6 ms·

GitHub/Microsoft is really setting themselves up to be a customer-centric (different to user-centric!) tech platform. If you try doing this process with Google

by dannyw 6y ago

GitHub/Microsoft is really setting themselves up to be a customer-centric (different to user-centric!) tech platform. If you try doing this process with Google, you are given a canned form and you'll probably (not) hear back from a robot.

wdb 6y ago
Yes, even LinkedIn is problematic. My dad is still listed on LinkedIn and Google while he passed away few years ago. Total silence from both, even when sending the death certificate.
modeless 6y ago
Google has Inactive Account Manager, a dead man's switch for your account: https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/3036546?hl=en https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/3036546?hl=en
- monadic3 6y ago
  Their activity detection does not inspire confidence. Google is an incredibly bad proxy for user activity. Edit: downvoted but no substantive responses? Guidelines are for thee but not for mee, I guess.
  - freddie_mercury 6y ago
    a) The guidelines don't say anything about needing to give a substantive response instead of downvoting. b) The guidelines do say not to complain about voting. c) Both the creator of HN and its moderators have repeatedly said that downvoting for disagreement is perfectly fine. "Downvoting has always been used to express disagreement." Paul Graham, February 16, 2008. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16131314 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16131314
    - DyslexicAtheist 6y ago
      off topic, and it makes for boring conversation. but: > "Downvoting has always been used to express disagreement." Paul Graham, February 16, 2008. this is something that bothered me for years. I know this is how people behave, that the workflow allows and enables it, and the culture we've built around our tools enforces that. When I watch my own feelings before downvoting it isn't my rational self but my petty lizard-brain which does this. It feels good for 1 second before I feel small and petty. Often it bothers me that I did it and I return to the button 3 minutes later undoing the downvote for a neutral no-vote. Who is served by the downvote? Is it the downvoter who feels upset another person disagreeing and now able to vent? Or the downvotee who can use the experience to learn what language to avoid? Or is it only the platform provider that benefits? If it's only the platform it seems like a very blunt and rudimentary tool IMHO. Perhaps a downvote is still less inflammatory for discourse than an angry reply and so a compromise? Regardless it's still lizard-brained and impulsive every time I use it and the more I think about it the more I'm puzzled that this is form of behavior modification is all we have after so many years on the Web. The biggest lie we tell ourselves is that sharing these thoughts are actually well thought-through "opinions" when in reality it's just "thinking out loud" or "reactions to other people thinking out loud". It's not like writing a letter, diary or journal. The Tech moves fast but our social collective behavior takes millenia to adjust and cope. Anyway I wish there was a switch that allowed me to hide the downvote button, and if I wanted to enable it, then it could only be done by a forced delay of X hours into the future when activated. I'd like to eliminate downvoting as a behavior in myself in 2021 - not for others sake but for my own inner peace. And also because none of it matters really.
      - sokoloff 6y ago
        Edit: I took a quick look at this at it's even easier than that. You can do it with just stylus/Stylish. @-moz-document domain("news.ycombinator.com") { [title=downvote] { display: none } } As a personal experiment, I'm going to leave this enabled for myself and see how long before I find the urge to downvote some comment. :D Original: You could hide the button with TamperMonkey pretty easily (send an email if you genuinely want to, looked at it, and couldn’t figure it out, and I’ll try to help) Then, the “only after reflection” I’d implement by forcing myself to use another browser or toggling the element title or the extension. I don’t downvote very often (probably 20:1 up to down vote ratio), but I do know that some of mine are still lizard brain.
  - medecau 6y ago
    > Their activity detection does not inspire confidence. Google is an incredibly bad proxy for user activity. I mostly agree with you on Google but your post has no substance either.
  - WolfRazu 6y ago
    I mean, if you use Gmail for instance it's incredibly likely I'll be dead when I stop checking my email for a year.
  - pc86 6y ago
    Where in the guidelines does it say you must provide a comment if you're going to downvote? I've just read them twice and don't see it. In fact, the only thing I see relevant to your comment is: > Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading.
- Diederich 6y ago
  Thanks, I wasn't aware of this service, even though I've been a pretty heavy Google services user for (looks it up)...holy crap, almost 17 years now.
zxcvbn4038 6y ago
I think you are giving them too much credit - Microsoft won’t talk to anyone who isn’t a partner and GitHub tends to just be silent on anything they can’t cut and paste an answer to. It’s more an issue that mumbling on about your algorithm and submitting support tickets while bereaved kin desperately seek access to a loved one’s account is just incredibly bad PR and always makes the front page - and nobody wants the job of dealing with that.
- Closi 6y ago
  Microsoft will definitely speak to people who aren’t partners - I work for a small business (12 people) and the two times I have had to go to Microsoft for support on 365 they have been incredibly helpful.
  - modo_mario 6y ago
    That's support you pay for tho. We also were surprised when i worked at a 9 person company to get someone from google on the line too when we were considering using google maps api for a project. Support which wasn't payed for but which I assumes comes from the expectation that we might become a paying customer.
    - tinus_hn 6y ago
      The other side is that with some companies you can’t even pay for support if you wanted. I’m looking at you, Google.
    - matkoniecz 6y ago
      Good luck with getting to Google support if you are paying customer. "Terraria canceled on Stadia after developer gets locked out of his Google accounts" is just recent example
- coderintherye 6y ago
  Have to agree with the other commenter here. I'm not a big Microsoft fan, but for organizations who use them that I've helped, I found it relatively straight-forward to get through and talk to someone at Microsoft when needed.
szszrk 6y ago
On my local market it's the reason Google cloud adoption among medium to large companies and institutions is laughably low. Microsoft's support exists, it's a real argument towards them.
vgalin 6y ago
It may depend on the services. A few years ago I lost an old email account, a hotmail one, because it was flagged for being potentially compromised. An account flagged as so has its password wiped and you have to reset it by following a link that is sent to your recovery email address. Somehow, and I don't know how my 10yo-self managed to do this, but the account's mail and the recovery mail were the same, so I wasn't able to recover my account this way. The only alternative was to fill up a form with your full name, date of birth (probably lied about it at this time), passwords you may have used for this account, people to whom I had sent emails (I only used it to register to websites)... I have never been able to do a "perfect score" to this test monitored only by robots. Now my account, from what I've read online, is probably disabled forever due to a 2 years inactivity.

by dannyw 6y ago

wdb 6y ago

Yes, even LinkedIn is problematic. My dad is still listed on LinkedIn and Google while he passed away few years ago. Total silence from both, even when sending the death certificate.

modeless 6y ago

Google has Inactive Account Manager, a dead man's switch for your account: https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/3036546?hl=en https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/3036546?hl=en

monadic3 6y ago
Their activity detection does not inspire confidence. Google is an incredibly bad proxy for user activity. Edit: downvoted but no substantive responses? Guidelines are for thee but not for mee, I guess.
- freddie_mercury 6y ago
  a) The guidelines don't say anything about needing to give a substantive response instead of downvoting. b) The guidelines do say not to complain about voting. c) Both the creator of HN and its moderators have repeatedly said that downvoting for disagreement is perfectly fine. "Downvoting has always been used to express disagreement." Paul Graham, February 16, 2008. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16131314 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16131314
  - DyslexicAtheist 6y ago
    off topic, and it makes for boring conversation. but: > "Downvoting has always been used to express disagreement." Paul Graham, February 16, 2008. this is something that bothered me for years. I know this is how people behave, that the workflow allows and enables it, and the culture we've built around our tools enforces that. When I watch my own feelings before downvoting it isn't my rational self but my petty lizard-brain which does this. It feels good for 1 second before I feel small and petty. Often it bothers me that I did it and I return to the button 3 minutes later undoing the downvote for a neutral no-vote. Who is served by the downvote? Is it the downvoter who feels upset another person disagreeing and now able to vent? Or the downvotee who can use the experience to learn what language to avoid? Or is it only the platform provider that benefits? If it's only the platform it seems like a very blunt and rudimentary tool IMHO. Perhaps a downvote is still less inflammatory for discourse than an angry reply and so a compromise? Regardless it's still lizard-brained and impulsive every time I use it and the more I think about it the more I'm puzzled that this is form of behavior modification is all we have after so many years on the Web. The biggest lie we tell ourselves is that sharing these thoughts are actually well thought-through "opinions" when in reality it's just "thinking out loud" or "reactions to other people thinking out loud". It's not like writing a letter, diary or journal. The Tech moves fast but our social collective behavior takes millenia to adjust and cope. Anyway I wish there was a switch that allowed me to hide the downvote button, and if I wanted to enable it, then it could only be done by a forced delay of X hours into the future when activated. I'd like to eliminate downvoting as a behavior in myself in 2021 - not for others sake but for my own inner peace. And also because none of it matters really.
    - sokoloff 6y ago
      Edit: I took a quick look at this at it's even easier than that. You can do it with just stylus/Stylish. @-moz-document domain("news.ycombinator.com") { [title=downvote] { display: none } } As a personal experiment, I'm going to leave this enabled for myself and see how long before I find the urge to downvote some comment. :D Original: You could hide the button with TamperMonkey pretty easily (send an email if you genuinely want to, looked at it, and couldn’t figure it out, and I’ll try to help) Then, the “only after reflection” I’d implement by forcing myself to use another browser or toggling the element title or the extension. I don’t downvote very often (probably 20:1 up to down vote ratio), but I do know that some of mine are still lizard brain.
- medecau 6y ago
  > Their activity detection does not inspire confidence. Google is an incredibly bad proxy for user activity. I mostly agree with you on Google but your post has no substance either.
- WolfRazu 6y ago
  I mean, if you use Gmail for instance it's incredibly likely I'll be dead when I stop checking my email for a year.
- pc86 6y ago
  Where in the guidelines does it say you must provide a comment if you're going to downvote? I've just read them twice and don't see it. In fact, the only thing I see relevant to your comment is: > Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading.
Diederich 6y ago
Thanks, I wasn't aware of this service, even though I've been a pretty heavy Google services user for (looks it up)...holy crap, almost 17 years now.

zxcvbn4038 6y ago

I think you are giving them too much credit - Microsoft won’t talk to anyone who isn’t a partner and GitHub tends to just be silent on anything they can’t cut and paste an answer to. It’s more an issue that mumbling on about your algorithm and submitting support tickets while bereaved kin desperately seek access to a loved one’s account is just incredibly bad PR and always makes the front page - and nobody wants the job of dealing with that.

Closi 6y ago
Microsoft will definitely speak to people who aren’t partners - I work for a small business (12 people) and the two times I have had to go to Microsoft for support on 365 they have been incredibly helpful.
- modo_mario 6y ago
  That's support you pay for tho. We also were surprised when i worked at a 9 person company to get someone from google on the line too when we were considering using google maps api for a project. Support which wasn't payed for but which I assumes comes from the expectation that we might become a paying customer.
  - tinus_hn 6y ago
    The other side is that with some companies you can’t even pay for support if you wanted. I’m looking at you, Google.
  - matkoniecz 6y ago
    Good luck with getting to Google support if you are paying customer. "Terraria canceled on Stadia after developer gets locked out of his Google accounts" is just recent example
coderintherye 6y ago
Have to agree with the other commenter here. I'm not a big Microsoft fan, but for organizations who use them that I've helped, I found it relatively straight-forward to get through and talk to someone at Microsoft when needed.

szszrk 6y ago

On my local market it's the reason Google cloud adoption among medium to large companies and institutions is laughably low. Microsoft's support exists, it's a real argument towards them.

vgalin 6y ago

It may depend on the services. A few years ago I lost an old email account, a hotmail one, because it was flagged for being potentially compromised. An account flagged as so has its password wiped and you have to reset it by following a link that is sent to your recovery email address. Somehow, and I don't know how my 10yo-self managed to do this, but the account's mail and the recovery mail were the same, so I wasn't able to recover my account this way. The only alternative was to fill up a form with your full name, date of birth (probably lied about it at this time), passwords you may have used for this account, people to whom I had sent emails (I only used it to register to websites)... I have never been able to do a "perfect score" to this test monitored only by robots. Now my account, from what I've read online, is probably disabled forever due to a 2 years inactivity.