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> Google, Twitter and FB massively need to ramp up their customer service This is not going to happen; the whole point of their businesses based on offering fr

> Google, Twitter and FB massively need to ramp up their customer service This is not going to happen; the whole point of their businesses based on offering free massive online services is that they are dirt-cheap by being run mostly automatically. No, the only way to fix the problem in those juggernauts, and protect the tiny individuals from getting caught and squashed in their wheels, is the mechanism that governments use to protect citizens from the worst effects of bureaucracy: having an ombudsman. A semi-independent service to receive complaints of severe abuse by the main service, and for which the primary goal is protecting users, not reducing costs. In some sense, this is how their PR department operates: they'll bring human attention and put all the required effort to fix an unjust situation, to clean the image of the company. The difference is that now the unjust situation needs to become a scandal, as you said, and an ombudsman would be required to examine all applications (either to accept them or reject them) as part of their official definition.

mschuster91 9y ago
> No, the only way to fix the problem in those juggernauts, and protect the tiny individuals from getting caught and squashed in their wheels, is the mechanism that governments use to protect citizens from the worst effects of bureaucracy: having an ombudsman. A semi-independent service to receive complaints of severe abuse by the main service, and for which the primary goal is protecting users, not reducing costs. Yeah but who would finance the ombudsman? To service a country like Germany, I'd bet it needs around 2.000 FTE minimum (Facebook alone is opening a new, additional 500 FTE centre right now, and that's just for deleting the worst of the worst hate speech and porn). That's around 5M € per month. Having it paid for by taxpayers is the true manifestation of cost externalization, having it paid for by the services quickly leads down to "do whatever $company wants", and having it paid for by users leads to service only for those who can afford it while leaving the poor and most vulnerable persons in the rain.
- TuringTest 9y ago
  Maybe a non-profit foundation could assume the task, financed by Google's PR money and wealthy patrons, and having some sort of community representation to take care of the needs of users. Modern society is looking a lot like time-compressed feudal eras, with corporations taking the role of noble families; imho the time of powerful independent bourgeois professionals, thriving under the rule of law in nation states, is coming to an end. Maybe we should start looking at the medieval ways of organizing a fair society, at least as the starting points for the new social structures that will be unique to the digital era.

mschuster91 9y ago

> No, the only way to fix the problem in those juggernauts, and protect the tiny individuals from getting caught and squashed in their wheels, is the mechanism that governments use to protect citizens from the worst effects of bureaucracy: having an ombudsman. A semi-independent service to receive complaints of severe abuse by the main service, and for which the primary goal is protecting users, not reducing costs. Yeah but who would finance the ombudsman? To service a country like Germany, I'd bet it needs around 2.000 FTE minimum (Facebook alone is opening a new, additional 500 FTE centre right now, and that's just for deleting the worst of the worst hate speech and porn). That's around 5M € per month. Having it paid for by taxpayers is the true manifestation of cost externalization, having it paid for by the services quickly leads down to "do whatever $company wants", and having it paid for by users leads to service only for those who can afford it while leaving the poor and most vulnerable persons in the rain.

TuringTest 9y ago
Maybe a non-profit foundation could assume the task, financed by Google's PR money and wealthy patrons, and having some sort of community representation to take care of the needs of users. Modern society is looking a lot like time-compressed feudal eras, with corporations taking the role of noble families; imho the time of powerful independent bourgeois professionals, thriving under the rule of law in nation states, is coming to an end. Maybe we should start looking at the medieval ways of organizing a fair society, at least as the starting points for the new social structures that will be unique to the digital era.