7 ms·

I know it's awful and true, BUT, can you blame them? Think about the infrastructure required to allow direct human contact for someone like Google, Youtube or

I know it's awful and true, BUT, can you blame them? Think about the infrastructure required to allow direct human contact for someone like Google, Youtube or Facebook. Just a regular ISP in my country of Sweden needs an entire call centre to handle the calls it gets from customers. Now scale that up to the levels of Google. I can totally see why they've made the decision to avoid consumer contact. Their consumers are the entire internet. I know this is controversial but one solution would be to break their monopoly up so that smaller companies could handle consumer contact.

Neil44 5y ago
Just because it's hard doesn't mean they should get away with not doing it. Google 2020 revenues were 181 Billion, you can build a VERY big call centre with that.
Orionos 5y ago
I'm failing to understand your logic. Google could put a call center in every country to handle local user's requests could'nt they ? Your ISP can afford to do so... But yes, as they have a monopoly, they can afford not putting any call center anywhere.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- ratww 5y ago
  Yep. And it doesn't even have to be a call center, manual verification would be enough.
- ahahahahah 5y ago
  I pay my ISP a lot more than I pay Google.
jimhefferon 5y ago
So, this business does things that take away people's rights, but it is OK because otherwise their cost of business would be too high?
- djbusby 5y ago
  Exactly! Won't someone please think of the helpless capitalist!!
intricatedetail 5y ago
It shouldn't be an excuse. The system is not fit for purpose.
LudwigNagasena 5y ago
If even a regular ISP can afford a call center so can Google with its economies of scale.
notyourday 5y ago
> I know it's awful and true, BUT, can you blame them? Yes, I can. Youtube knowingly traffics and sells stolen goods and services. Youtube's officers and directors know it. The key words there is knowingly. Arrest Youtube CEO as a head of a criminal enterprise. Bust her door pre-dawn and drag her out into the slammer. There's zero difference in how we should deal with Incs be that Mafia, Inc. or Youtube, Inc. The mere prospect of that will quickly solve all the technical problems. It is all about motivation. Youtube's executives currently are not motivated to solve the problem. The government needs to provide the motivation.
CamelCaseName 5y ago
The underlying assumption with all these criticisms is that human contact would be better. But is this really true? Humans can be bribed, manipulated, or lied to. This introduces a whole set of new problems. It just turns "YouTube algo removed my channel because I got report bombed" to "A YouTube employees removed my channel after they were social engineered".
- JKCalhoun 5y ago
  Contact with a knowledgeable human is better than no contact is I think what people are arguing, yes.
adrr 5y ago
At scale you have more options. You can subcontract out your call center like all the big companies. These companies use these subcontracted callcenters like https://www.helpware.com/ https://www.helpware.com/. They don't want to spend the money.
fault1 5y ago
They can always contract it out, and in some cases they do. For example Meta has (used to have?) large deals with Accenture to handle a lot of the interaction internationally.
dredmorbius 5y ago
Understanding and respecting that (I made a similar case within the past day: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29421420 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29421420), there's still the rejoinder: If you can't provide a service safely, equitably, and predictably at a given scale, maybe the answer is "don't do that".
tyingq 5y ago
They all have the ability to control that funnel though. In this case, they could allow channel owners that have been demonetized to open a ticket. Or allow artist representatives that already have "special" YouTube accounts to complain, etc.
JKCalhoun 5y ago
I think it only seems like it would be crazy because we've allowed companies to get away with not doing it. Go back, pre-internet, and Bell Telephone surely had a sophisticated and expensive tech-support, customer-support department. They managed. I think we've just come to begrudgingly accept that outsourcing, automating everything is okay. It's okay now to let the customer find your support phone number, navigate your phone tree, spend 30 minutes or more in a phone queue for, in the end, no real help. Doesn't mean we have to excuse it.
- creato 5y ago
  > Go back, pre-internet, and Bell Telephone surely had a sophisticated and expensive tech-support, customer-support department. They managed. Those services were a lot more expensive to their users as well. If everyone paid $xx/mo to YouTube I’m sure the customer support would be a lot better. But then most people wouldn’t be users in the first place.
bottled_poe 5y ago
I hope you are being sarcastic. These companies were fortunate to be ahead of the curve in automating content delivery but, despite their best efforts, have failed in automating service delivery. Human connection should be mandatory in running a modern business. If you want to deal with humans, you should be required to reciprocate.
BohdanAnderson 5y ago
I think an ISP is a bad example. The relationship between the user (content creators) and Youtube very different than that of a consumer.
ClumsyPilot 5y ago
"Think about the infrastructure required to allow direct human contact for someone like Google, Youtube or Facebook." So they have an unfair advantage over competition by avoiding the cost of customer support? Am I meant to feel sorry for them?
colinmhayes 5y ago
Google makes billions of dollars. They can easily afford to hire tens of thousands of call center employees.
Arrath 5y ago
> I know this is controversial but one solution would be to break their monopoly up so that smaller companies could handle consumer contact. I think I lean in this direction, too. Customer service should go hand-in-hand with having customers in the first place. If you have grown so outrageously large that you have no feasible way to plumbing some of your astronomical profits to servicing those who facilitate your profits, then maybe you have grown too big.
exabrial 5y ago
They could absolutely do it and they have more than enough money to do it. They just don't want to because it'd cut into profits.

Neil44 5y ago

Just because it's hard doesn't mean they should get away with not doing it. Google 2020 revenues were 181 Billion, you can build a VERY big call centre with that.

Orionos 5y ago

I'm failing to understand your logic. Google could put a call center in every country to handle local user's requests could'nt they ? Your ISP can afford to do so... But yes, as they have a monopoly, they can afford not putting any call center anywhere.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
ratww 5y ago
Yep. And it doesn't even have to be a call center, manual verification would be enough.
ahahahahah 5y ago
I pay my ISP a lot more than I pay Google.

jimhefferon 5y ago

So, this business does things that take away people's rights, but it is OK because otherwise their cost of business would be too high?

djbusby 5y ago
Exactly! Won't someone please think of the helpless capitalist!!

intricatedetail 5y ago

It shouldn't be an excuse. The system is not fit for purpose.

LudwigNagasena 5y ago

If even a regular ISP can afford a call center so can Google with its economies of scale.

notyourday 5y ago

> I know it's awful and true, BUT, can you blame them? Yes, I can. Youtube knowingly traffics and sells stolen goods and services. Youtube's officers and directors know it. The key words there is knowingly. Arrest Youtube CEO as a head of a criminal enterprise. Bust her door pre-dawn and drag her out into the slammer. There's zero difference in how we should deal with Incs be that Mafia, Inc. or Youtube, Inc. The mere prospect of that will quickly solve all the technical problems. It is all about motivation. Youtube's executives currently are not motivated to solve the problem. The government needs to provide the motivation.

CamelCaseName 5y ago

The underlying assumption with all these criticisms is that human contact would be better. But is this really true? Humans can be bribed, manipulated, or lied to. This introduces a whole set of new problems. It just turns "YouTube algo removed my channel because I got report bombed" to "A YouTube employees removed my channel after they were social engineered".

JKCalhoun 5y ago
Contact with a knowledgeable human is better than no contact is I think what people are arguing, yes.

adrr 5y ago

At scale you have more options. You can subcontract out your call center like all the big companies. These companies use these subcontracted callcenters like https://www.helpware.com/ https://www.helpware.com/. They don't want to spend the money.

fault1 5y ago

They can always contract it out, and in some cases they do. For example Meta has (used to have?) large deals with Accenture to handle a lot of the interaction internationally.

dredmorbius 5y ago

Understanding and respecting that (I made a similar case within the past day: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29421420 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29421420), there's still the rejoinder: If you can't provide a service safely, equitably, and predictably at a given scale, maybe the answer is "don't do that".

tyingq 5y ago

They all have the ability to control that funnel though. In this case, they could allow channel owners that have been demonetized to open a ticket. Or allow artist representatives that already have "special" YouTube accounts to complain, etc.

JKCalhoun 5y ago

I think it only seems like it would be crazy because we've allowed companies to get away with not doing it. Go back, pre-internet, and Bell Telephone surely had a sophisticated and expensive tech-support, customer-support department. They managed. I think we've just come to begrudgingly accept that outsourcing, automating everything is okay. It's okay now to let the customer find your support phone number, navigate your phone tree, spend 30 minutes or more in a phone queue for, in the end, no real help. Doesn't mean we have to excuse it.

creato 5y ago
> Go back, pre-internet, and Bell Telephone surely had a sophisticated and expensive tech-support, customer-support department. They managed. Those services were a lot more expensive to their users as well. If everyone paid $xx/mo to YouTube I’m sure the customer support would be a lot better. But then most people wouldn’t be users in the first place.

bottled_poe 5y ago

I hope you are being sarcastic. These companies were fortunate to be ahead of the curve in automating content delivery but, despite their best efforts, have failed in automating service delivery. Human connection should be mandatory in running a modern business. If you want to deal with humans, you should be required to reciprocate.

BohdanAnderson 5y ago

I think an ISP is a bad example. The relationship between the user (content creators) and Youtube very different than that of a consumer.

ClumsyPilot 5y ago

"Think about the infrastructure required to allow direct human contact for someone like Google, Youtube or Facebook." So they have an unfair advantage over competition by avoiding the cost of customer support? Am I meant to feel sorry for them?

colinmhayes 5y ago

Google makes billions of dollars. They can easily afford to hire tens of thousands of call center employees.

Arrath 5y ago

> I know this is controversial but one solution would be to break their monopoly up so that smaller companies could handle consumer contact. I think I lean in this direction, too. Customer service should go hand-in-hand with having customers in the first place. If you have grown so outrageously large that you have no feasible way to plumbing some of your astronomical profits to servicing those who facilitate your profits, then maybe you have grown too big.

exabrial 5y ago

They could absolutely do it and they have more than enough money to do it. They just don't want to because it'd cut into profits.