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So in this story Facebook was responsible for $50 of charges, a business disruption and a huge and ongoing hassle. And Facebook refuses so much as to pick up t

So in this story Facebook was responsible for $50 of charges, a business disruption and a huge and ongoing hassle. And Facebook refuses so much as to pick up the phone to discuss it. In the old days the equivalent would have been one of those roach motel businesses rated 'F' on the Better Business Bureau, buckets arrayed on the floor to catch rain leaking through the roof. And yet in this day it's one of the most profitable businesses in the world. Weird.

jokoon 5y ago
I think they are at a point where they would rather side with a scammer since they generate more money from this situation. I guess they have data that shows this particular kind of user will almost never buy ads ever again, so at least let a scammer do it. You're right, this is weird, but if you look at the profit model, it makes sense, and there are no laws that would really protect the user.
- jokethrowaway 5y ago
  Those transactions are likely to be reversed thanks to the practically unlimited chargebacks practice which is rampant in our banking system.
  - nijave 5y ago
    Sure but then the question is "Should we leave an account with history of compromise in place that will lead to chargebacks or should we just permanently disable it"
- OneLeggedCat 5y ago
  Exactly. From the article, "Personally, I think it’s very telling that Facebook acts so swiftly to block out the original user who can stop an ad scam, and so slowly to stop a scam ad that they can still bill for."
cs2733 5y ago
Companies like Facebook are as big as Nation States. Any positives that come out of this for the author are just a Facebook PR move. If they did care about users, their support system wouldn't be so anti-user.
- kbenson 5y ago
  It's trite at this point that someone will respond that the users aren't the customers, they're the product, but it's trite because it's often correct, and deserves to be said, so I guess I'll be the one to say it this time. The sad thing is that this person actually is a customer because they bought a product and pay for things on it, but Facebook still doesn't realize that, or more likely these customers are such a small amount of their revenue they just don't care (and don't think it matters for growth of this area or don't care about that growth).
  - ballenf 5y ago
    > this person actually is a customer That's the reason the "you're not the customer" line is just a distraction. It totally misses the point that Facebook doesn't have customers any more than any other first world power has. Facebook has treaties with governments and follow laws when it's less costly than breaking them. FTC actions are like one country taking another to the WTO -- not something to ignore, but not really threatening either.
    - kbenson 5y ago
      > That's the reason the "you're not the customer" line is just a distraction. I don't think it is. If Facebook wasn't coming from a place such as that, then we wouldn't necessarily see them act like this. It's not just about size. > Facebook has treaties with governments and follow laws when it's less costly than breaking them. So do most large companies, but they don't all act the same to their customers. Apple may be guilty of other ways of mistreating their customers, but to my knowledge they're mostly innocent of this specific brand of it, and anything you want to attribute to Facebook's size that you can't attribute to any of the other tech big 5[1] should be examined for whether that's really the relevant underlying cause. 1: https://www.fastcompany.com/90651160/facebook-is-now-the-fifth-u-s-tech-giant-worth-over-1-trillion https://www.fastcompany.com/90651160/facebook-is-now-the-fif...
shortstuffsushi 5y ago
This is largely my thought too. This exact story we've seen repeated how many times now? What is the outcome? It seems the users are left in the lurch, having lost access to their accounts and any associated resources without any recourse, and that's that. The end. What will it take to have them create some mechanism for recovery?
- lotsofpulp 5y ago
  >What will it take to have them create some mechanism for recovery? People valuing it sufficiently to choose an alternative (and most likely paying for an alternative) over the benefits of free access to an established network.
potatolicious 5y ago
> And Facebook refuses so much as to pick up the phone to discuss it. It's part of the business model - each FB user generates so little revenue for the company that you can't afford to offer anything resembling "real" support channels. The company is massively profitable by sheer scale - by making a small amount of money per year off of a vast number of users. This applies to Google as well - or really any ad-based engagement-centric business. Your individual users aren't worth enough to have human-intensive labor assigned to them, hence heavily automated support channels and little to no ability to ever have something processed by a human. One of many reasons I pay Google to host my email rather than use a free Gmail - when you are generating a non-negligible revenue stream suddenly companies' willingness to answer emails and pick up phones increases. When it comes to FB there's often the pithy "when you're not paying for a service you're not the customer, you're the product" - which is a simplistic take. In this case though at the very least this is true: "when you're not paying for a service your support needs are dead weight".
- milkytron 5y ago
  In this case though, the customer did buy a product, the Oculus Quest.
- mavhc 5y ago
  Facebook revenue per US/Canada user per year ~$160
- lookalike74 5y ago
  I got Google One just for the telephone customer service option. They weren't very helpful for my needs in particular, but I think most people would appreciate the phone option for the $2+ a month it cost.
- xondono 5y ago
  > One of many reasons I pay Google to host my email rather than use a free Gmail - when you are generating a non-negligible revenue stream suddenly companies' willingness to answer emails and pick up phones increases. If you think that does any difference, I hope you good luck. Google is unreachable for support, even if you are a paying user.
pjc50 5y ago
Leaving aside the fact that they are profitable because of the zero cost service, like Ryanair, we should consider how many businesses only have the standard they do because of consumer action through the media.
captainmuon 5y ago
There are many motels, but Facebook has a monopoly on facebook accounts. If you could make a facebook account somewhere else, you could "take your business elsewhere". Last I checked, FB actively banned using their APIs to build a competing product. I wish the government would make it mandatory to offer federation if you had, say, more than a million customers. But alas, governments rarely do what's convenient for customers.
- kapp_in_life 5y ago
  That's pretty silly. Should I be able to use Amazon APIs to host reviews for my competing ecommerce site? Or be able to proxy user search requests to google and then intersperse my own advertisements in the results for my web search service?
  - strgcmc 5y ago
    I'm not the person you're responding to, but I would say unequivocally and unironically, yes! The end result is more competition, lower prices, and more options for the end consumer. Sure the raw idea of this mechanism is a little naive and could be refined, but the outcomes you paint sound totally reasonable to me... think of this as a creative way to apply a new kind of tax to the criminally undertaxed big tech behemoths like Amazon and Google.
    - kapp_in_life 5y ago
      You are allowed to do that(as far as I understand scraping legality), but google/amazon/facebook are also well within their rights to blacklist your IPs, or implement other methods to prevent scraping of their IP(intellectual property in this case).
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
    - warkdarrior 5y ago
      If you come up with a cool service on top of Amazon's API, should Amazon be allowed to use your APIs to scrape your service data and use it in their offering?
stjohnswarts 5y ago
Facebook likes to cut down on costs by using an AI excuse to say "hey we help customers" but they don't really. If they hired enough humans to handle all the complaints/reports they get then their profit would plummet off the edge of a cliff. If this is the future of AI customer service give me those underpaid offshore services any day. At least the being laughing at me on the other end is still a human.

jokoon 5y ago

I think they are at a point where they would rather side with a scammer since they generate more money from this situation. I guess they have data that shows this particular kind of user will almost never buy ads ever again, so at least let a scammer do it. You're right, this is weird, but if you look at the profit model, it makes sense, and there are no laws that would really protect the user.

jokethrowaway 5y ago
Those transactions are likely to be reversed thanks to the practically unlimited chargebacks practice which is rampant in our banking system.
- nijave 5y ago
  Sure but then the question is "Should we leave an account with history of compromise in place that will lead to chargebacks or should we just permanently disable it"
OneLeggedCat 5y ago
Exactly. From the article, "Personally, I think it’s very telling that Facebook acts so swiftly to block out the original user who can stop an ad scam, and so slowly to stop a scam ad that they can still bill for."

cs2733 5y ago

Companies like Facebook are as big as Nation States. Any positives that come out of this for the author are just a Facebook PR move. If they did care about users, their support system wouldn't be so anti-user.

kbenson 5y ago
It's trite at this point that someone will respond that the users aren't the customers, they're the product, but it's trite because it's often correct, and deserves to be said, so I guess I'll be the one to say it this time. The sad thing is that this person actually is a customer because they bought a product and pay for things on it, but Facebook still doesn't realize that, or more likely these customers are such a small amount of their revenue they just don't care (and don't think it matters for growth of this area or don't care about that growth).
- ballenf 5y ago
  > this person actually is a customer That's the reason the "you're not the customer" line is just a distraction. It totally misses the point that Facebook doesn't have customers any more than any other first world power has. Facebook has treaties with governments and follow laws when it's less costly than breaking them. FTC actions are like one country taking another to the WTO -- not something to ignore, but not really threatening either.
  - kbenson 5y ago
    > That's the reason the "you're not the customer" line is just a distraction. I don't think it is. If Facebook wasn't coming from a place such as that, then we wouldn't necessarily see them act like this. It's not just about size. > Facebook has treaties with governments and follow laws when it's less costly than breaking them. So do most large companies, but they don't all act the same to their customers. Apple may be guilty of other ways of mistreating their customers, but to my knowledge they're mostly innocent of this specific brand of it, and anything you want to attribute to Facebook's size that you can't attribute to any of the other tech big 5[1] should be examined for whether that's really the relevant underlying cause. 1: https://www.fastcompany.com/90651160/facebook-is-now-the-fifth-u-s-tech-giant-worth-over-1-trillion https://www.fastcompany.com/90651160/facebook-is-now-the-fif...

shortstuffsushi 5y ago

This is largely my thought too. This exact story we've seen repeated how many times now? What is the outcome? It seems the users are left in the lurch, having lost access to their accounts and any associated resources without any recourse, and that's that. The end. What will it take to have them create some mechanism for recovery?

lotsofpulp 5y ago
>What will it take to have them create some mechanism for recovery? People valuing it sufficiently to choose an alternative (and most likely paying for an alternative) over the benefits of free access to an established network.

potatolicious 5y ago

> And Facebook refuses so much as to pick up the phone to discuss it. It's part of the business model - each FB user generates so little revenue for the company that you can't afford to offer anything resembling "real" support channels. The company is massively profitable by sheer scale - by making a small amount of money per year off of a vast number of users. This applies to Google as well - or really any ad-based engagement-centric business. Your individual users aren't worth enough to have human-intensive labor assigned to them, hence heavily automated support channels and little to no ability to ever have something processed by a human. One of many reasons I pay Google to host my email rather than use a free Gmail - when you are generating a non-negligible revenue stream suddenly companies' willingness to answer emails and pick up phones increases. When it comes to FB there's often the pithy "when you're not paying for a service you're not the customer, you're the product" - which is a simplistic take. In this case though at the very least this is true: "when you're not paying for a service your support needs are dead weight".

milkytron 5y ago
In this case though, the customer did buy a product, the Oculus Quest.
mavhc 5y ago
Facebook revenue per US/Canada user per year ~$160
lookalike74 5y ago
I got Google One just for the telephone customer service option. They weren't very helpful for my needs in particular, but I think most people would appreciate the phone option for the $2+ a month it cost.
xondono 5y ago
> One of many reasons I pay Google to host my email rather than use a free Gmail - when you are generating a non-negligible revenue stream suddenly companies' willingness to answer emails and pick up phones increases. If you think that does any difference, I hope you good luck. Google is unreachable for support, even if you are a paying user.

pjc50 5y ago

Leaving aside the fact that they are profitable because of the zero cost service, like Ryanair, we should consider how many businesses only have the standard they do because of consumer action through the media.

captainmuon 5y ago

There are many motels, but Facebook has a monopoly on facebook accounts. If you could make a facebook account somewhere else, you could "take your business elsewhere". Last I checked, FB actively banned using their APIs to build a competing product. I wish the government would make it mandatory to offer federation if you had, say, more than a million customers. But alas, governments rarely do what's convenient for customers.

kapp_in_life 5y ago
That's pretty silly. Should I be able to use Amazon APIs to host reviews for my competing ecommerce site? Or be able to proxy user search requests to google and then intersperse my own advertisements in the results for my web search service?
- strgcmc 5y ago
  I'm not the person you're responding to, but I would say unequivocally and unironically, yes! The end result is more competition, lower prices, and more options for the end consumer. Sure the raw idea of this mechanism is a little naive and could be refined, but the outcomes you paint sound totally reasonable to me... think of this as a creative way to apply a new kind of tax to the criminally undertaxed big tech behemoths like Amazon and Google.
  - kapp_in_life 5y ago
    You are allowed to do that(as far as I understand scraping legality), but google/amazon/facebook are also well within their rights to blacklist your IPs, or implement other methods to prevent scraping of their IP(intellectual property in this case).
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
  - warkdarrior 5y ago
    If you come up with a cool service on top of Amazon's API, should Amazon be allowed to use your APIs to scrape your service data and use it in their offering?

stjohnswarts 5y ago

Facebook likes to cut down on costs by using an AI excuse to say "hey we help customers" but they don't really. If they hired enough humans to handle all the complaints/reports they get then their profit would plummet off the edge of a cliff. If this is the future of AI customer service give me those underpaid offshore services any day. At least the being laughing at me on the other end is still a human.