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Small claims court became Meta's customer service hotline

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Re: Small claims court became Meta's customer service hotline

#221

Post by qingcharles »

nradov wrote: post #62
jeremyjh wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it may need to cost more than $100. They would need a notary to validate your identity or something like that.

Anyone can make a fake notary stamp. Or become a notary themselves. This is super common in fraud cases. Notaries are basically a worthless anachronism and shouldn't be relied upon for anything important. And even if identity is validated, what does that mean? Like there are probably a thousand Meta accounts for "Robert Jones". If someone has a valid government issued ID in that name should he then be able to "recove…

Notaries are out of favor these days. In Illinois, for instance, there is almost nothing that requires a notary now. You can "certify" yourself by signing a document under penalty of perjury.

Re: Small claims court became Meta's customer service hotline

#222

Post by qingcharles »

tarikjn wrote: post #108

Since this is the topic, I'm going to post my own recent experience with Google/Youtube: (also with the hope that a good soul can assist/give pointers) I have a YT channel with a short-feature documentary film I uploaded 13 years ago ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Nz4N2K64o8 ). Last year YT started sending emails that channels with inactive accounts will start being deleted. So I have been working on logging on m…

I'm in the same situation. I have an account where I have the email/pass/recovery email, and I have all emails from the account forwarded to me. But I can't get into it because it requires a phone number I no longer have. There was no 2FA on the account because the term barely existed when I created the account.

I've put a significant amount of time into this problem, I've talked to various people inside Google on the phone (there are numbers they have to provide by law, such as a number to get your data out etc). Nobody has yet been able to solve this problem.

My next step is just to turn up to Google HQ and set up camp in their parking lot until someone finds a way to get me back into my own account. Let me know (email on profile) if you ever find a solution.

(p.s. finding rogue Meta employees isn't too hard, but I've yet to find a rogue Googler who I can pay off for this)

Re: Small claims court became Meta's customer service hotline

#223

Post by qingcharles »

throwawaycities wrote: post #205

I recently wrote an Ask HN post[1] about obtaining my trademarked X & YouTube handles (neither is registered by a user/both are being “protected” from being registered by the respective platforms). Since 2022 I’ve worked with legal/support teams and successfully climes my trademarked handle/username from: Meta (IG & Threads) Microsoft (GitHub) Reddit TikTok Amazon (Twitch) Kick Similarly, no user had registered my tr…

If you sue them, what kind of tort is it? I wouldn't think these sites are under any obligation to give you the name, as long as they aren't assisting someone else to use your name?

Re: Small claims court became Meta's customer service hotline

#224

Post by chii »

AlexandrB wrote: post #31

Consumer rights have taken such a beating in the internet age. If you look at pre-internet product categories there are all kind of protections on the books like minimum warranty lengths, lemon laws, etc. Meanwhile, with software products - even very expensive ones - you're at the mercy of the vendor and their ToS. The fact that you can't even get refunds (e.g. within 15 days or something) for most software is ridicu…

> at the mercy of the vendor and their ToS.

they've discovered that their ToS is something they can abuse and write whatever they wish and pretend it's law. And because consumers both dont read it, and don't understand it, it becomes difficult for the consumer to disambiguate what is legal and what isn't.

Re: Small claims court became Meta's customer service hotline

#225

Post by rendaw »

matthewgrossman wrote: post #165
jjav wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Small claims court does get a company's attention. Different topic, but I find not enough people are aware of the CFPB (Consumer Financial Protection Bureau) complaint process. If some financial-related company wrongs you and you can't get through to support, file a complaint. Suddenly they listen and contact you back. https://www.consumerfinance.gov/complaint/

+1 to CFPB My account at Venmo was banned with zero explanation and no support would talk to me on the phone. I submitted a complaint to the CFPB, got a phone response within 2 weeks, and was promptly unbanned.

Is that a violation of something? I thought the TOS gave them the ability to freely ban anyone at will.

Re: Small claims court became Meta's customer service hotline

#226

Post by bsder »

josephg wrote: post #191
doctor_eval wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TFA is explicitly about Facebook externalising its support costs to small claims courts. If RPI was accused of the same thing, I'd feel the same way. Anyway, as I understand it, RPI externalises support costs to retailers. I can certainly call my RPI supplier and talk to someone. Externalising commercially is totally fine, externalising to the public is up there with pollution, perhaps a kind of tragedy of the common…

I think part of the "deal" with free services like GMail, Facebook, Whatsapp, twitter, and so on is that the services only work financially because there isn't any customer support. If you forget your password, or your account gets hijacked or something, well, you don't actually make the companies enough money to take your troubles seriously. Arguably, this is fine so long as the customer knows in advance that that's…

Except that because they are "free", they drive out any semblance of competition which would serve as a check on the super shitty customer service.

As an alternative solution, I'm all for splitting up Meta, Google, etc for being anti-competitive.

If Gmail, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Hotmail, etc. all had to stand on their own without being able to share revenue from other sections of the company, the "free to prevent competition" would go into the trash can where it belongs.

Re: Small claims court became Meta's customer service hotline

#227

Post by Rinzler89 »

ipython wrote: post #133
TeMPOraL wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're still at the stage of "old school" (pre-ChatGPT) bots, just with higher-quality audio. The other day my wife got a call from someone who sounded like real woman, but reacted just a tad too quickly; I tried a bunch of usual hack to get at the system prompt on her, but the only thing I learned is that it's a keyword-listening bot with a lot of high-quality audio recordings, including plenty of deflecting and reas…

It may be an old school soundboard run by a human on the other side of the world- scammers have been using those for years

When can AI do the following: "Sir, please do not redeem the gift card".

Re: Small claims court became Meta's customer service hotline

#228

Post by throwawaycities »

qingcharles wrote: post #223
throwawaycities wrote: post #205

I recently wrote an Ask HN post[1] about obtaining my trademarked X & YouTube handles (neither is registered by a user/both are being “protected” from being registered by the respective platforms). Since 2022 I’ve worked with legal/support teams and successfully climes my trademarked handle/username from: Meta (IG & Threads) Microsoft (GitHub) Reddit TikTok Amazon (Twitch) Kick Similarly, no user had registered my tr…

If you sue them, what kind of tort is it? I wouldn't think these sites are under any obligation to give you the name, as long as they aren't assisting someone else to use your name?

In my case I would file 2 claims: 1) trademark infringement, and 2) trademark dilution. However, I’ll take a look at these cases and see what claims they filed and maybe supplement if anything applies.

Trademark infringement typically requires “likelihood of confusion”, except where the trademark is famous then there can be trademark dilution even when there is no “likelihood of confusion.”

My trademark is famous, and it’s evidenced by the fact that YouTube and X (and all the other platforms) reserved and protected my trademarked name from being registered and used.

The legal argument would be these platforms are infringing by reserving the name and diluting the famous trademark by not allowing the trademarked account to exist on their platforms.

YouTube and X don’t want to be in Court explaining why they reserve trademarked names and don’t release them to the trademark owner, so it’s just a matter of getting a human involved to get it resolved.

Re: Small claims court became Meta's customer service hotline

#229

Post by exe34 »

autoexec wrote: post #144
exe34 wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

all that freedom and you can't return a faulty product?

Long before we started keeping more of our citizens locked up behind bars than any other nation on the earth "all that freedom" has been mostly just advertising, but the free speech is pretty nice.

at least you guys have guns though! you know, in case the government makes laws that you don't like or it lets corporations take the piss.

Re: Small claims court became Meta's customer service hotline

#230

Post by exe34 »

hanniabu wrote: post #189
exe34 wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

no, I'm saying I believe in the free market. buy a product that meets your requirements. if you find it doesn't, return it for a refund. do a chargeback if they won't do a refund. you are entitled to a refund within 14 days. https://www.termsfeed.com/blog/return-refund-laws-eu/#:~:tex...

Can't believe there's still people to think the free market actually exists

now imagine one where you have a right to return something that doesn't meet your needs within 14 days.
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