8 ms·

This culture of not treating people even half-decently frustrates me. Is it so hard to acknowledge that the user is a human?

SpicyLemonZest 7y ago
It is. It's very hard, to the point of impossibility, to ensure that not a single one of Facebook's 2.4 billion users will fall into a weird process gap. Other organizations that are smaller by multiple orders of magnitude still regularly fail at it.
- retrac 7y ago
  It's not when the user falls down a weird gap in the architecture that is frustrating and dehumanizing. It's that there's almost never a way to get ahold of a human to explain what's broken. There is apparently no straightforward way to simply contact Facebook support. I'm not sure they even have support.
  - netsharc 7y ago
    The frustrating thing is, if they had a support team, they'd be inundated with really simple questions. A few years ago an article discussing some new Facebook login feature became the top search result for "Facebook login". What happened next? Thousands of comments on that article in the lines of "I want to login to Facebook, why am I seeing this page instead, please give me back my Facebook!". Google started offering an open-to-the-public question and answers on search results, and some people think that's the place to book a restaurant table after googling said restaurant. There's some article that said 90% of computer users are below proficient, they have their routines but get totally lost if something doesn't work... OTOH, having no support isn't the answer either, especially if the issue is actually on their side, and the user is genuinely inconvenienced.
    - sansnomme 7y ago
      Perhaps it is time to charge for advanced support like AWS. If you want priority support for Facebook where stupid questions are entertained and your hand is held, 99 dollars a year. Considering the value of social media these days, it is not too much to ask, especially if you are an enterprise customer. For everyday customers with non-critical problems that can be solved by Namecheap-style support teams in Eastern Europe, 5 dollars a month.
      - nitwit005 7y ago
        If a company like Facebook offered paid support, the press would rush to denounce them for it. It would also probably generate more support scams.
      - perl4ever 7y ago
        I don't want support for 99 dollars a year. I'd be happy with $1 a minute or whatever. It's fine to discourage 99% of the support calls normal companies get. Just have something for extreme situations.
        pishpash 7y ago
        And refund if it's their issue, basically a bug bounty with a PEBKAC cost.
      - Nextgrid 7y ago
        Instead of a recurring support plan just charge up-front per ticket, something like 50$ or so. The fee is refunded if the issue is on Facebook's fault. This would solve the issue of monkeys wasting support's time while offering a way to get support for those who know what they're doing and are happy to put their dollars on the line.
        nulbyte 7y ago
        > The fee is refunded if the issue is on Facebook's fault. Does this model actually work? I'm sure there are some reputable companies that could make it work, but I'm not sure I know anyone who would trust Facebook to get this right.
    - asdf21 7y ago
      I would think companies that collect so much user data would have some idea of which users are proficient and which aren't.. Just offer support to the proficient ones.
- uberman 7y ago
  I originally just down voted this comment, but I feel it warrants a response rather than a down vote. I removed my down vote so here are my thoughts. Big tech, Google and Facebook in particular don't have "weird process gaps". What they have is a willful ignorance of any and all customer service. They are the vanguard of a new economy devoid of any and all notion of customer service. That quaint notion is too expensive in today's economy. Today, "customer service" is provided via a one way email black hole. The only way anyone gets customer service from any unicorn is either by shaming them in a vial social media post or leveraging an internal contact. There used to be a time where one could call and talk to an actual person who actually worked for the company and might, just might be in a position to help. Those days began to end with the shift to offshore call centers and now have completely vanished thanks to canned email responses. I NEVER in my wildest dreams would have though "I wish Google had an offshore call center to support me". Years ago, while flying British Air from Nairobi to London I had my camera equipment and dress shoes stolen by ground crew. I called up BA and explained that I had watched a person on the tarmac open my bag as it was being loaded onto the plain. I don't even know if the ground crewman was a BA employee or an Airport employee, but the BA rep on the phone told me she was mortified at what had happened and the next day they couriered a check to me. No bickering, no stonewalling, no email voids, just pure customer service. That one great experience was snatched from the jaws of disappointment by a timely customer service rep with the authority to help and has meant that I will fly BA whenever it is possible over all other airline options. Would they do the same today? I doubt it, but they did it once and I will always be a fan as a result.
  - rckoepke 7y ago
    Just 3 years ago BA went above and beyond for me when I left a wallet on a plane, but didn't find out until I was in a different terminal (45 minutes later), and couldn't go back due to security/visa checkpoints. BA sent runners to the plane in the other terminal and they physically carried my wallet with all cards/cash in it to me. I've heard a lot of well-deserved criticism of BA as well, but it does seem like many of their staff are still willing to go above and beyond.
    - teh_klev 7y ago
- CamperBob2 7y ago
  If those gaps are that rare, then how hard could it be to employ a few human beings who are empowered to help the vanishingly-few users who fall through the cracks? Either the gaps are not that rare, or FB doesn't give a shit. There are no other options.
  - SpicyLemonZest 7y ago
    Your intuition for the size of the problem here is off. If "vanishingly few" means that a tenth of a percent fall through some crack each year, that's 2 million cases annually. In practice, I bet Facebook does even better than that, but I would be very surprised if it were a workload that could be handled by just a few extra people.
    - perl4ever 7y ago
      You know, when a few million people "fall through the cracks" due to some governmental screw-up, people get really bent out of shape.
      - SpicyLemonZest 7y ago
        Do they? They get moderately annoyed, certainly, and they have every right to. But the DMV issues mistaken suspensions all the time, and I don't think many people see that as either a critically important issue or proof that the government is evil.
        perl4ever 7y ago
        I think people do, the idea of being stuck in a bad situation due to a heartless bureaucracy with no way out is something people obsess over, and are disturbed by it happening to even a single person. Have you ever seen "Brazil"? Read something by Kafka? Talked to a (US-style) libertarian or conservative, particularly about the early Soviet Union?
    - CamperBob2 7y ago
      Imagine if, say, a tenth of a percent of cars failed to start in the morning. That would be considered a big deal, wouldn't it? Enough to employ people to look into the problem(s) and fix them?
- coffeefirst 7y ago
  That’s true, but look, nobody made them get that big. They worked really hard to make it happen. And good for them, but scale is not a get out of responsibility free card.
- int_19h 7y ago
  If it's "too big to care", then perhaps it should be trimmed down to size? Industries where you have many different companies competing for customers somehow manage to have decent customer support.
- reaperducer 7y ago
  It's very hard, to the point of impossibility, to ensure that not a single one of Facebook's 2.4 billion users will fall into a weird process gap. So Facebook should just admit it doesn't scale, and work on doing things smaller and better. If it was a startup, the HN crowd would be all about "doesn't scale!" But since it's a FAANG, it's, "Sure! Just keep on going and hurting society. Am I vested yet?"
netsharc 7y ago
Or that a human working for FB can make a mistake and put someone else "in jail". No, thought the dev team, this mistake would never happen, the only way to "get out of jail" is to show us your release papers! It's pervasive, isn't it. Babies or seniors being checked by TSA because the machine beeped, so they might be a terrorist. What I realized once was, the TSA agent doesn't want or isn't allowed to think and make decisions, because making decisions mean being responsible for those decisions...
- mschuster91 7y ago
  > Babies or seniors being checked by TSA because the machine beeped, so they might be a terrorist. Unfortunately, children being used for smuggling stuff or as bombs on legs is nothing new :'( Humans are cruel.
pureagave 7y ago
I’m reminded of the old comic where it shows that Facebook’s users are the product. The advertisers are the only customers. Why should they care to deal with one billionth of their product if it is accidentally marked bad?
- perl4ever 7y ago
  This is something people always repeat, but it's nonsense. Facebook (and similar companies) is a middleman between users and advertisers. Neither party is uniquely a "customer" versus the other, and advertisers have basically the same problem of being a very small part of the business and therefore unimportant and without leverage.
Iv 7y ago
Well the user is the product. Considering it human would interfere with the bottom line.

SpicyLemonZest 7y ago

It is. It's very hard, to the point of impossibility, to ensure that not a single one of Facebook's 2.4 billion users will fall into a weird process gap. Other organizations that are smaller by multiple orders of magnitude still regularly fail at it.

retrac 7y ago
It's not when the user falls down a weird gap in the architecture that is frustrating and dehumanizing. It's that there's almost never a way to get ahold of a human to explain what's broken. There is apparently no straightforward way to simply contact Facebook support. I'm not sure they even have support.
- netsharc 7y ago
  The frustrating thing is, if they had a support team, they'd be inundated with really simple questions. A few years ago an article discussing some new Facebook login feature became the top search result for "Facebook login". What happened next? Thousands of comments on that article in the lines of "I want to login to Facebook, why am I seeing this page instead, please give me back my Facebook!". Google started offering an open-to-the-public question and answers on search results, and some people think that's the place to book a restaurant table after googling said restaurant. There's some article that said 90% of computer users are below proficient, they have their routines but get totally lost if something doesn't work... OTOH, having no support isn't the answer either, especially if the issue is actually on their side, and the user is genuinely inconvenienced.
  - sansnomme 7y ago
    Perhaps it is time to charge for advanced support like AWS. If you want priority support for Facebook where stupid questions are entertained and your hand is held, 99 dollars a year. Considering the value of social media these days, it is not too much to ask, especially if you are an enterprise customer. For everyday customers with non-critical problems that can be solved by Namecheap-style support teams in Eastern Europe, 5 dollars a month.
    - nitwit005 7y ago
      If a company like Facebook offered paid support, the press would rush to denounce them for it. It would also probably generate more support scams.
    - perl4ever 7y ago
      I don't want support for 99 dollars a year. I'd be happy with $1 a minute or whatever. It's fine to discourage 99% of the support calls normal companies get. Just have something for extreme situations.
      - pishpash 7y ago
        And refund if it's their issue, basically a bug bounty with a PEBKAC cost.
    - Nextgrid 7y ago
      Instead of a recurring support plan just charge up-front per ticket, something like 50$ or so. The fee is refunded if the issue is on Facebook's fault. This would solve the issue of monkeys wasting support's time while offering a way to get support for those who know what they're doing and are happy to put their dollars on the line.
      - nulbyte 7y ago
        > The fee is refunded if the issue is on Facebook's fault. Does this model actually work? I'm sure there are some reputable companies that could make it work, but I'm not sure I know anyone who would trust Facebook to get this right.
  - asdf21 7y ago
    I would think companies that collect so much user data would have some idea of which users are proficient and which aren't.. Just offer support to the proficient ones.
uberman 7y ago
I originally just down voted this comment, but I feel it warrants a response rather than a down vote. I removed my down vote so here are my thoughts. Big tech, Google and Facebook in particular don't have "weird process gaps". What they have is a willful ignorance of any and all customer service. They are the vanguard of a new economy devoid of any and all notion of customer service. That quaint notion is too expensive in today's economy. Today, "customer service" is provided via a one way email black hole. The only way anyone gets customer service from any unicorn is either by shaming them in a vial social media post or leveraging an internal contact. There used to be a time where one could call and talk to an actual person who actually worked for the company and might, just might be in a position to help. Those days began to end with the shift to offshore call centers and now have completely vanished thanks to canned email responses. I NEVER in my wildest dreams would have though "I wish Google had an offshore call center to support me". Years ago, while flying British Air from Nairobi to London I had my camera equipment and dress shoes stolen by ground crew. I called up BA and explained that I had watched a person on the tarmac open my bag as it was being loaded onto the plain. I don't even know if the ground crewman was a BA employee or an Airport employee, but the BA rep on the phone told me she was mortified at what had happened and the next day they couriered a check to me. No bickering, no stonewalling, no email voids, just pure customer service. That one great experience was snatched from the jaws of disappointment by a timely customer service rep with the authority to help and has meant that I will fly BA whenever it is possible over all other airline options. Would they do the same today? I doubt it, but they did it once and I will always be a fan as a result.
- rckoepke 7y ago
  Just 3 years ago BA went above and beyond for me when I left a wallet on a plane, but didn't find out until I was in a different terminal (45 minutes later), and couldn't go back due to security/visa checkpoints. BA sent runners to the plane in the other terminal and they physically carried my wallet with all cards/cash in it to me. I've heard a lot of well-deserved criticism of BA as well, but it does seem like many of their staff are still willing to go above and beyond.
  - teh_klev 7y ago
CamperBob2 7y ago
If those gaps are that rare, then how hard could it be to employ a few human beings who are empowered to help the vanishingly-few users who fall through the cracks? Either the gaps are not that rare, or FB doesn't give a shit. There are no other options.
- SpicyLemonZest 7y ago
  Your intuition for the size of the problem here is off. If "vanishingly few" means that a tenth of a percent fall through some crack each year, that's 2 million cases annually. In practice, I bet Facebook does even better than that, but I would be very surprised if it were a workload that could be handled by just a few extra people.
  - perl4ever 7y ago
    You know, when a few million people "fall through the cracks" due to some governmental screw-up, people get really bent out of shape.
    - SpicyLemonZest 7y ago
      Do they? They get moderately annoyed, certainly, and they have every right to. But the DMV issues mistaken suspensions all the time, and I don't think many people see that as either a critically important issue or proof that the government is evil.
      - perl4ever 7y ago
        I think people do, the idea of being stuck in a bad situation due to a heartless bureaucracy with no way out is something people obsess over, and are disturbed by it happening to even a single person. Have you ever seen "Brazil"? Read something by Kafka? Talked to a (US-style) libertarian or conservative, particularly about the early Soviet Union?
  - CamperBob2 7y ago
    Imagine if, say, a tenth of a percent of cars failed to start in the morning. That would be considered a big deal, wouldn't it? Enough to employ people to look into the problem(s) and fix them?
coffeefirst 7y ago
That’s true, but look, nobody made them get that big. They worked really hard to make it happen. And good for them, but scale is not a get out of responsibility free card.
int_19h 7y ago
If it's "too big to care", then perhaps it should be trimmed down to size? Industries where you have many different companies competing for customers somehow manage to have decent customer support.
reaperducer 7y ago
It's very hard, to the point of impossibility, to ensure that not a single one of Facebook's 2.4 billion users will fall into a weird process gap. So Facebook should just admit it doesn't scale, and work on doing things smaller and better. If it was a startup, the HN crowd would be all about "doesn't scale!" But since it's a FAANG, it's, "Sure! Just keep on going and hurting society. Am I vested yet?"

netsharc 7y ago

Or that a human working for FB can make a mistake and put someone else "in jail". No, thought the dev team, this mistake would never happen, the only way to "get out of jail" is to show us your release papers! It's pervasive, isn't it. Babies or seniors being checked by TSA because the machine beeped, so they might be a terrorist. What I realized once was, the TSA agent doesn't want or isn't allowed to think and make decisions, because making decisions mean being responsible for those decisions...

mschuster91 7y ago
> Babies or seniors being checked by TSA because the machine beeped, so they might be a terrorist. Unfortunately, children being used for smuggling stuff or as bombs on legs is nothing new :'( Humans are cruel.

pureagave 7y ago

I’m reminded of the old comic where it shows that Facebook’s users are the product. The advertisers are the only customers. Why should they care to deal with one billionth of their product if it is accidentally marked bad?

perl4ever 7y ago
This is something people always repeat, but it's nonsense. Facebook (and similar companies) is a middleman between users and advertisers. Neither party is uniquely a "customer" versus the other, and advertisers have basically the same problem of being a very small part of the business and therefore unimportant and without leverage.

Iv 7y ago

Well the user is the product. Considering it human would interfere with the bottom line.