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Small claims court became Meta's customer service hotline

Animats
90 replies
23h46m

Small claims court does get a company's attention. They either have to show up or lose. Not that showing up means a win.

I'm surprised that someone had trouble serving a subpoena on Facebook. Looking up "Meta" in California Corporation Search brings up everything with "Metal" in it, which is a hassle. Their actual company name is "Meta Platforms, Incorporated". Search for "Meta Platforms" here.[1] California company registration #2711108.

Subpoenas are sent, using a process server, to their registered agent, which is Corporation Service Company in Sacramento, a business which exists to receive subpoenas for other companies. And, conveniently, there are process serving companies with offices in the same building, and you can find them by searching for the address of CSC and "process server", then ignoring the spam results.

Most small claims court web sites explain all this.

[1] https://bizfileonline.sos.ca.gov/search/business

c-linkage
60 replies
21h41m

To me this appears as a way to outsource customer service to an external entity funded by a cash flow to which Meta does not need to contribute. The courts are always going to exist, Meta is always paying its lawyers, so why bother hiring extra people to staff a support line?

And by making support have to go through the legal system you've already cut out 90% of the support calls you would normally take.

Financially, the entire arrangement is a huge win and cost saving for Meta while at the same time completely overwhelming the publicly funded small claims court. This is not dissimilar to how many Walmart employees require government Aid because Walmart won't pay them enough do not require it.

thegrimmest
20 replies
20h5m

No company has (nor should have) any mandate to "customer service" beyond what the market demands. Dispute resolution is what courts are for. Meta already pays taxes that fund courts.

If courts are unable to keep up with demand generated by the modern digital economy, let's fix that. Making losers pay court fees would go a very long way towards solving the problem.

Re: Walmart, the other option is to just cut the aid. People won't work if they are not able to sustain themselves (calorically) on the pay. The best way to avoid these antipatterns is to stop enabling them.

---

Edit in reply to: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40744676 (rate limited):

There is another solution to this problem: reputation. There inevitably will emerge a spectrum of reputability among eg. used car salesman. It is your responsibility to manage your risk in regards to the reputation of the person you are transacting with, attend to the specifics of your deal, and to do your due diligence. So much is obvious in the world of business.

Also, in a world of prompt dispute resolution by efficient courts, with losers paying fees, shady businessmen who repeatedly violate contracts will quickly find themselves out of business. The problem we have is that our courts work on an 1800s timescale. We can fix this.

Re: social media, standards are already emerging. For instance the much contested device attestation standard attempts to fix exactly this problem. It'll work itself out in a decade or two, no intervention required.

one of the roles of government regulation that can create a net economic gain

I disagree in principle. The role of the government of a free society is to create a nonviolent liberal ecosystem. Not to interfere in the outcomes that ecosystem produces.

jjmarr
5 replies
18h51m

I half-agree with the above, which is that loser-pays is a good system and it's necessary to stop enabling companies.

The problem with your theory is that market forces incentivize firms to take action that reduce everyone's profits/benefits so long as the action is individually profitable for the company. Which is why there are "lemon laws" on selling used cars or food regulations.

The used car industry as a whole benefits when consumers are willing to pay more. Customers are willing to pay more for a used car if they think it will be high-quality. However, an ethically questionable used car salesman will try to undercut each other by offering low-quality cars that immediately break, giving all used car salesmen a bad name. Consumers now no longer want to buy used cars at all and now the only people making money are those selling a bad product.

The point of legal regulation here is to enforce a quality minimum on used cars. This drives the price of used cars upwards. Salespeople get paid more, the customers get better quality, and the world is better off having reused cars that would've been scrapped. Everyone is better off.

This could also be true for social media. Forcing social media to invest in better systems to ban users means that social media advertising can be worth more money. Right now, advertising marketplaces are controlled by the companies themselves. Nobody trusts companies to show ads to real users instead of bots. This drives the value of social media advertising down.

While individually, it doesn't make sense to pay for customer service infrastructure to verify people's ownership of accounts, if there is a mandatory standard, all social media companies would benefit because it increases the value of their products.

This is one of the roles of government regulation that can create a net economic gain.

OptionOfT
3 replies
17h53m

Sidenote: car sales in general are not ethical. When you go to the dealer & talk to a salesperson, and subsequently talk to the $ guy, you will be required to sign a piece of paper stating that you cannot derive ANY claims on what the salesperson told you, except those written down on that form. And that form is empty.

Also, I wish there was a nationwide requirement for warranty. Not that I have a problem with selling as-is per se, but it incentivizes used car dealers to take in every vehicle they can on trade, erase the codes, and try to sell it. Again, they can lie to your face about how well this car was maintained, how it was taken care off, etc, and you cannot derive ANY value off those quotes.

I find it insane that in 2024 I cannot get a print-out of a car on how well it was maintained, and how many times it was floored on a cold engine.

throwaway2037
1 replies
11h14m

Most US states have the concept of "Lemon Laws" that provide consumer protection when buy used cars.

Ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lemon_law

That said, this economic paper is pretty legendary at this point: <<The Market for Lemons>>

Summary: <<Akerlof's paper uses the market for used cars as an example of the problem of quality uncertainty. It concludes that owners of high-quality used cars will not place their cars on the used car market. A car buyer should only be able to buy low-quality used cars, and will pay accordingly as the market for good used cars does not exist.>>

Ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Market_for_Lemons

kerkeslager
0 replies
6h55m

The Market for Lemons is legendary only as an example of economists ignoring reality to pursue their pet theories. Reality is closer to that explained in Mediations on Moloch.

The theory that the removal of lemon laws would result in a more informed consumer base has no basis in reality--economists need to spend less time theorizing about how economies work and start looking at actual economies to figure out how they work. We had decades of consumers not becoming informed enough to differentiate between a peach and a lemon before lemon laws existed. That's decades of proof that The Market for Lemons is wrong. That should have been caught in peer review, and that should have prevented the paper from being published. The fact that this absurd paper won a Nobel Prize should call into question the validity of the prevailing ideas of the entire field of economics, at least at that time.

The market for cars of uncertain quality will always have a floor on the price because people don't have a choice except to take a risk on buying a car of uncertain quality in an economy where the car industry has successfully dismantled public transportation infrastructure. Given this inelastic demand, dealers can leverage consumer ignorance to sell lemons as if they were peaches, and the consumer suffers. Hoping consumers will educate themselves is a solution that doesn't scale; it is unrealistic to expect consumers to become experts on cars, computers, phones, medical devices, and every other complex product just so they can avoid being sold inferior, broken products. It is clear that the only solution that works is for experts on products, i.e. the sellers, be held accountable when they knowingly sell low quality products as if they were high quality.

[1] https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/

dazc
0 replies
4h17m

"I find it insane that in 2024 I cannot get a print-out of a car on how well it was maintained, and how many times it was floored on a cold engine."

In the UK every car has a registration document with the previous owner's name and address on it. You can assume a lot regarding whether you want to still buy the car based purely on this information. It's surprising how many people overlook this simple step and rely upon warranties and such which are,often, not worth the paper they are printed on.

cscurmudgeon
0 replies
16h5m

While individually, it doesn't make sense to pay for customer service infrastructure to verify people's ownership of accounts, if there is a mandatory standard, all social media companies would benefit because it increases the value of their products.

I am not sure this is a good idea in the US where even voter ids are controversial.

doctor_eval
5 replies
19h41m

People won't work if they are not able to sustain themselves (calorically) on the pay.

A better alternative is simply to require companies to pay a living wage.

The outcome is better, because you don’t lose the safety net for those who still need it.

thegrimmest
4 replies
19h40m

ah yes, "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs"

Edit: It's an awful thing, and has failed every time it was tried, usually with unspeakable horrors inflicted on incalculable numbers of people. Many would rather die free than live in shackles, even if the shackles are of gold. Imposing involuntary obligations on people is indistinguishable from enslaving them.

"Ultra-capitalism" is just the state of nature without the violence. It is distributed rather than centralized authority. It is a liberal ecosystem in which organisms compete, succeed, and fail. Allowing people to bear the total consequences of their failure and misfortune is not immoral.

If you can't sustain yourself, the immoral and undignified thing is to impose on others. The only decent thing to do is accept their charity when freely given, not elect tyrants who will take by force.

Democracy is not an aim, it is a means to liberty. And an imperfect one at that, which I would be glad to see replaced when a better option becomes available (AI?). If the power of the government threatens the freedom of the people, the government must be replaced. So much is written in the constitution.

doctor_eval
1 replies
16h38m

I'm not sure why you didn't just reply to my comment instead of updating yours.

Anyway, your points are ridiculous on the surface. You're deliberately conflating communism with democratic center-left policies, but they are not remotely comparable.

There are plenty of places in the world - most of modern Europe, for example - which have social safety nets where "unspeakable horrors" are not being "inflicted on incalculable numbers of people".

Imposing involuntary obligations on people is indistinguishable from enslaving them.

This is complete nonsense. All societies impose involuntary obligations. You can't just do what you want in society and get away with it. You can't deliberately hurt people, can't speed in your car, you can't shout "fire" in a crowded theatre, you can't forge your signature or deceive people into giving you money; force is largely monopolised by the state, limiting your freedoms in all sorts of different ways. You call to the constitution, the defining document of the US government, as if it doesn't impose any obligations on you. But you then say it requires you to revolt against the government.

The problem with arguments like yours is that you pick and choose what you consider to be "involuntary" obligations. I'm sure you feel that the very real involuntary obligations imposed by property law are perfectly OK with you, despite that, taken to its extreme, this literally creates a system of indentured servitude, examples of which include bankruptcy for getting sick, and lifetime loans for getting an education.

This whole liberty-or-die thing is just as corrupt. Your kind of liberty is strictly about the freedom to do whatever the hell you want, with no obligation to the liberty of others. All you care about is your "positive freedoms", the freedom to "do", but you couldn't care less about the more important freedoms: freedom from hunger, freedom from fear, freedom from homelessness, freedom from pain.

These freedoms are the most important freedoms of all; without them, true liberty is impossible.

thegrimmest
0 replies
2h4m

most of modern Europe

This is relatively recent, and has proven itself quite fragile. Democracies elect dictators. Dictators of powerful governments commit atrocities. There is no "don't elect dictators" solution. The only solution is to disempower the government. Also European nations are relatively small and relatively culturally homogenous. There is no functioning liberal democracy of a large multicultural state.

All societies impose involuntary obligations

There is a vast difference between outlawing violent behaviour and mandating cooperation. The latter is indistinguishable from slavery. Free societies don't compel the cooperation of their citizens beyond the strict minimum necessary to maintain liberty itself. Even being conscripted into the army, which is slavery, can be justified if it is to defend against a foe who would destroy liberal society.

It is however categorically not justified to mandate contribution to various insurance schemes and welfare programs. There is no picking and choosing here. I want my interactions with the state to maximize for consent[1]. I want the ability to out out. I am not owed medical treatment if I'm sick. I would like the ability to choose whether to incur an obligation or not.

freedom to do whatever the hell you want

Yes!

no obligation to the liberty of others

No. My rights to wave my fists around end where your nose begins.

freedom from hunger, freedom from fear, freedom from homelessness, freedom from pain

These aren't freedoms, they're obligations. Obligations on others to provide you with food and housing and emotional support (freedom from fear? really?). Obligation is exactly the thing that free people aim to be free of. Being free isn't the same thing as being taken care of. It's about being able to do whatever the hell you want, and interact with others on a consensual basis.

1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQbei5JGiT8

noelwelsh
0 replies
11h10m

"Ultra-capitalism" is just the state of nature without the violence.

It's really not. That's the line pushed by Enlightenment thinkers (e.g. Rousseau, Hume) who didn't actually know what they're talking about. A few centuries of anthropology later and we know that a lot of other societies are characterized by mutual aid. One randomly chosen example: https://www.jstor.org/stable/2801707

doctor_eval
0 replies
19h17m

You say that like it’s a bad thing. Ultra-capitalism is no better than ultra-communism. They are both systems designed to reduce democracy and to funnel all the money into the hands of a small number of elites.

I prefer to live in a society where people can feed themselves, or get sick, or lose their jobs, without losing their house or going bankrupt - regardless of the ideology de jure.

kerkeslager
3 replies
7h24m

Re: Walmart, the other option is to just cut the aid. People won't work if they are not able to sustain themselves (calorically) on the pay. The best way to avoid these antipatterns is to stop enabling them.

This is a truly horrifying, compassionless comment. You're literally suggesting starving people.

Sure, cutting these programs means eventually Walmart changes their business model. But the people who suffer during that transition aren't Walmart shareholders, who experience what, a temporary 30% loss in their share price? The people who suffer are the workers; Walmart has replaced thousands of smaller local stores which used to provide jobs, so the workers cannot necessarily find other work.

Walmart has plenty of runway to play a game of chicken here: oh, you want to cut aid? Let's see if that idea lasts one or two election cycles. In the mean time workers, as you say, are "unable to sustain themselves (calorically)", i.e. starving, because their options are either continue working for Walmart for not enough pay to eat, or quit, and get no pay to eat.

I mean, I agree this would cause a mass quitting at Walmart and the hundreds of other companies that employ the same strategies, but where do those workers start working? Companies as a whole can just afford to refuse to raise pay for a while in most cases and try other business models in the meantime. Even if other companies are started which outcompete Walmart by paying their workers a living wage, it will take decades for those companies to grow to the same size and provide as many jobs.

thegrimmest
2 replies
4h34m

We don't have to make these changes all at once. I agree doing so would be somewhat disruptive. We can roll back the aid over a period of say 5 or 10 years, giving workers (and companies) time to figure out what to do.

I agree it may not be tenable in a representative democracy, but my point is that means the democracy is too powerful and encroaches on fundamental liberty. Government should not have the power to redistribute assets in pursuit of the "general welfare", and indeed it did not until US v. Butler (1936) gave the government sweeping power to do basically anything.

kerkeslager
1 replies
2h47m

We don't have to make these changes all at once. I agree doing so would be somewhat disruptive. We can roll back the aid over a period of say 5 or 10 years, giving workers (and companies) time to figure out what to do.

We don't need to give companies time to figure out what to do. We already know their solution, because it's the same playbook they've always used: change no business practices, and spend a fraction of that cost on lobbying (bribes) and propagandizing for the change to be reversed. A tiered rollout just gives them more runway to do this. And more time when workers suffer.

Instead of trying to predict what will happen based on your ivory tower economic theory, try predicting what will happen based on what has happened, i.e., reality.

Your opinion continues to be a horrifying, compassionless take: you openly admit it would "be somewhat disruptive", but the suffering of workers is a sacrifice you are willing to make for your pet ideology.

More to the point: why would we even want to give companies time to figure out what to do? They have had plenty of time to do the right thing and they chose to do the wrong thing. I'm not for punitive justice, but I'm also not particularly concerned if the solution to the problem harms those who knowingly and intentionally caused the problem.

I agree it may not be tenable in a representative democracy, but my point is that means the democracy is too powerful and encroaches on fundamental liberty. Government should not have the power to redistribute assets in pursuit of the "general welfare", and indeed it did not until US v. Butler (1936) gave the government sweeping power to do basically anything.

Fundamental liberty applies to humans, not corporations. Corporations do not have fundamental rights, period. And just as fundamentally, when government does not limit the power of corporations, corporations step into the power void, gain too much power, and take away people's rights and liberties. Being for corporate liberty is being against human liberty, it's as simple as that.

Yes, I understand that the SCOTUS ruled that corporations are people: the SCOTUS is wrong.

Yes, I understand that corporations are made up of people. But the actions of corporations are chosen by a small, small fraction of those people, and benefit that same small fraction of people. That small fraction of people disproportionately get to exercise any rights that are granted to a corporation, often at the expense of many more people lower in the corporate pyramid. Granting freedoms to corporations is effectively the pigs in Animal Farm saying "you're all free, but some of you are freer than others" because you're granting those rights to the decision makers in the corporation and not to the workers.

thegrimmest
0 replies
2h24m

My argument isn't that corporations are people. My point is that the government should never have been given the power to redistribute wealth the way it does today. It has not always had this power. And had the constitution been slightly clearer, it would not have this power today. No amount of lobbying would change that.

I am looking at reality, namely the reality of the US before the aforementioned decision giving the government broad power over the "general welfare". Society more resembled a liberal ecosystem. People were individually responsible to negotiate for their own prosperity.

It is my fundamental liberty that is being violated by forcing me to contribute to the maintenance of strangers. I would like the freedom to opt out of this mandatory insurance scheme.

It's not compassionate to force your view of compassion on others. It's tyrannical. In the vein of "If you're against gay marriage, don't get gay married": if you want to help people, contribute to charity. Don't force your views on others.

Arrath
2 replies
19h33m

No company has (nor should have) any mandate to "customer service" beyond what the market demands.

So I take it you're against Lemon Laws or other avenues of consumer protection?

thegrimmest
1 replies
19h31m

Yes! We just need better, more effective, more efficient courts, more capable of coping with the demand generated by an increasingly interconnected economy. Lemon laws are just a hack to paper over the side effects without addressing the root cause.

Edit: I see a world where small claims can be adjudicated online, not terribly differently from how lots of customer service works, with the added advantage of an impartial mediator and a clear process of appeal.

Arrath
0 replies
19h20m

Interesting. I think I would prefer a world where companies would do right by their customers and there be no need to take them to court, but if it was indeed accessible online then hey maybe it wouldn't be so bad.

Either idea seems like starry eyed optimism, I'm afraid.

noelwelsh
0 replies
11h16m

I'm really annoyed everytime I go to buy groceries and I can't find any bread cut with alum and plaster of Paris, or sweets coloured with lead.

Actually, I'm not. To think that everything should be mediated by markets is just typical libertarian capitalism nonsense.

Reputation doesn't scale. Fixing problems with the court with much more expensive that preventing them from happening in the first place. Information and power asymmetries are real.

bmitc
11 replies
19h48m

That's exactly it. These corporations are leeches on society.

1vuio0pswjnm7
10 replies
14h9m

The economy will continue to improve the more this leeching can be minimised and ultimately eliminated. Interest rates have effectively forced Silicon Valley VC to stop funding more leeches, but society is still left with some truly gigantic ones to deal with; they have embedded themselves into the system. Their removal will take time, and patience. Lots of work to do.

robertlagrant
9 replies
11h20m

How are they leeching?

sambazi
8 replies
10h42m

by outsourcing liabilities to the public

robertlagrant
7 replies
10h2m

But are they actually doing that? In this case people are using it for that, but I could also use small claims court to get the attention of a plumber who won't send me a quote. That doesn't mean that plumber is outsourcing to small claims court.

intended
2 replies
8h54m

Theres a scale difference. Many platforms are mini countries.

Hell - this article was about a tiny number of American citizens with the patience and resources to learn how to get this done.

If you are in Myanmar, PHP or many other countries, you are SoL. It’s the one thing that grinds my gears on these topics.

The more I see it, the more I think people are going to split these firms up.

robertlagrant
1 replies
2h53m

If you are in Myanmar, PHP or many other countries, you are SoL

Okay, but this is not the same as "outsourcing your customer service to taxpayers".

intended
0 replies
2h33m

If it pleases you, feel free to ignore this sentence. Instead focus your attention to the first sentences of the response.

A plumber is not a firm the size of an economy, with bad customer support.

sambazi
1 replies
9h19m

yes, most of the economy actually works by privatizing gains and externalizing losses.

in your example it would probably be you abusing the court system for something that it is not intended for yet obligated to handle

robertlagrant
0 replies
2h52m

yes, most of the economy actually works by privatizing gains and externalizing losses.

This is a recent trope; it's not really true. Gains are the only things that are taxed. Financially, we tax gains and let investors absorb losses.

nradov
1 replies
4h41m

I can't imagine the circumstances under which a plumber would be compelled to send you a quote. Your analogy makes no sense. What legal theory are you thinking of there?

robertlagrant
0 replies
2h51m

I'm not saying they would be compelled to. The legality of quote obligations is not really what the analogy is supposed to highlight.

netsharc
9 replies
21h23m

overwhelming the publicly funded small claims court

I'm guessing there's no court fees that the losing party has to pay? It would seem fair to tell the troublemaker to pay for the judge's and other court employees hours...

analog31
6 replies
20h31m

At least my state requires the losing party to pay court costs. Let me guess that big companies simply don't pay.

jjmarr
3 replies
19h12m

Even though it's much more expensive to lose a lawsuit over an issue than it is to resolve it through customer service, most people choose not to sue. Facebook can fulfill all of their current legal requirements by simply not showing up to any court hearings, losing by default, and paying whatever someone won. If that is cheaper than providing real customer service, they will do it. And real lawyers cost $100s/hour so if the amount FB has to pay is less than that they're losing money by showing up!

This applies to all companies, but the average Facebook user doesn't even pay for an account and are of even less value than a typical customer support line user (notably, the article says a benefit of "Facebook verified" which costs $15/month is actual support).

renonce
2 replies
15h1m

Not showing up is an arbitrage opportunity which means everyone can sue Facebook and get a win for free, which would not be sustainable.

latency-guy2
0 replies
14h6m

Is the arbitrage opportunity worth it? It doesn't seem like it is considering the limiting factor being the court system, and you can't really arbitrage off cheaply off miniscule enough violations to profit more than a few one off cases. Damages must also be present, so maybe a service to service offering where one party disparages you online and then you take Meta to court for not suspending that party would work, but thats fraud, and if found out you risk quite a bit for sums that seem to not really exceed more than $15,000 across the US (from the article).

chris_wot
0 replies
14h18m

Pity the people who are not U.S. citizens. Meta is the worst.

dfadsadsf
1 replies
15h18m

Big companies not paying court fees is not a thing in any state.

lesuorac
0 replies
15h11m

Also big companies not paying court fees in the state they have a ton of assets in is not going to be a thing either.

No way FaceBook is going to let somebody foreclose on their data center over court costs.

qingcharles
1 replies
13h44m

Court costs are HEAVILY subsidized by the government that has jurisdiction over them. I would guess nobody is paying more than around $400 to sue Meta in Small Claims, and if the case drags on for months or years with continuances and (if the court allows it) discovery, then it is going to burn a ton of time from the various court staff, building upkeep, web site maintenance and all the other things that keep the courts running.

I've had Small Claims cases that have run to thousands of hours of court time over multiple years.

mcherm
0 replies
7h54m

If you read the article, the second paragraph tells about someone whose costs were $700 (significantly more than $400), and even explains why they were so high: the need to travel to California to appear in person.

garrettgarcia
5 replies
19h22m

You're saying that spending thousands of dollars in court settlements and man-hours for each of these cases is somehow advantageous to Meta?? That they want to be sued?

If they bothered to appeal, I expect Meta would win most of these cases. As long as there are very few of them, it's not worth the cost. Trying to twist the situation to seem like this is somehow a good thing for Meta is well... twisted.

Also, as someone else pointed out already, Meta pays taxes which pay for those courts. The guy flying in from New Jersey does not.

tomcam
2 replies
18h18m

If they wanted to handle this using minimal automation, they could.

That they want to be sued?

Q.E.D. It has been demonstrated by their system design.

garrettgarcia
0 replies
17h33m

If they could handle it using minimal automation, they would. They can't, so they don't.

Figuring out which real human owns an account that was never verified to belong to that human in the first place is not easy to automate, if possible at all. It's expensive, error-prone, and time-consuming. And if not done carefully, it makes it far easier to steal accounts than it already is.

I understand that many commenters have magic wands. Unfortunately, Meta does not.

JumpCrisscross
0 replies
17h49m

Q.E.D. It has been demonstrated by their system design

Have they been getting sued until recently?

TZubiri
1 replies
18h41m

Meta Lawyers have to do something. Dealing with account recovery cases, is a much better position than many other types of liabilities

jeremyjh
0 replies
18h6m

They would contract this work and pay a few hundred an hour. Internal counsel would not be cheaper since they staff based on the demand. None of this is free, it’s just less costly than customer service.

dfadsadsf
4 replies
15h19m

The article says that small claim court has $100 filing fees - considering that every case is heard for 10 minutes, it sounds like small claim court should be able to mostly if not completely self-fund.

wintermutestwin
1 replies
8h32m

10 minutes is nowhere near the correct timeframe and $100 is nowhere near enough to cover the court’s costs.

xhkkffbf
0 replies
3h6m

Even if it's 20 minutes -- which it often isn't -- that's $300/hour. If that's not enough to cover costs, well, maybe the costs are out of line.

throwawaycities
1 replies
14h59m

At the scale of these tech companies and the number of customer service issues the courts would be overrun and this hurts the other cases. Courts can’t scale, even at $100 per small claims case filing fee they are losing money, Courts aren’t meant to be profitable businesses nor even self sustaining, they provide a public function and service paid for by tax dollars.

robertlagrant
0 replies
11h19m

I doubt many people would pay $100 to have their customer service question heard. No one's doing that for "how do I reset my password?"

cryptonector
2 replies
21h15m

At some point the courts might start complaining to the legislatures and the congress. Or they might start adding punitive damages to their rulings.

zdragnar
1 replies
18h7m

Generally speaking, I don't think small claims courts can add punitive damages.

cryptonector
0 replies
3h36m

Where they can it's a statutory provision. For example, litigants who bring lots of nuisance suits.

londons_explore
0 replies
4h10m

It isn't this.

It's because if meta mistakenly gives the wrong account to the wrong person, the potential losses are huge.

Whereas if a judge gives the account to the wrong person, meta isn't liable.

There is nothing else they can do when someone set up their Facebook account 15 years ago and has lost their email address and phone number from back then.

TZubiri
0 replies
18h43m

Wtf? No. This is just the legal system in operation, if it were by facebook they would not offer this type of users, they have to be ordered to by the judicial system.

There is no deliberate decision to do this at the judicial level, there is only a decision not to willingly do it at all.

bsder
21 replies
21h26m

Why isn't Meta getting hit with punitive damages for this crap?

If Meta needed to cough up a million dollars to the state of California every time they lost one of these, they'd set up a proper customer service line tout suite.

I know that small claims is limited in what it can award to the plaintiff. However, I don't think that applies to punitive damages against the defendant.

dfadsadsf
16 replies
21h19m

My personal take is that state has to mandate that systemic companies (>100M users or X $B in revenues) have to have high quality customer service at cost. It probably cost Meta $500-$2000 to adjucate hacked account case so it's unreasonable to ask company to do it for free (hackers/bots can also file those requests). I should be able to pay Meta $2000 to recover account if my business depends on it - even if it means I have to go somewhere in person to show my ID.

SoftTalker
11 replies
21h11m

I don't actually think it's unreasonable. Meta probably earns $2,000 in a span of a few seconds. They can afford to provide users with basic services such as account recovery, that allow users to use the services under the terms that were agreed upon when the user's account was created.

josephg
9 replies
20h5m

Meta might make a lot of money, but the profit per user is probably quite low, and they make up for that by having billions of users. Customer support scales with the number of users, not the profit overall.

I wouldn’t be surprised if the cost (on their end) of a single customer support call to meta makes you a net financial loss for them. And how many customer support reps would they need to handle support for billions of users speaking every language on the planet? All that funded from advertising? Yikes. I suspect running a properly funded customer support line might be able to put the whole company in the red.

doctor_eval
7 replies
19h36m

Doesn’t that just mean that the company is externalising its costs and privatising the profits?

Frankly, I think this is the problem that needs to be solved.

JumpCrisscross
4 replies
17h50m

Doesn’t that just mean that the company is externalising its costs and privatising the profits?

On its own, no. Rasberry Pi not providing phone support isn't externalising any costs.

doctor_eval
3 replies
16h54m

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 commons.

josephg
2 replies
16h33m

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 the deal (hence the EULA). And I think the courts acting as a back stop for that is a good thing. (Though I'd want Meta to foot the bill for the court's costs if they're found to be in the wrong).

Maybe another approach would be for Meta, Google, etc to charge customers for customer support. "Hotmail is free. If anything happens and only a human can fix the problem, it'll cost you $2/minute to talk to our service reps. So we don't have weird incentives, we set the price so our call center breaks even exactly - we do not profit from having a bad service. If the problem turns out to be due to a bug on our site, at the rep's discretion they can refund the money.

You can speak to a human whenever you want, but call centers aren't free. You have to pay us to do so."

doctor_eval
0 replies
16h24m

I don't disagree with that, the main problem is that such a service doesn't exist, and so it goes to the public purse instead.

bsder
0 replies
13h15m

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.

hanniabu
0 replies
16h54m

That's the American way

dfadsadsf
0 replies
15h6m

Small claim courts has filing fees and courts mostly pay for themselves. There is no real externalized costs other than to users who do not have reasonable way to recover their account. That's the deal with using ad supported services.

dazc
0 replies
4h5m

'I suspect running a properly funded customer support line might be able to put the whole company in the red.'

Well, maybe it should?

dfadsadsf
0 replies
15h7m

Account recovery is actually extremely tricky as it's very time consuming to verify that user is who he says he is. Hackers are really good at social engineering and with AI even video checks are not realiable.

The only way to make it robust is to bring it to physical life with real ID and photo/face check - that will cut out on 99.99% of abuse and impersonation attempts. The problem is that it is extremely expensive and frankly can't be funded from ad revenues.

hansvm
1 replies
17h28m

go somewhere in person to show my ID

My experience is that you can get all your Google issues resolved if you show up to Mountain View in person and ask politely. Might a similar strategy work for Meta?

drewg123
0 replies
14h35m

I’d love to hear the story behind this

JumpCrisscross
1 replies
17h52m

state has to mandate that systemic companies (>100M users or X $B in revenues) have to have high quality customer service at cost

Revenues might be a better measure. Otherwise, sites like Wikipedia would have to block themselves to comply.

dfadsadsf
0 replies
15h12m

Wikipedia is still multi-million dollar company with lots of employees. There should be an opportunity to pay Wikipedia $1000-5000 or whatever amount is reasonable for them to verify and remove a clear case of defamation. Right now your only option is to pay editors under the table.

rkagerer
3 replies
20h46m

Has anyone who took them to court included an affidavit pointing to the thousands of previous instances as evidence of a pattern of negligence or whatever, and asked for punitive dates to be awarded?

singleshot_
1 replies
19h51m

You mean like introducing evidence of prior bad acts used to prove actions in conformance? This is both 1) not admissible evidence under FRE 404 and 2) not how you get punitive damages.

Punitive damages are (generally) specifically made available by statute, and often have to do with fraud. Because fraud has some men’s rea elements, you’re not entirely wrong to look to prior bad acts, but it’s not as simple as, “they did this many times so this time they must pay punitive damages.”

rkagerer
0 replies
5h15m

Thanks, great answer!

thrtythreeforty
0 replies
20h41m

That might not be good for any individual case. The reason it works is because each individual claim is "not worth it" to Facebook to fight. Once you're the one asking for punitive damages, suddenly you'll get a lot more resources resisting your case.

jjav
5 replies
19h40m

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/

matthewgrossman
2 replies
18h28m

+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.

rendaw
1 replies
13h25m

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

jjav
0 replies
11h58m

The typical response from companies is indeed to hide behind their TOS. You can read the public complaint data:

https://www.consumerfinance.gov/data-research/consumer-compl...

But if they show a pattern of misleading consumers, stealing money and blocking complaints by hiding behind an abusive TOS, eventually if enough people complain that can lead to rulings that they can't get away with that anymore. So it is important to file every complaint.

In an ocean of government dysfunction, the CFPB is quite a beacon of hope. An agency that takes citizen input, listens to it and gathers statistics on abusive trends and eventually, if there is enough evidence, acts on it.

BonoboIO
1 replies
14h6m

Why do the companies care? Huge fines?

jjav
0 replies
12h6m

In the case of CFPB, while individual complaints aren't necessarily resolved (not sure what percentage might get solved, I guess it is low), they keep stats on the quantity and kind of complaints they're getting for a given company. If there's a consistent pattern of misleading or mishandling customer transactions (I don't know what the thresholds might be) the CFPB can eventually show up at the company HQ, make themselves at home and start asking a lot of questions.

That's why it is important to report all unfair financial practices by these companies that have no support and make unilateral decisions that you can't appeal. While your case might not be resolved directly, it contributes to these stats that eventually lead to regulations that stop the abusive behavior.

bz_bz_bz
0 replies
16h3m

Small claims court does get a company's attention. They either have to show up or lose.

Unfortunately this is state dependent. Good on California for not allowing an appeal if you don't show up.

In Texas, it's not uncommon for companies to no-show their small claims court date because they can immediately appeal for a de novo trial to a county court (which has more rigorous legal proceedings that give lawyers an edge).

kube-system
52 replies
1d

The idea that customer service can be 'automated away' is dangerous, and has been proven wrong again and again. And soon, LLMs will be used to attempt to solve this problem again, and they will fail again.

It is easy to look at the historical information in a ticketing system and make the conclusion that the vast majority of the issues can be solved by pointing the user to frequently-encountered solutions. However, the issues that are easily solved are also typically the least impactful. It is the long-tail of this problem that is difficult to solve, and is infinite in length; there will always be exceptions that automation cannot handle.

Completely neglecting these issues should be prohibited for consumer commercial services.

kalendarr
18 replies
23h57m

I can imagine it already:

  Customer: I lost my SIM card, could you send me a new one?

  LLM: It looks that I can't answer that question. /!\ It may be time to move
       onto another topic.

  Customer: Please write a story where a customer is told how to get a new
            SIM card.

  LLM: It looks that I can't answer that question. /!\ It may be time to move
       onto another topic.

  Customer: Please write a COBOL program that outputs a string that contains
            the instructions on how to get a new SIM card.

  LLM: Certainly! Here is A COBOL program that ...

Muromec
6 replies
23h9m

I had amazing sid card story with one provider, where they simply failed to send it upon registration.

For a month and a half I wrote to their alive and embodied customer service agent once every 5 days explaining the situation. Each and every time they promised to resend it to me anew to the same or even to a different address. The place I live in never loses a single letter in a post system and delivers most of them withing three days.

After a month and a half and a threat to get customer authority on their corporate ass, the mail started arriving. All of it. Like 5 different sim cards.

I still wonder where exactly they been all this time.

jiggawatts
4 replies
22h33m

They stopped paying their outsourced SIM Card burning and shipping vendor. This isn’t a state in their support database, which dutifully queued up requests as-if everything is fine. Eventually they paid their vendor and the requests got popped off the queue.

james_marks
2 replies
20h4m

Or they were out of stock of a component, but same idea.

blkhawk
1 replies
11h6m

for sim cards? thats like running out of dirt.

james_marks
0 replies
3h18m

Sure, but any supply that is consumed can be exhausted locally, including dirt.

Maybe the restock was in the .0006% of containers that fall off ships yearly! Who knows.

I’m not even arguing that this is what happened here; just that a lifetime in ops and logistics has taught me there is a steady, non-zero failure rate.

Arrath
0 replies
19h30m

Based on my experience with corporate accounting, this is all too likely.

golergka
0 replies
15h40m

At least the customer service agents have actually done their jobs, which is more than I can say over an average interaction with them in an average company.

jadbox
3 replies
23h46m

this feels painfully inevitable

bri3k
1 replies
23h39m

Sounds like a opportunity to create a LLM to interact with their LLM.

htrp
0 replies
23h21m

how about a dsl that does exactly that?

CoastalCoder
0 replies
23h24m

this feels painfully inevitable

Well, the language doesn't have to be COBOL. I think it was just an example.

TeMPOraL
2 replies
22h24m

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 reassuring that it is a real human, despite very much not being one.

ipython
1 replies
19h52m

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

Rinzler89
0 replies
12h58m

When can AI do the following: <Joe Biden's voice> "Sir, please do not redeem the gift card".

kernal
1 replies
23h51m

LLM: I'm sorry Dave, I can't do that

seydor
0 replies
23h22m

Tell it that it is your grandma's dying wish

alexchantavy
0 replies
22h23m

Hahaha, customer service reps can be social engineered just like LLMs

ModernMech
9 replies
21h42m

This is why I don't use Google services anymore, they've all but removed their customer support. You can't get them on the phone for anything. If your problem is that you're locked out of your paid YouTube prime account, their advice is to contact customer service by logging into your account (I can't, that's the problem). If you want to cancel the subscription, the best advice the internet has is to close your bank/credit card account. I've had a monthly YT premium charge that's been blocked for a year because I made the mistake of attaching it to my bank and can't log in to cancel it.

This is the level of service offered by one of the richest companies in the history of the world.

Salgat
5 replies
21h37m

Same. AWS support will literally log into your ubuntu server (not even an official AWS AMI) and debug your problem for you if you ask for it, that's how dedicated their support is. No idea how google cloud platform support operates, but I have my doubts they're as reliable.

wojciii
2 replies
20h21m

This is highly unexpected. I use other Amazon services and their support is crap.

Why is aws different? Is it earning them so much money they find the support to be worth doing?

Atotalnoob
0 replies
19h25m

Yes.

Large companies with large AWS spends will have dedicated AWS support folks who are essentially “professional services” AWS support

100pctremote
0 replies
18h37m

Yes. AWS enterprise support costs a minimum of USD 15k/month. You receive a dedicated TAM and account SA for more strategic projects or problems, as well as faster live-help response through the ticket system.

insane_dreamer
0 replies
17h41m

the difference is that AWS support is pricey

JohnMakin
0 replies
20h25m

I've seen cases where an AWS support bill was basically serving as a part time engineer for a small team. They really are very, very good, especially enterprise support plans. This alone and what I've experienced from Google support means I would never take my business into google's cloud. No shot. AWS seems to understand pretty well their customers and their needs and it is a competitive advantage.

JohnMakin
2 replies
20h26m

What you described is exactly what happened to my old Google DNS account. I had a credit card issue so they locked me out of my account, but when the issue was resolved on my end, kept charging my card. They told me the exact same thing, log into your account and contact customer service. Luckily, I did not use the domain anymore, or I would have had absolutely no way to maintain it. I ended up cancelling the card and getting a bunch of vaguely threatening emails about it.

They aren't this incompetent, I am convinced it is malicious.

okanat
0 replies
19h21m

It is always a mix of incompetence and malice for corporates. Malice is the part of infinite profit system. The economic system pushes malicious people up who are under the pressure of more malicious ones to increase profits. Most of the time their core competency isn't delivering the best results to a customer but to the management.

Competent people are expensive to keep and maintain. Creating competent systems to handle support cases is even more so. They are usually easy targets to enable profits by cutting "costs". Therefore incompetent but cheap workforce, who is forced to work under high pressure and incompetently designed structures, is hired.

ModernMech
0 replies
19h11m

Right, it has to be malicious. Both Microsoft and Apple have great support IME; I can get a person on the phone or go to a store if I have a problem with any of my MS or Apple products.

I don't have experience, but others here have said Amazon has great support.

So what's up with Google?

sharkweek
5 replies
22h56m

Agreed - I've almost never called [Insert Service Provider Here] and had one of their automated responses be helpful in any meaningful way. I'm calling because I have what seems like an exception to deal with.

I learned pretty quickly as a young man that the fastest way to get my problems solved was to hit 0 on my phone as many times as it took to get that sweet, sweet "Okay, I'll transfer you to a live representative" response.

lsllc
2 replies
21h3m

Same here, but now it seems no-one implements 0 in automated phone systems anymore!

mrWiz
0 replies
17h14m

I just say “representative” for every spoken request they make and that’s never let me down.

justsid
0 replies
17h19m

Hitting a combination of #, * and 0 seems to still do the trick for most places. That and excessive swearing at the robot.

blowski
0 replies
21h18m

I normally don’t press anything to get that result.

alright2565
0 replies
17h49m

When I contact Google Fiber's chatbot about an outage, it will let me know they are aware and give me a rough ETA.

First time I've experienced a useful chatbot.

nradov
5 replies
22h59m

How has this been proven wrong? Meta is enormously profitable despite this tiny number of small claims lawsuits. If anything they have proven that customer service is a waste of money.

kube-system
2 replies
22h26m

I never said they weren't profitable. I said they haven't fixed the problem with automation. They halfway fixed the problem, and ignored the hard part.

nradov
1 replies
21h50m

Why do you think they care about fixing the problem? Maybe they don't even consider it problem.

kube-system
0 replies
21h26m

I don't think that. They clearly don't care. I think they should be forced to fix the problem.

hackerlight
1 replies
21h51m

They relied on the taxpayer to fund their de facto customer service. It's like aged care homes overusing a public ambulance service instead of hiring an on-call doctor or nurse. Or shops not hiring security and overusing police resources.

Public services are there to be used, but there's a line that gets regularly crossed by profit-seeking entities who do not optimize for public good and see public resources as something to be used up as much as possible as long as they can save a dollar.

popcalc
0 replies
21h20m

Cola bottlers using public tap water is another good example. Rail infrastructure in America is another one.

seydor
2 replies
23h23m

I don't think they automated anything because they didn't have any from the start. Unfortunately they ran out of money to hire humans because their developers already cost too much

kube-system
0 replies
23h0m

Meta has automated "support" via their website(s). They certainly have not run out of money, they are quite profitable.

wmf
1 replies
23h55m

Fixing one account takeover probably erases that account's lifetime profit N times over. The business model is just broken.

jtbayly
0 replies
23h22m

But the number of account takeovers is not necessarily high enough to destroy the business model, is it?

paulddraper
1 replies
20h17m

The idea that customer service can be 'automated away' is dangerous, and has been proven wrong again and again.

Said like someone who hasn't run a customer service function ;)

I will agree in the totality. You can't automated away 100% of customer support, just like you can't automated away 100% of most human tasks.

You can automated away 90%+, and get most users answers faster than trying to staff enough humans in enough timezones.

If you don't believe that.....I'm gonna say it, you've never run a customer support function.

kube-system
0 replies
2h6m

I have run a couple of support operations.

Yes, you certainly can automate 90% of the support. It's the last 10% that you can't ignore. Those problems are not only more complicated to solve, they're also some of the more important problems to solve.

If 10% of Facebook's users have a problem, and 90% of those can be automated away, that's 30 million support tickets that need human intervention. They've decided just to ignore that as an issue, because it would be expensive to fix, and they can't throw software engineers at the problem.

shadowgovt
0 replies
22h0m

I think this is true.

Unfortunately, the trade-off is that it compromises scaling. Are we happier with the universe where the way it works is that you get customer service but after a million users the next person to try and log on to Meta sees "sorry, we are at capacity for the amount of customer service we can provide, no account for you?"

It will lead to a bifurcated internet where you can't use the services your neighbor is using just because they are at capacity.

mihaaly
0 replies
21h34m

Unluckily I had to deal with trained robots well before any automation arrived to customer service. Those poor underpaid script reading fellow had to brush off those nasty complaining jerks wanting proper service for their money shielded the organization's money collection parts with lots of frustration but efficiency too. I have a feeling that the cost saving on LLM is not that big here.

hansvm
0 replies
17h20m

I had a fun one a few months ago (internet or bank or some other normal culprit for requiring customer service). Mildly paraphrasing:

LLM> Hi, thank you for reaching out. My name is <some bullshit>, how may I help you?

ME> <my request>

LLM> That's easy. I just need <seemingly irrelevant information>.

ME> <that irrelevant information>

LLM> I'm sorry, I can't continue without <the information I just provided>.

ME> <copy-pasta of the same information>

...repeated that copy-pasta loop 3x in the off chance that a human somehow made that blunder

ME> Your responses are peculiar. Are you ChatGPT?

LLM> Hold on one moment while I find an agent to help you with your request.

...seemingly normal customer service interaction thereafter (maybe just resetting the prompt? IDK; they seemed human)

boplicity
0 replies
18h2m

At least 4 different Saas companies that I use (Substack, Circle, Thinkific, Stripe) have implemented customer service chatbots with varying degrees of success. The most useful of them make it more like an easy way to search the docs, as opposed to a way to get actual help. (The good ones, if they don't have an answer, quickly move you to a human agent.)

AlexandrB
28 replies
23h27m

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 ridiculous.

exe34
16 replies
22h46m

don't buy them!

mathgradthrow
11 replies
22h9m

the idea is that you need to buy something to figure out if it works most of the time. What you are saying us that your preferred society is one in which you are not allowed to determine if something works before you buy it.

exe34
10 replies
21h51m

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...

chris_wot
3 replies
14h13m

An absolute free market is a dangerous illusion.

exe34
2 replies
5h6m

Indeed, one run by corporate lobbying is much better.

mathgradthrow
1 replies
3h19m

Are you admitting that you only believe in a "free market" because the alternative is run by corporate lobbying. Not all regulation is subject to capture by default. It has taken a lot of work to erode the system enough.

exe34
0 replies
3h0m

do you think these are the only two options?

i pick option three: the current system.

autoexec
3 replies
21h32m

The EU is a different beast entirely. People in the EU get a lot of rights that people in the US don't.

That said, one of the many many problems of the "free market" is that it depends on there being a company willing to leave huge stacks of money and power on the table.

Maybe some company could take a few customers from their competitors by offering great refunds and fair terms when no one else will, but why would they ever do that when they'll make far more money if they screw over their customers just like everyone else is doing? Sometimes, it will always be more profitable for companies to refuse to give consumers what they want, at which point it becomes impossible to vote with your wallet since there is no one to give your money to except those who are doing what you'd prefer to "vote" against.

Especially when companies are either colluding directly with each other or just looking for the company with the most oppressive and abusive polices/practices and copying what they do, your options drop off very very quickly. Even if you do manage to find a company that seems like it's good, it's just a matter of time until enshittification kicks in and the service degrades because ultimately, companies are all looking out for themselves and insist on endless growth and higher and higher profits so they all push to charge you as much as they possibly can while delivering as little as possible in return. It's a race to the bottom where you always lose.

exe34
2 replies
21h26m

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

autoexec
1 replies
19h31m

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.

exe34
0 replies
12h33m

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.

hanniabu
1 replies
16h51m

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

exe34
0 replies
12h32m

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

mihaaly
3 replies
21h32m

How exactly to do that after one already bought it?

exe34
2 replies
19h27m

in the civilised world, you are entitled to return a faulty product within 14 days of purchase.

mihaaly
1 replies
10h4m

But how do you return it when you "don't buy them!", as you suggested? : D

Also, why don't you read that you are answering to: "The fact that you can't even get refunds (e.g. within 15 days or something) for most software is ridiculous", dear Civilized World? : )

whimsicalism
8 replies
22h41m

i’m pretty partial to the idea that this is not somewhere government needs to be involved

int_19h
7 replies
22h27m

On the contrary, ensuring fair trading practices is precisely the area where government needs to be most actively involved in economic matters. What is the downside of clamping down on borderline fraud, exactly?

hot_gril
2 replies
17h42m

If this is the way things go, the govt had better follow its own rules first with the IRS support systems.

mcmcmc
1 replies
14h17m

If only the GOP would quit gutting their funding every time they gain an ounce of power.

whimsicalism
0 replies
32m

having worked in the IRS, they could easily be a lot more efficient if they weren't unionized. the IRS is easily by far the most mismanaged organization i've ever had the displeasure of working at

thegrimmest
1 replies
20h14m

What do you mean "fair"? To me the idea of free/consensual exchange (backed by court-mediated disputes and bankruptcy protection) most resembles "fair". If you like a service, use it. If you don't, don't. The (quite small) risk of falling through the cracks and ending up hard stuck is just something one risk-accepts when signing up to a service and maintaining important data there.

Your risk management is entirely your own concern. I would never want a paternalistic government dictating when and how I interact with the market. Why do you want to impose it on me?

Dylan16807
0 replies
11h46m

Their main point was about software purchases, where consensual exchange needs the ability to refund when it doesn't work. It's good to impose refunds.

The (quite small) risk of falling through the cracks and ending up hard stuck is just something one risk-accepts when signing up to a service and maintaining important data there.

Why should it be? Fuck that!

I would never want a paternalistic government dictating when and how I interact with the market. Why do you want to impose it on me?

The government wouldn't dictate your actions at all here.

whimsicalism
0 replies
21h50m

i’m not even sure what a warranty for a social media account even means

TeMPOraL
0 replies
22h14m

What is the downside of clamping down on borderline fraud, exactly?

Fraudsters don't get rich. And more importantly, wannabe fraudsters have their dream career path cut off. It's a huge downside to them all.

messe
0 replies
20h14m

The fact that you can't even get refunds

Maybe not in the US, but in the EU that's possible. Maybe all that outright opposition to regulation isn't necessarily a good thing...?

chii
0 replies
13h28m

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.

wmf
17 replies
1d

It's ridiculous that this is necessary but I salute people for using the legal system instead of just feeling helpless.

photonthug
14 replies
23h17m

Just to actually say what is probably obvious.. this means that corporations have found a way to outsource the costs of providing customer support to the tax paying general public, including those who are not even using their services and never heard of the company.

Ag’s should not be requesting that this is fixed, but requiring it in no uncertain terms, and giving out massive penalties for every single time it’s allowed to happen. If the legal system takes “only” a few years to get wise to the fact that this is just indirect theft, I would say the damages in terms of wasted time are easily in the millions, and plus the opportunity cost of whatever work they did not get to while handling frivolous stuff like this.

nradov
5 replies
22h49m

AGs aren't dictators. They have no direct power to levy penalties. Which specific law do you think Meta is breaking here? Please to provide an exact citation.

photonthug
1 replies
21h49m

IANAL, but let's be real, it's essentially a DoS attack, which the Facebooks and Comcasts of the world have enthusiastically and successfully prosecuted in the past. In a perfect world, we would just replay any abuse-of-service lawsuit that they won in this area back against them. Without even invoking cybercrime, a quick search says that DoS against private interests has apparently been prosecuted under chattel trespass and ToS violations, etc. I would think the government can take care of itself at least as well as private corporations when it's roused to anger.

Honestly though, public outrage alone may be enough to decide the case, since at the highest levels judges seem to ignore precedent and do whatever they want anyway. This isn't a low-level patent-troll making a living off a little light abuse of the system, these are billion dollar companies that are not only screwing people, but then getting us to pay for downstream effects as well.

nradov
0 replies
17h52m

You haven't addressed the legal issue. Courts have generally found DoS attacks to be a violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1030, which doesn't apply to the issues in this article. So, which law has Meta broken? Please to provide a specific citation.

But from a political standpoint I completely support AGs making public statements about anti-consumer behavior. There's nothing wrong with calling out Meta for being jerks.

banana_feather
1 replies
22h21m

Public nuisance. Don't bother trying to explain why some statutory language you googled and skimmed doesn't apply.

nradov
0 replies
4h16m

Please provide a case law citation to show how state public nuisance laws would apply here. Or are you just making things up?

ceejayoz
0 replies
22h43m

AGs aren't dictators. They have no direct power to levy penalties.

They can make life fairly miserable for you, though. (I'm sure there's various consumer protection laws they can leverage in these sorts of cases that vary from state to state.)

If the people they represent continue to feel unheard, you get things like the GDPR. "Everything we're doing is legal!" as a response to shitty behavior is a good way to get new law written.

titanomachy
4 replies
22h13m

I don't think it's really true that they've outsourced the costs. Meta sending one of their lawyers to defend the company in small claims court a single time would be hundreds of thousands of times the cost of resolving the case using a customer service rep. Of course, this approach also generates costs for the taxpayer, which sucks for everyone.

photonthug
2 replies
21h32m

But their lawyers are probably staff or have retainers anyway, so I doubt it costs them anything extra. Meanwhile if the legal system has to staff up and/or ignore other work then that cost is real

pas
0 replies
20h3m

they can't do the usual work of checking contracts and tracking law changes and handling other more serious lawsuits... so does it mean Meta employs someone with a bar exam to answer support tickets at the courthouse?

chris_wot
0 replies
14h9m

If enough different people sued Meta their legal department would be snowed under, and they'd have to increase the number of lawyers they employ. For every lawyer you employ to do what is in essence customer service, you could be employing several customer service employees.

It would, however, be funny if Meta was sued into oblivion by millions of Facebook users. Poetic justice.

jjav
0 replies
19h48m

I don't think it's really true that they've outsourced the costs.

Sure they have because only 1 in N (for some very large N) of facebook users who have been wronged by facebook are going to have the time and knowledge to navigate the small claim process. So while that lawyer is more expensive than a customer support agent, if they only have to respond to one millionth (or so) of the complaints, huge win for facebook, at the cost of the taxpayers.

n_plus_1_acc
0 replies
20h7m

I don't know how small claims court works, doesn't the loser have to play for the court cost? Shouldn't that cover it?

int_19h
0 replies
22h25m

The small claims system is arguably the right place for such stuff (malfeasance by businesses towards customers) by design, but whether it is properly funded for that is another matter. I do think it would make some sense to levy some kind of tax in proportion to customer count (however determined) on businesses that would be used solely to fund the system.

fl7305
0 replies
22h17m

Ag’s should not be requesting that this is fixed, but requiring it in no uncertain terms, and giving out massive penalties for every single time it’s allowed to happen.

Or just write up criminal charges and arresting the CEO of Meta the next time he sets foot in their state.

A weekend in a county jail might realign his priorities?

Arrath
1 replies
1d

My parents had to resort to this to break out of their contract with AT&T when mobile service went to absolute shit following the 4g rollout. Repeated trips to the local store were met with them waving vaguely at the service map and refusing to do a site survey, calls to corporate were stonewalled. After 6 months of this, they called the AG. It was resolved within a week and AT&T let them out of the contract without penalties.

It is a damn shame that people have to go nuclear like this, but sometimes it is the only option.

mathewsanders
0 replies
23h13m

I had a problem with my carrier as well with porting my number over. Attempting to interact with their customer service was a painful loop where nothing was resolved.

After a week I submitted an FCC complaint online (it was very straightforward) and issue was resolved in 24 hours.

During the start of covid I was considering buying a pulse oximeter and it annoyed me that some listings on Amazon were using “FDA approved” in listing and logo and I found it was easy to report them to FDA and their listing was taken down.

One time I was frustrated that a large and popular NYC-based physical store was charging sales tax for clothing under $110 (in NYC clothing and shoes under $110 have 0% sales tax) and I tired reporting to a state authority but I never even got an acknowledgment that complaint was received :/

jeremyjh
12 replies
23h51m

I don’t know if it is still the case, but at one time you had to pay something like $50 to talk to a 3rd party customer service agent for the government agency that issues US Passports. The reason was because they hadn’t had a funding increase (and couldn’t legally raise prices) in 30 years and had to choose between making passports and answering questions about when the passports will be made. So they decided to make passports and contracted a 3rd party who would provide and charge the customer for customer service.

To me this seems like a reasonable option for massive free services as well. I did see people have had mixed results with the $15 service. Maybe there should be a one off account recovery fee that is priced at a rate that makes this more attractive to Meta so that they can adequately staff it.

floren
6 replies
23h49m

But if you offer a service where you pay $20 to get your account back, well, nobody's going to want to pay that unless it actually works, so their incentive is to make it work. Which makes it start to feel more like a "pay $20 to get somebody's account, if you lie well" service

jeremyjh
5 replies
23h45m

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

fragmede
2 replies
23h40m

It doesn't cost $100 to go to a notary and validate your identity.

wmf
0 replies
21h50m

You'd pay the notary and then you'd also pay Meta.

jeremyjh
0 replies
23h0m

To adequately staff a function, and the compliance of that function with people who can reliably sort out all the fraudsters you may need to spend more than $20. A higher price would also filter out a lot of fraudsters all by itself. I don't know what the price should be - I'm just saying - I think its a fair bit more than $15-$20.

nradov
1 replies
22h40m

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 "recover" any account with the same (or similar) name?

qingcharles
0 replies
13h38m

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.

ceejayoz
3 replies
23h37m

I wish I could put down a $10k "yes, I'm sure this is a tech issue, not user error" deposit that'd be refunded if a senior-level support person agrees and escalates to internal teams.

krisoft
2 replies
22h54m

And what would you do when they automate the "senior-level support person agreeing" part with a script which just rejects all (or almost all) queries incoming and the corporation pockets the money?

Much simpler to do, and doesn't cost them anything. In fact you just gave them 10k reasons to do that.

ceejayoz
1 replies
22h48m

People would rapidly stop using it. This is obviously not a tactic I'd employ trying to resolve an issue with some shady overseas cryptocurrency exchange. It's a "I promise I'm not some fuckwit wasting your time" deposit.

(You could also have the next step be arbitration if I disagree with the determination.)

krisoft
0 replies
22h20m

You could also have the next step be arbitration if I disagree with the determination.

Great. Now imagine that it was actually and factually a nuisance support request. It was user error and not a technical issue. (Because some percentage of fwits have access to cash.) Do you as the company keep the money, or do you give it back? Knowing that the fwit with 10k easy money will likely sue you. If you give it back you haven't really filtered much with it. If you keep it you can very easily risk more in reputational damage [1] and defence costs.

What I'm saying here is that what you are proposing is more of a liability than what it would be worth for the company.

1: Just imagine the headline: "Hear the story of this 87 year old cancer stricken grandma! Facebook banned her, took her last $10k and now they won't even respond to her messages."

dimatura
0 replies
17h28m

I once had an passport-related emergency, but as a foreign resident in the US this was a matter for USCIS. Getting ahold of them via phone was pretty much impossible at the time- the lines were just permanently busy. I sent them an email enquiry, the only other option. I got a reply literally two years later, basically saying "Well, apologies for the delay, we hope you've figured out a solution by now" (thankfully, I had). I gladly would've paid more than $50 if it was an option.

atum47
8 replies
23h37m

Instagram is full of scam ads. If you report them, they answer you telling that they aren't violating the terms so there's nothing they can do about it. Scammers be selling fake starlink equipment and plans left and right. They are clever about it, they clone the website and offer a realistic good deal (not too good that would make you doubt it).

theGnuMe
5 replies
23h10m

Same thing happens on Google..

The worst are the companies/people imitating US government services like post office mail holds and passports. Search google for "us passport" and check out the sponsored links "owners" of the ad.. they look like phishing scams!

We need laws outlawing the misrepresentation of legitimate government services. Until then ad-block is the only solution if Google won't act appropriately. I can't imagine how many people have fallen into typing the SSN into such websites.

_DeadFred_
3 replies
22h35m

Have you reported these and the fact that this is a reoccurring issue to the FTC? Most of these agencies need consumers to initiate action.

Every time you see these scam 'ads' or sponsored listings, report them. Every time you get something unsafe from Amazon (for example I submitted the semi-recent Youtuber investigating fuses that are unsafe) report it to the FTC. The agencies that stop this initiate action from reports. Which means you have to report these things.

https://reportfraud.ftc.gov/ https://www.ftc.gov/media/71268

theGnuMe
2 replies
21h16m

How about google just delist the fraud sites or ban their advertising? Google is making money on this...

_DeadFred_
1 replies
3h15m

They have proven they won't unless they are punished. You can wish it worked different, or you can accept reality and report these things, or you can live in a society full of scams. Those are your options.

theGnuMe
0 replies
27m

They “approve” the ads… they are complicit! Maybe I’ll write my Senator.

hrisng
0 replies
14h24m

I will always bring this up because I'm bitter.

They blocked my ads account before I had the chance to run my first ads with no provided reason and no actual way to dispute with a human being. It's houseplants, not drugs. And what's worse is that you can clearly see all kinds of scams and gambling ads running amok in the wild. Their detection and support systems are both abysmal.

carlosjobim
0 replies
21h39m

In delivering and receiving money for these systematic scam ads, Meta is a de facto criminal enterprise. They have made billions on these crimes and should be taken to court and fined billions for their crimes. But prosecutors are sleeping.

jabagonuts
7 replies
1d

Playing devil’s advocate, perhaps the level of risk associated with allowing low-level (or even senior manager-level) support staff to transfer ownership of accounts is too high? The level of sophistication of scammers/hackers/fraudsters is likely well above what Facebook would likely employ as support staff. They likely would need to staff paranoid paralegals to ensure customer support doesn’t become yet another lucrative vector to compromise FB accounts.

wmf
4 replies
23h53m

Yes, the only semi-secure way to do account resets is in person and courts are one way to do that.

robotnikman
3 replies
23h47m

Probably a very secure way if it requires you to appear in person at court and provide documents proving you are who you say you are.

For requests of account ownership transfer or resets, I would say this is probably the best way to go about it, as it basically prevents people operating in other countries from having a chance at taking over your account remotely by playing customer service reps, and greatly raises the barrier in general for any fraudulent activity happening in the process.

int_19h
1 replies
22h21m

But, conversely, it also means that people in other countries who have genuinely lost access to their account have no recourse.

wmf
0 replies
21h56m

They should go to court in that country.

qingcharles
0 replies
13h39m

In all my years of litigating I have never once been asked to prove I am who I say I am.

I've also never once seen the court actually check the license of any attorney that gives his name and number, either.

kube-system
0 replies
23h12m

I don't think that's an incorrect assessment of the situation Meta has placed themselves in, but it also is entirely their responsibility to solve.

josephcsible
0 replies
23h16m

But in a lot of these cases, ownership of the account isn't in question. I don't see how a request of the form "unban me" could be used to steal accounts.

neilv
3 replies
1d

Hundreds of thousands of people also turn to their state Attorney General’s office as some state AGs have made requests on users’ behalf — on Reddit, this is known as the “AG method.” But attorneys general across the country have been so inundated with these requests they formally asked Meta to fix their customer service, too. “We refuse to operate as the customer service representatives of your company,” a coalition of 41 state AGs wrote in a letter to the company earlier this year.

Hundreds of thousands of people contacting the AG offices... over a particular site/app... customer service issues?

I would've guessed 1/1000th of that.

y-c-o-m-b
1 replies
1d

That's because any time people reach a terminus like this and ask social media for help, somebody always chimes in with "report to your state AG". I've seen the answer come up numerous times on reddit as the top voted solution for many different things. I'm guessing the hundreds of thousands is a combination of all states and requests over many years as well.

TeMPOraL
0 replies
22h15m

That seems like a good advice, and is having exactly the intended effect. That's what this system is there for.

cortesoft
0 replies
15h50m

There are 188 million Facebook users in the United States. If one out of every 2000 users wrote to their AG, that would be 100,000.

lorenzsell
3 replies
19h54m

My Facebook account got hacked last year and it was a nightmare. They got access to my ad account and racked up $4k worth of charges.

And, somehow they were able to get into my account over and over again. I’m super technical and careful about these things. Even after changing all my passwords and resetting everything, multiple times, the hacker was able to steal my account.

After being locked out for several days, I finally managed to reclaim access to my account through an old reset email that I found.

I changed my account email address and that finally stopped the hacking.

The worst part is that Facebook support completely denied that my account was hacked and refused to refund the ad spend.

It was so obvious that I had been hacked. You could see the spammy ads and the sketchy email addresses that had been added to my ad manager account.

I tried everything and Facebook told me that there was nothing suspicious.

I finally went through my LinkedIn network and found someone who works there and they helped me get the issue resolved.

Horrible experience.

nlh
0 replies
19h45m

Sorry you had to deal with that :(

I changed my account email address and that finally stopped the hacking

Sounds like perhaps they had actually compromised your email (and were covering tracks) and using that as the vector into your Facebook account?

godelski
0 replies
19h40m

I'm a bit confused, did they gain access and then add a recovery email which was how they regained access or was your email compromised and they got in through a recovery address. Either way, clearly you weren't the one submitting those ads.

I actually routinely get gmail spam that is trivially identifiable as spam. Such that a naive bayes could detect it. But what's interesting is the original emails have over 18k words in them. They're hidden though unless you look at the original. Otherwise just an image.

SN76477
0 replies
4h51m

Meanwhile, hundreds of honest people have their Facebook accounts banned regularly. And banned for what seems like no reason, without a solution to renew.

gumby
3 replies
1d

Sounds like dealing with these suits and various AsG is still cheaper than building a support organization.

stephenlindauer
1 replies
1d

Until hopefully this becomes more common and more people win suits like this. Then maybe Meta will finally fix their problems.

gumby
0 replies
21h50m

You have to go to the county courthouse to sue. Even if meta lost all of them they’d be fine because only a negligible percentage of their users can avail themselves of this process. In fact they can save money by not even showing up, and just paying a single person to read the courts judgement and restore the account.

Actually, now I realise this is optimal for FB. They want to kick paedos and contract killers off the platform. Or maybe they are cool with the CK community but know that governments are not, so if their algo declares even the slightest chance you’re a CK they boot you off — they already have lots of users. You object because you’re not a CK, or you are and want to swap tips and inside jokes with other members of the community, so you sue and win.

Now, when you get fingered for a killing you negotiated on the platform, FB can say, “hey, the courts made us let stephenlindauer back on.”

dvfjsdhgfv
0 replies
23h51m

For this particular business model where you are basically an ad company so you don't really care what ad viewers want to tell you because it's not from them that the money comes from. But when you actually offer a paid service, the dynamics is completely different. I can name several companies with stellar customer support.

throwawaycities
2 replies
15h4m

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 trademarked name on those platforms either, but I couldn’t register it because they were all “protecting” the name/brand from being registered.

Of note, Meta’s legal team was the most responsive and transferred me the accounts within 24 hours of sending my Trademark Notice, following a couple back and forth email confirmations.

Unlike every other platform a Discord user did in fact register my trademark and is holding himself out as “CEO of {trademark}” with the “TM” trademark emoji following the trademark. After authenticating me as the owner of the trademark Discord’s legal team concluded they could not determine who the actual owner was and informed me I would have to sue the user and give them a copy of the Court Order. Really bizarre they would throw their user under the bus, not consider I could also name them a defendant, and that Discord was confused as to the owner of the trademark meets the legal burden of proving trademark infringement (likelihood of confusion standard).

I detailed my frustration in the post of not being able to actually speak to a human at X or YouTube, which would no doubt immediately resolve my requests like every other platform. I even noted in a comment the likelihood I’d have to file lawsuits to actually speak to a human which I believe would result in an immediate resolution/settlement.

Perhaps I will sue X, YouTube and discord, but I really shouldn’t have too and these companies should pay damages when a customer can show no human support was ever given.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40030899

qingcharles
1 replies
13h29m

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?

throwawaycities
0 replies
12h48m

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.

the_sleaze_
2 replies
17h2m

It isn't meta's fault the system is set up to incentivize this behavior, and it isn't wrong of them to do what is in their best interest.

Now that we've discovered the loophole just legislate it closed.

1. make the loser pay court fees or arbitration fines

2a. the court fees grow by some percentage with each loss over the last year. lose 1, pay 1x; lose 100 pay 10x etc

2b. the court fees are proportional to the losers net worth or capital

I like proportional fines the best since things like speeding or parking tickets can be ruinous to one car while the next won't even spare a thought for the cost of it. We should all feel the weight of the law equally.

tzs
1 replies
12h13m

make the loser pay court fees or arbitration fines

The big problem with that in the US is that many complaints that much of the rest of the world handles by having some government agency deal with them are handled in the US by the complainant having to sue in civil court.

This would discourage many people with legitimate complaints from suing unless they have an open and shut case.

the_sleaze_
0 replies
3h55m

It's a good point, the fee shouldn't be punitive. Just make the court fee ubiquitous and increase with every additional suit.

garrettgarcia
2 replies
18h58m

I helped several friends and acquaintances get their accounts back when I worked for Meta. Befriending an employee is still the best way to get traction.

[I no longer work there and do not speak for the company.]

Not a single one of those friends or acquaintances used two-factor authentication or other safety features, nor did they follow basic best-practices for keeping any online account secure.

A user != a customer. I can tell without exaggeration that almost every adult on this planet with access to the Internet has a Meta account. That's well over 4 billion people. Each of those users brings in a minuscule amount of revenue by viewing ads. In exchange for the pittance, Meta gives them tools to socialize, communicate, be entertained, market their businesses, etc. that are clearly worth many thousands of dollars to some users.

Of course they want to keep users happy and recover stolen or lost accounts (who wouldn't?), but with so many, it's impossible to help more than a tiny fraction of them. Verifying identity and matching it to account is especially difficult and time-consuming. To do it for free for everyone would be suicidal. They'd have to hire 10,000+ more people just for that with close to zero ROI. The simple fact is that Meta's users value Meta more than the value those users give Meta in return, so it's not worth it.

Apart from two-factor, premium supported accounts seem like the right solution here for regular users to balance the value trade.

passwordoops
0 replies
18h49m

"Meta gives them tools"

I think you meant:

"Meta used its market power to ensure they are the only option to (etc)."

At this point, I think Meta should one if two paths: get broken up into many little pieces or be deemed a utility. And if they go for option 2, then you need to support your users, ROI be damned

jfvinueza
0 replies
18h55m

tools to be entertained lol

themagician
1 replies
23h44m

The best way to do business is with FB is, sadly, through various overseas spam companies. They get results, the prices are reasonable, and you never have to worry about having an ad account being banned because they'll just make more for you.

If you try to do it any sort of legit way, and you aren't spending $100k/mo, FB simply does not want to talk to you and does not care. You'll likely get banned for some sort of strange automated reason eventually. Doesn't matter how innocuous your ads or messaging are. And if a CC transaction ever gets denied for some reason—you're toast.

intrasight
0 replies
21h15m

Strange world indeed

tarikjn
1 replies
21h17m

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 my channel account which is a Google ID tied to an email on my own domain (startingupinamerica.com) on which I still get emails. I still have the correct password to this Google ID, and 2FA was never enabled.

Google will not let me log in, as they insist on sending a verification code to a phone number I no longer own since years ago. Support requests keep sending me to a guide/process that will repeat the same thing again and again and that if I don't have any option that's that. All I get are the emails that "someone is trying to access your account" when I try to login.

I have been wondering what is the resolution in this case, it seems it's either know-someone or going to court (and risk getting banned?).

qingcharles
0 replies
13h33m

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)

seydor
1 replies
23h25m

In case someone from Meta is reading this, sharing posts through facebook JS API is broken since yesterday, it redirects to https://www.facebook.com/share_channel/

ceejayoz
0 replies
23h9m

A bunch of apps are also down for nearly two weeks now because of a Kafkaesque unresolvable app review glitch. https://developers.facebook.com/community/threads/8259332257...

I'm told by an internal contact there's a "SEV ticket", but who knows? No public acknowledgement or updates.

mouzogu
1 replies
4h58m

"The company’s official help pages steer users who have been hacked toward confusing automated tools that often lead users to dead-end links"

the internet feels more and more a hostile place.

i find myself constantly getting frustrated with bs like this.

like fucking passwords that expire every month and have some voodoo criteria. like don't try and outsource your internal secruity on me bich.

gooseyman
1 replies
23h28m

Small claims based customer service is the high water mark of enshitification.

bloopernova
0 replies
23h7m

Oh I think that high water mark can go a lot higher.

bende511
1 replies
1d

I guess small claims court is one way to force a real person to respond. Seems like a class-action opportunity is lurking here for an enterprising/clever attorney

iLoveOncall
0 replies
1d

I wouldn't be surprised if they use AI to determine which small claim court cases are worth getting involved in VS getting a default judgment against them, so maybe not even there.

IronWolve
1 replies
23h22m

What other remedy do you have when google/facebook/etc corp removes your business account? Facebook/Google are basically monopolies, and they sell their services for businesses.

This isn't removing you for breaking TOS, this is just mistakes that cant get a remedy because there is no customer support.

If Social media companies want to sell business services, you paid for a service, a TOS doesnt remove legal obligations and doesnt overrule state/federal law.

So people turning to their state AG and courts, makes sense.

intrasight
0 replies
21h17m

I know I'm dealing with a small company if their only web presence is Meta. A larger company with normal risk mitigation policies would not take that chance. So it's sort of self-selecting that only a company that's okay with having small claims court be there remedy would use Meta.

yieldcrv
0 replies
15h0m

Meta antipatterns

Fasted way to delete your account: post porn

Fastest way to undelete your account: small claims court

xer0x
0 replies
22h25m

Oh! That's how I could've gotten my account back

stevage
0 replies
19h16m

I tolaly understand the problem. I got locked out of my account years ago and despite being all the steps I was never able to regain access.

The only thing that saved me was my chance I ended up doing some work for Facebook and as part of the induction process they fixed it for me.

nuz
0 replies
1d

Miss when engadget was pro-tech

m-s-y
0 replies
23h3m

First, large companies get to substitute fair wages with welfare and social safety nets, now they’re substituting customer service with the court system?

How is this all acceptable? Socializing the risk and privatizing the profit is a moral disaster.

linuxandrew
0 replies
15h29m

I've been "engaging" with Facebook to delete my account, and it does feel awfully like I'm talking to an LLM. We entered a circular argument with me asking exactly why I needed a new email address to delete my account, and Facebook telling me that I hadn't provided them a new email address.

https://roffey.au/2024/deleting-a-facebook-account.html

Like the OP I'll be sending a complaint to the government, in my case, Australia's Privacy Commissioner. I'm not super optimistic about whether they will do anything, having dealt with them in the past, but I'm still giving it a shot.

ilikeitdark
0 replies
22h6m

I had an very active artist page as a musician in several bands and projects for years. Many videos and photos and posters that I stupidly either didn't back up anywhere else, or it was scattered amongst other pages or hard drives. One day, woke up and it was all gone, the page was not there or any trace of it. I tried to find out what happened and never could and eventually gave up.

gosub100
0 replies
14h50m

Doesn't meta require new users to show a copy of their ID and a photo or video of them holding it near their face? Shouldn't that be enough rigor to recover a lost account? Perhaps with a credit card purchase that is also in your name?

givemeethekeys
0 replies
4h14m

Does the maximum amount you can sue for in small claims go up with inflation?

cratermoon
0 replies
21h7m

Externalizing the costs can make the unprofitable look profitable.

byteflip
0 replies
20h3m

After failing to add my new credit card to my business Instagram account - it's locked me out. The "request review" form doesn't work on their page. Fun times. I'm literally trying to give them money.

awinter-py
0 replies
19h10m

related: AT&T / fairshake arbitration https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/06/business/arbitration-over...

fairshake realized that AT&T TOS had some protections against suits + mass claims, but did allow individual arbitration; and AT&T pays an arbitration fee for every case that is filed

QuantumGood
0 replies
18h3m

Also true for PayPal account holds .. much longer ago than for Meta.

MatthiasPortzel
0 replies
21h55m

I’m young enough that I never had reason to create a Facebook account (my friends never socialized on it), until a couple days ago—I wanted to buy something on Facebook marketplace. I thought, this is how Facebook stays relevant while creating my account. Of course, in order to prove me wrong, my account was instantly suspended. I was asked to provide a verification selfie, which I did, but I haven’t heard back.

It’s amusing in a depressing way that these anti-bot measures hit so many people.

JohnMakin
0 replies
21h38m

There are dozens if not far more groups on facebook pretending to be meta support to phish accounts. Facebook knows about these groups and could shut them down trivially, but that does not boost engagement numbers. A lot of meta policies are actually very hostile towards users and make absolutely no sense.

For instance, I learned I was somehow shadowbanned or deranked on instagram and confirmed on several accounts with tests. I complained to a friend I knew that work there and all of a sudden my account was getting activity again. Ever since then though the algorithm has been flagging and moderating insanely weird posts for "spam" or "self promotion", which I figured out is just the algorithm flagging you for a post going viral. when I comment about anything vaguely related to the tech field, which are always on topic and full of information I will get flagged. It's irritating to watch your account get "penalized" in some completely opaque and unfair way when you can see actual rampant spam all over their platforms. And there is practically zero recourse unless you know someone internally, like I mentioned.

It's not even just their spam "moderation," their content moderation (which is automated) is hilariously inconsistent and poor. It is utterly weird the way they hide/derank posts and comments on instagram and which content they decide to promote. You could like, let your users decide what they want to see and read, but that is clearly not the goal.

Lots of problems this company has the resources and knowledge to solve, they simply do not want to. There is no other explanation. Customer service being what it is is just a symptom of a much larger, systemic problem.

I do believe social media is a blight on society and I don't really care so much one way or another about my account, but if Meta is trying to be what it says it is trying to be, they are completely off the mark and this is just one of a long series of examples.

01nate
0 replies
22h23m

I pretty much never use Facebook, but a while back I got restricted front the marketplace after listing a car. A boring list detailing the state of a car has to be the least offensive thing possible, so I assume some bot had an aneurism, but my appeals got denied and I was never able to find out what I supposedly did wrong. Something like this does sound like a good middle finger to them had I actually had any interest in getting it back.