simply isn't a solution at the scale of companies like Google.

Then your company doesn't get to scale.

Sorry, but you can't skip support because it's not cost effective, just like you can't skip financial regulations or data regs. You don't get to use the excuse of "Sorry we are too busy making billions, maybe we wouldn't have to cut corners if we weren't so successful."

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