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“They wanted my Instagram handle, and somehow they've now got it.”

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Re: “They wanted my Instagram handle, and somehow they've now got it.”

#101

Post by sircastor »

oigursh wrote: post #100
sircastor wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember for a while after Meta bought Oculus, they still had a Human support system. People who's Facebook accounts had been hacked/reset/whatever were buying Quest/Quest2s so they could get support for their Facebook account. It's obnoxious the extremes we have to go to. Especially when these representations of ourselves might reflect on us poorly through no fault of our own, and we have no recourse.

My favourite thing is the fake typing ellipsis that chat bots do, as they have infinite time and patience.

It's one of those things that we script in to make it feel more comfortable for humans - add in those little things that we're used to.

I'm reminded of a national tour put on by Nissan for the All-Electric LEAF when it first came out. We were told by our presenter that there was an aluminum cover under the hood designed to look like an engine block - apparently it was discomforting to people to open the hood and not see that component.

Re: “They wanted my Instagram handle, and somehow they've now got it.”

#102

Post by tennisflyi »

s-video wrote: post #53
ZantaWB wrote: post #3

The underground marketplace for desirable social media handles (OG Handles) was explored in this excellent episode of Reply All: The Snapchat Thief [1]. In that story the basic technique was a SIM-swapping attack [2]. Fraudster calls the cell provider, claims to be the victim and that they lost their phone. Cell provider then ports the phone identity over to a new SIM. After that the fraudster just resets the account…

Is this how new brands get usernames that would otherwise seem to be claimed long ago?

So, "Zo" for Lonzo Ball (NBA) has a user ID number of 243,382,891 (profilePage_243382891).

"OBJ" for Odell Beckham Junior (NFL) has a user ID number of 309,853 (profilePage_309853).

"Abby" for Abby Pollock (influecner) has a user ID number of 239,219,491 (profilePage_239219491).

"Kevin" for Kevin Systrom (IG founder) has a user ID number of 3 (profilePage_3).

Pretty sure FB/Meta will set you up in some capacity. Two of these are far too large to not have been squatted.

> https://www.codeofaninja.com/tools/find-instagram-user-id/

Re: “They wanted my Instagram handle, and somehow they've now got it.”

#103

Post by Rebelgecko »

rom-antics wrote: post #39
sircastor wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember for a while after Meta bought Oculus, they still had a Human support system. People who's Facebook accounts had been hacked/reset/whatever were buying Quest/Quest2s so they could get support for their Facebook account. It's obnoxious the extremes we have to go to. Especially when these representations of ourselves might reflect on us poorly through no fault of our own, and we have no recourse.

FB's net income for 2022 was $28.83 billion. They could drop that to $28.82 billion and fund a good size customer support team.

How big of a team could you build for $10m/year? Maybe 30 people working at any given time? 50-100 if you offshore?

Re: “They wanted my Instagram handle, and somehow they've now got it.”

#104

Post by Sparyjerry »

newsclues wrote: post #92
dgudkov wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you underestimate $28.83 billion.

“FB's net income for 2022 was $28.83 billion. They could drop that to $28.82 billion and fund a good size customer support team.” I’m pretty sure the math of 28.83B - 28.82B is 0.01B or ten million dollars to support 2-3 Billion users worldwide. Which is laughable.

As oppose to zero support now though. They only really need a queue. People would accept it if support got to their ticket in like a month from when they put it in. Hell they could even charge for customer support like $50 per hour or whatever and people would gladly pay it.

Re: “They wanted my Instagram handle, and somehow they've now got it.”

#106

Post by 29083011397778 »

krolden wrote: post #94
ZantaWB wrote: post #3

The underground marketplace for desirable social media handles (OG Handles) was explored in this excellent episode of Reply All: The Snapchat Thief [1]. In that story the basic technique was a SIM-swapping attack [2]. Fraudster calls the cell provider, claims to be the victim and that they lost their phone. Cell provider then ports the phone identity over to a new SIM. After that the fraudster just resets the account…

Love how using a VoIP number would totally cancel out that attack, but so many websites require you to have a 'real' phone number. I assume its mostly to weed out scammers.

Yes and no. No, you can't buy a VoIP number and use it as your contact immediately and indefinitely. You would be amazed at how few companies update their list of VoIP vs POTS/Carrier numbers though. Hypothetically, one could transfer their carrier number to a VoIP provider, and use it for damn near everything. There would be trade-offs [0], of course, but I can attest to its effectiveness as a workaround.

[0] Trade-offs include a glitchy MMS experience, easy, automatic, and built-in call-recording, IVR capabilities to screen unknown callers, voicemail transcription, and the ability/requirement to use an email client as your SMS client. Though you then get to treat SMS and calls as device agnostic - desktop, laptop, tablet, and phone all send & recieve SMS and voice calls

Re: “They wanted my Instagram handle, and somehow they've now got it.”

#107

Post by berniedurfee »

pindab0ter wrote: post #96
ghusto wrote: post #87

We get what we deserve. It's obvious in retrospect that one of the main ways tech companies make money is scale, without the costs that physical based companies bear with scale. For example, you go to a shop, and they have employees they have to pay. When the shop scales, so does the number of employees. Tech companies aren't like that though. You write software, then scale it to as many users as possible (billions,…

Could you elaborate on "We get what we deserve"? I don't see how we (users of Instagram or social media as a whole, I guess) deserve this.

Maybe “You get what you pay for” is more appropriate.

Re: “They wanted my Instagram handle, and somehow they've now got it.”

#108

Post by throwawaylinux »

Justsignedup wrote: post #24

This is the #1 problem with google/facebook/other giant companies - zero due process. They build a business around minimal human interaction with our staff and it shows when real problems come up. I'm frankly sick of hacker news being a facebook/google/whatever ticketing system. And yet, there's no alternative.

I disagree, I think the #1 problem with the people who run giant companies is they conspire with elected officials and others in the ruling class to keep and horde wealth and power over others.

One of the major problems with social networks is zero due process, and clearly corporate backed networks manipulate and censor their users in pursuit of the above (e.g., see Twitter Files), but lack of fairness is not unique to corporations. Moderators who are drawn to the role "out of the goodness of their hearts" are among the most vicious, petty, vindictive, capricious, hypocritical, narcissistic, and unjust arbiters I've ever encountered. They also are the best of the best, but those ones are few and far between, and many tend to burn out as communities grow whereas the former type are a dime a dozen and thrive in the role. This is the main reason why I'm not all that hopeful for mastodon or not-corporate social networks.

Re: “They wanted my Instagram handle, and somehow they've now got it.”

#109

Post by newsclues »

Sparyjerry wrote: post #104
newsclues wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“FB's net income for 2022 was $28.83 billion. They could drop that to $28.82 billion and fund a good size customer support team.” I’m pretty sure the math of 28.83B - 28.82B is 0.01B or ten million dollars to support 2-3 Billion users worldwide. Which is laughable.

As oppose to zero support now though. They only really need a queue. People would accept it if support got to their ticket in like a month from when they put it in. Hell they could even charge for customer support like $50 per hour or whatever and people would gladly pay it.

How many languages does FB support in how many different legal jurisdictions?

If you hire the cheapest WFH customer support in the world, and provide a minimal service that was slow as heck, you couldn’t even setup a global program legally and in most languages for users for $10 million a year even if you charged for support tickets.

The legal and localization costs will be massive.

Re: “They wanted my Instagram handle, and somehow they've now got it.”

#110

Post by hatter »

pindab0ter wrote: post #96
ghusto wrote: post #87

We get what we deserve. It's obvious in retrospect that one of the main ways tech companies make money is scale, without the costs that physical based companies bear with scale. For example, you go to a shop, and they have employees they have to pay. When the shop scales, so does the number of employees. Tech companies aren't like that though. You write software, then scale it to as many users as possible (billions,…

Could you elaborate on "We get what we deserve"? I don't see how we (users of Instagram or social media as a whole, I guess) deserve this.

You invested (your time, energy, reputation) into a system which you either knew or could have quickly established, places no value in you as a person and has zero interest in fixing any problems that may affect you. I'm sure many users started using it for nothing of any real importance at first, so didn't let that really worry them. But over time, they invested much more while still in the back of their mind knowing that while the odds are small of anything happening, that if it did, your data and relationships could be taken from you, and possibly even given to others, for reasons you may never even know, or reasons you may know to be false but unable to do anything about the error.
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