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When this topic is applied at scale, I feel that the article is discussing "Tech giants don't want to recruit the people they need to handle customer support",

When this topic is applied at scale, I feel that the article is discussing "Tech giants don't want to recruit the people they need to handle customer support", with extra steps. Tech scales cheaply. People do not. The argument here, which I wholeheartedly support, is that people deserve transparency - we should know what happens to our data. The sum of human interactions, our actions as a group, our foibles, best natures and choices are sitting behind NDAs and firms that are essentially imperial, a state that no one wants. Firms like the power, but not the cost. But any more equitable state will require legions of people to respond to all of those complaints raised in a day. Which costs money. Making that information transparent, giving reasons, creating an appeals process (the santa clara principles) is expense. I bet that no firm wants to, and if forced to do so, they will shift the costs to someone else. Either firms that treat all of those escalations as fodder to churn through or upsell, or to tax paying citizens. Kafkaesque bureaucracy? If anyone is willing to take the other side of a bet, I'll bet that there is ONLY Kafkaesque bureaucracy here. Get more people, then you get more lopsided human bias influenced decisions. Get more automation, and then you have the current state of affairs - no nuance, no clarity and the unfeeling boot of an automaton on your account. "Which KPI defined the fate of humanity? Appeals addressed per second" Final point: In the real world, if you have open transparent rules, then it takes human time and physical action to appeal or tie up the system. In a digital system, open and transparent rules mean that someone will eventually automate a way to tie up your appeals que at no cost. Ban the user? New account shows up in 10 seconds. I have no idea how to address this last difference.

naasking 5y ago
> Get more automation, and then you have the current state of affairs - no nuance, no clarity and the unfeeling boot of an automaton on your account. You seem to be taking as given that they have to be making these decisions to boot people off. You can have all of the inexpensive automation and little customer support costs you want and it works just fine, as long as you don't try to enforce a Kafkaesque set of terms and conditions to begin with.
- sofixa 5y ago
  And then you end up with antisemitic child trafficking porn ring on your platform, people ( rightfully ) hate you for it, and there's legal trouble. There have to be content rules. Once they're there, various interest groups ( advertisers, religious nuts, "concerned parents") will exercise pressure to add their "demons" in those rules.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - naasking 5y ago
    > And then you end up with antisemitic child trafficking porn ring on your platform, people ( rightfully ) hate you for it, and there's legal trouble. What legal trouble? Let's get precise. > There have to be content rules. No there don't. You receive a court order, you remove the illegal content. That doesn't require a lot of staff, or listening to "various interest groups". That's what being a common carrier means.
    - sofixa 5y ago
      > What legal trouble? Let's get precise If there's child porn on your website? I'm fairly certain that will bring legal trouble. The same way that torrent trackers were sued for "conspiring", "enabling", "accessory" to copyright violations. > No there don't. You receive a court order, you remove the illegal content. That doesn't require a lot of staff, or listening to "various interest groups Depending on your size, it can require some staff. Furthermore, once you get to a certain size, things can be forced - look at YouTube that had to settle and implement ContentID to appease copyright holders, or OnlyFans having to remove certain types of content due to pressure from payment providers. Payment providers, advertisers, religious, lobbying groups will all try to pressure you once you're big enough. Even Cloudflare with their very aggressively independent/free speech stance had to bow to the pressure and get rid of certain very unsavoury clients.
      - naasking 5y ago
rapind 5y ago
To me it just sounds like the business model won’t scale if you have to solve this problem. I’m not sure why society has to solve it for the tech giants (advertising conglomerates) though. We should just say, via regulation, that it needs to be solved or we shut it down. Give them a reasonable amount of time to figure it out of course. My hunch is it’s just not workable.

naasking 5y ago

> Get more automation, and then you have the current state of affairs - no nuance, no clarity and the unfeeling boot of an automaton on your account. You seem to be taking as given that they have to be making these decisions to boot people off. You can have all of the inexpensive automation and little customer support costs you want and it works just fine, as long as you don't try to enforce a Kafkaesque set of terms and conditions to begin with.

sofixa 5y ago
And then you end up with antisemitic child trafficking porn ring on your platform, people ( rightfully ) hate you for it, and there's legal trouble. There have to be content rules. Once they're there, various interest groups ( advertisers, religious nuts, "concerned parents") will exercise pressure to add their "demons" in those rules.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- naasking 5y ago
  > And then you end up with antisemitic child trafficking porn ring on your platform, people ( rightfully ) hate you for it, and there's legal trouble. What legal trouble? Let's get precise. > There have to be content rules. No there don't. You receive a court order, you remove the illegal content. That doesn't require a lot of staff, or listening to "various interest groups". That's what being a common carrier means.
  - sofixa 5y ago
    > What legal trouble? Let's get precise If there's child porn on your website? I'm fairly certain that will bring legal trouble. The same way that torrent trackers were sued for "conspiring", "enabling", "accessory" to copyright violations. > No there don't. You receive a court order, you remove the illegal content. That doesn't require a lot of staff, or listening to "various interest groups Depending on your size, it can require some staff. Furthermore, once you get to a certain size, things can be forced - look at YouTube that had to settle and implement ContentID to appease copyright holders, or OnlyFans having to remove certain types of content due to pressure from payment providers. Payment providers, advertisers, religious, lobbying groups will all try to pressure you once you're big enough. Even Cloudflare with their very aggressively independent/free speech stance had to bow to the pressure and get rid of certain very unsavoury clients.
    - naasking 5y ago

rapind 5y ago

To me it just sounds like the business model won’t scale if you have to solve this problem. I’m not sure why society has to solve it for the tech giants (advertising conglomerates) though. We should just say, via regulation, that it needs to be solved or we shut it down. Give them a reasonable amount of time to figure it out of course. My hunch is it’s just not workable.