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> But there are plenty of Google engineers and good helpful people on Hacker news. > (from a screenshot) I work at Google [...] so I escalated your issue [...]
by martin_a 6y ago
> But there are plenty of Google engineers and good helpful people on Hacker news.
> (from a screenshot) I work at Google [...] so I escalated your issue [...]
> I believe the HN thread getting on the homepage tremendously helped me and somebody from Google saw it and expedited the review after all
So, once more an issue with FAANG could only be fixed because somebody knew somebody else and went out of his way to get this to the right eyes.
This could easily have gone another way and OP would have received no help whatsoever and would have waited for days or weeks to get this issue cleared and lost his business.
Maybe it's only me but I find it unbearable that you'll usually not be able to reach any real person at all for issues like these and it's pure luck what happens to you.
- inglor_cz 6y agoThis is really feudalism replayed. If you know important people at the emperor's court, you have a chance to get yor problem solved.
- alisonkisk 6y agoIt's not "feudalism", it's human social relations and power dynamics.
- inglor_cz 6y agoDemocratic societies try to limit this problem by establishing some semireliable channels to remedy injustice, though.
- x86_64Ubuntu 6y agoI don't think anyone considers this to be in the realm of injustice.
- inglor_cz 6y agoAnyone? That is a strong word. At least I would consider losing an important asset based on a whim of an algorithm without a possibility of appeal to humans quite a gross injustice, though within the limits of the law as it stands today.
- cema 6y agoI do consider it injustice, in the everyday sense of the word (not legal).
- dleslie 6y agoIt's definitely in the realm of injustice; how could it not be?
- rakoo 6y agoIt's not "power dynamics", it's freedom to innovate
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- croes 6y agoWhat if his post had not been seen or he didn't know HN. Google etc are the gatekeepers they decides what allowed and what isn't.
- mpweiher 6y agoUnregulated power dynamics are basically feudalism. (Well, feudalism put in some regulations...)
- franklampard 6y agoNot really just feudalism. But how most parts of the world work
- rakoo 6y agoA secret set of rules, a single party that is the judge, jury and executioner, an opaque resolution process that involves backchannels rather than merit, and no oversight ? Is that really something to accept as inevitable ?
- mushbino 6y agoYes, networking is inevitable. Transparency and accountability are hedges against this, but incentives aren't there short of some sort of massive public pressure.
- edoceo 6y agoMassive public pressure means.... sounds like legislation to me.
- notriddle 6y agoYes. It’s literally called “The Iron Law of Oligarchy.”
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- jahewson 6y agoIt’s really not, least of all because feudalism didn’t have emperors.
- inglor_cz 6y agoWhat? Even if we ignore China or Japan, the existence of the Holy Roman Empire overlapped that of feudalism in Europe.
- dividedbyzero 6y agoThe Holy Roman Empire was pretty much prototypical for feudalism and definitely had emperors
- xenihn 6y agoDark ages Europe wasn't the only example of feudalism in history.
- drc500free 6y agoDefinitely seems like a class system, you’re either above the algorithm or below it.
- bitcharmer 6y agoThis is the norm with FAANG and it really annoys me. How many of these cases never saw the light of day because of that? Even with HN it's a complete lottery what contents reaches the front page, so getting issues like these resolved is a matter of extreme luck for a common person.
- uh_uh 6y agoProbably naive idea: Would it be possible to set up an insurance fund for this? As in, the money would be used to sue FAANG for damages in cases when businesses are lost due to them being flagged/blacklisted by FAANG incorrectly. If enough companies contribute to this, it might put some pressure on FAANG to take things seriously.
- jokethrowaway 6y agoAnother idea is to stop supporting FAANG. Apple or Google won't see a cent from me.
- bonzini 6y agoDo you not own a smartphone?
- Jimmc414 6y agoThis gentleman had a similar issue where his site was taken down without explanation at youtube. I intervened certain that we just needed to light some fires and get a human to look at it. He never got back into his account and to my knowledge never got a reply that was not a canned response. https://www.linkedin.com/posts/mohammedadam24_cybersecurity-infosec-penetrationtesting-activity-6749595324978987008-UFbn https://www.linkedin.com/posts/mohammedadam24_cybersecurity-...
- davidmurdoch 6y agoI can't access my 13+ year old gmail account because Google now requires I verify I have access to a phone number I've never owned. There is no 2FA on this account, I know my password, and have access to the "Recovery Email" (which gets emailed a "Somebody knows your password" warning whenever I attempt to sign in to the account with my password). I reached a real person at Google Domains and managed to get things escalated to "Specialist". Their response: "we can't help you, post about it on the community forums" (which I had already done 20 days prior). This account "owns" digital goods, thousands of songs, and many domain names. Google is actively stealing these things, but they don't care and, "can't help".
- dencodev 6y agoHave you considered calling the number tied to the account and asking them to help?
- jabo 6y agoIIRC only the last 4 digits of the phone number are shown.
- davidmurdoch 6y agoThey only show the last two digits of the number. And I've only ever had two phone numbers in my life, and neither of them end with those digits.
- ncann 6y agoPlus it is always a bad idea to give someone a code sent to your number. 99% of the time someone is trying to hack you and a necessary step is obtaining that code.
- kuschku 6y agoFor me that actually ended up the only way to gain access back to an old account of mine. Luckily I was able to cooperate with the new owner of the number, and he was helpful enough to give me the code that was sent, otherwise I'd have lost a Google account with several hundred euros of purchases on it, despite having the password, control of the backup email, knowing all security questions, and knowing the exact date the account was registered (the only issue was that mobile carriers here re-issue phone numbers after 6 months without any calls, and I had put the SIM into a tablet).
- deckard1 6y agoThe worst part is that we are just conditioning people to accept this as normal. Just like EULA and cookie banners. It's always the same story. Some guy gets on Twitter or HN who happens to get noticed, then FAANG releases a statement saying they made a "mistake". Mistakes in the aggregate that affect millions of people aren't "mistakes." That's deliberate malfeasance at scale. Funny they never ask you that design question in interviews. "Design a system which will harm at most 5% of your users while scaling up to billions of people." Maybe if more people understood the sobering dark side of scale, they would stop gleefully promoting runaway scale-at-any-cost engineering. Just kidding. Profit is God. I'm also reminded of the dystopian movie Brazil. You're always at danger of getting eaten by the bureaucratic machine today, with only the most absurd recourse available. Just read the passive indifference of the email that Google sent this guy. "Google has received and processed...", "Google systems indicate...". This is one shit dystopia are are living.
- edoceo 6y agoUpvote for Brazil! Great movie, Gilliam is a genius, so good. https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0088846/ https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0088846/
- matheusmoreira 6y agoYou're not the only one who finds it unbearable. Google acts like they own the internet. They cause massive damage to people and businesses when they unilaterally block them. They compound that damage by refusing to resolve the issue unless people somehow manage to reach some insider.
- marshmallow_12 6y ago>Google acts like they own the internet They kind of do
- dang 6y agoThat quote is from an 8-year-old comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5972927 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5972927.
- C19is20 6y agoIsn't that how life works?