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Tell HN: There needs to be a “right to speak with a human”

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Re: Tell HN: There needs to be a “right to speak with a human”

#231

Post by stevesimmons »

bobabob wrote: post #188
rmellow wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My partner bought some clothing in Brazil and wanted to exchange it at the store for something else. Unfortunately she lost the receipt, and the alternative which is providing your SSN is not available to her (not a citizen). The exchange was denied. We walked into another store location. They were sympathetic to the foreigner situation, and made an exception. Takeaway: Computers can't see that a process is flawed an…

There is no SSN in Brazil.

CPF - Cadastro de Pessoas Físicas

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CPF_number

Re: Tell HN: There needs to be a “right to speak with a human”

#232

Post by ironmagma »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #191
ironmagma wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nowhere has it been shown that adding support people would make these companies unprofitable.

I have worked with budgets at large companies with paid products and real human customer support. The cost of customer support is much, much bigger than people realize. For a low-margin business, a single customer support interaction might wipe out an entire year of profit. Even the most optimized ad-supported companies like Facebook have revenues (not profits, that's before expenses) in the range of a couple dollars…

If you are paying $0, you aren't a customer. You aren't a customer of Facebook typically, you are a user. Facebook does have customers, which are advertisers, and they get live support (unsurprisingly). [1]

Besides, we really aren't talking about low-margin businesses. If you are a low-margin business, chances are, your overall impact on society is not that high, and the importance of regulating you is not high either. If we introduced regulations like this it would be restricted to businesses of a certain headcount and revenue, probably.

[1] https://www.facebook.com/business/help/2476867112525530?id=3...

Re: Tell HN: There needs to be a “right to speak with a human”

#233

Post by dmd »

rkangel wrote: post #224
dmd wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But people are specifically saying it doesn't have to be for money. If I've made some open source tool that people use for free, do I really need to provide phone support - also for free?

You're not providing a service though are you? You're providing intellectual property for people to do things with.

And if I throw an instance of it up on my web server that runs on a raspberry pi next to the cat litter in my basement? Now do I need to provide phone support to the world?

Re: Tell HN: There needs to be a “right to speak with a human”

#234

Post by kqr »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #220
kqr wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is empirically a false dichotomy. You can have flexibility and safety. It just takes the right culture. You have to do away with hierarchy, blame, etc. In fact, I believe flexibility can ultimately lead to even greater safety than bureaucracy, which is, as Graeber put it, active stupidity. And while aiming for stupidity might rule out some classes of errors, it definitely introduces even more of them.

I think I disagree. In security (not just financial), security and user convenience are almost always at war with each other. And "culture" doesn't seem to fix it.

Have you read anything by e.g. Sidney Dekker or Nancy Leveson on "human error"?

It sounds like you're picturing fully automated systems in which case you're right; flexibility is at conflict with security (as far as we know now, anyway.)

But once you throw humans into the loop, allowing them to be autonomous and not rule-bound, command-obeying robots can improve security a lot.

Re: Tell HN: There needs to be a “right to speak with a human”

#235

Post by asah »

ironmagma wrote: post #27
PaulKeeble wrote: post #16

I think its important to recognise that quite a lot of modern web based companies are running their business on the 0 cents model. That is they take the marginal cost of a customer and push it down to zero and rely on scale to make a profit from it. They can't add anything to their business that would scale with the number of their customers that has any real cost, computing resources even are heavily optimised for l…

I think the point here is that it’s a bad business model. I don’t mean “bad as in won’t make you money or keep the business running,” I mean “bad for society.” Hence the desire to regulate.

Seems hard to regulate the model... but y I agree we can regulate the requirement to have a no-dark-pattern way to reach a human.

Obviously, we need to avoid abuse especially automated abuse, and this in turn becomes difficult.

So... perhaps it makes the most sense to roll this issue into regulation against dark patterns.

Or... fund an organization exposing dark patterns and helping consumers choose companies that avoid them.

Re: Tell HN: There needs to be a “right to speak with a human”

#236

Post by vmception »

ironmagma wrote: post #229
vmception wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the adjectives and adverbs in front of 'country' suggest something 'particular' about one country or a category of countries, which is the word I used, purposefully avoiding the word 'unique' the difference now seems to be that I avoid words that I don't mean and can't rely on it seems like you mean to say that a country has a cultural misunderstanding of a shorthand version of the first amendment that is so pervasiv…

No, the first amendment is totally disconnected from what I said. What I said instead is that our culture is about free expression. This is an important lead-in to the whole Hacker News saying, "information wants to be free." It's interesting that instead of answering the question I asked (effectively revealing the answer), you've chosen to go down this unrelated tangent.

which question? I don't know if the reviewer's criticisms are accurate, thats the question you asked multiple times but its not a question for me so its better I ignore it. I just assumed the other questions where rhetorical and it looks like I addressed them.

also I get stuff booted off the internet all the time, in the US, which is a pretty strong "cultural free speech/expression" place. so my reality is pretty different than yours.

Re: Tell HN: There needs to be a “right to speak with a human”

#237

Post by rpdillon »

coldtea wrote: post #99
PaulKeeble wrote: post #16

I think its important to recognise that quite a lot of modern web based companies are running their business on the 0 cents model. That is they take the marginal cost of a customer and push it down to zero and rely on scale to make a profit from it. They can't add anything to their business that would scale with the number of their customers that has any real cost, computing resources even are heavily optimised for l…

> I think its important to recognise that quite a lot of modern web based companies are running their business on the 0 cents model. That is they take the marginal cost of a customer and push it down to zero and rely on scale to make a profit from it. Well, that's their problem. There should absolutely be a "right to speak with a human", like a restaurant must pass health inspections, and other such things. If they c…

I think a better requirement (that is, more likely to achieve the desired result) may be to make it clear on signup that there will be no human support provided. I suspect this would be enough to allow customers to make an informed decision, so that folks that value real support can choose companies that provide it. Today, I can sign up for a service online and only find out in my moment of need that there's no hope of getting help from a real person. But perhaps people would still just choose the cheapest option regardless.

Re: Tell HN: There needs to be a “right to speak with a human”

#238

Post by ironmagma »

vmception wrote: post #236
ironmagma wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, the first amendment is totally disconnected from what I said. What I said instead is that our culture is about free expression. This is an important lead-in to the whole Hacker News saying, "information wants to be free." It's interesting that instead of answering the question I asked (effectively revealing the answer), you've chosen to go down this unrelated tangent.

which question? I don't know if the reviewer's criticisms are accurate, thats the question you asked multiple times but its not a question for me so its better I ignore it. I just assumed the other questions where rhetorical and it looks like I addressed them. also I get stuff booted off the internet all the time, in the US, which is a pretty strong "cultural free speech/expression" place. so my reality is pretty dif…

My mistake, I thought you were the top-level commenter. I agree the tech platforms tend to buck the cultural expectation of free speech... in my opinion this is a big reason that "Big Tech" has a negative reputation. When entities go against cultural norms, there is backlash.

Re: Tell HN: There needs to be a “right to speak with a human”

#239

Post by throwbigdata »

Your desire to speak with a human is nothing that should be right. You should always be able to send certified mail for these conversations. If you’re not happy with the service you are getting you should be able to take your business elsewhere. You can and should be able to write this into a contract if they want agree to it take your business elsewhere.

It is immoral to suggest that the company is obligated to have a human on standby to talk to you whenever you define a desirable need.

Re: Tell HN: There needs to be a “right to speak with a human”

#240

Post by throwbigdata »

msla wrote: post #213
pempem wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think we can presume the author means: goods/services I have exchanged funds for. Additionally I would point out that Gmail makes plenty of money off our data and we all have written about or thought about how 'users are the product'. Not sure why there's seemingly a heightened emotional response here.

There's always an answer. If you don't pay for it: "You're not the customer, you're the product." If you do pay for it: "You get what you pay for." If you pay for it and have a contract specifying you will get it: "Not worth taking it to court." If you do take it to court: "We must stop all these frivolous lawsuits!" There is always an answer.

Respectfully, you’re begging the question that it would be frivolous. If the contract says they must have a human respond within so much time and the company fails to do that, the lawsuit would not be frivolous to a rational person.
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