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As others pointed out, this is a huge problem in the making. Someone who genuinely deserves the suspension (e.g. posts illegal content) will use the service. T

As others pointed out, this is a huge problem in the making. Someone who genuinely deserves the suspension (e.g. posts illegal content) will use the service. They'll get their suspension lifted because the company trusts the internal employee who filled out the form. Said person will continue to post illegal content and be suspended again. Enough true negatives like this and eventually the company will discover the employee is using their authority to let in randos. If the company is smart, they mark accounts that have been lifted by internal employees, so they will discover the first time it happens. The best probable scenario for this is that said employee gets fired. Presumably, the company trusts said employee knows who they are vetting because they are risking their job; and I'm confident they would not be happy knowing they are using this service. But the worst is that the company stops allowing all internal employees from filling out forms for anyone. At the very least, if this site is a joke, it should put up a disclaimer that indicates such. Not just a disclaimer to vet the rando, because I doubt an internal employee can do so any better than the customer support can. It should actively remove functionality like sending or publicing emails so that posters and developers can't actually use it to contact each other and exchange money.

jrockway 2y ago
This seems unlikely to me. No company is going to fire you because you were trying to help. However, accepting money for this service seems pretty much guaranteed to result in termination even if 100% of the accounts you help with were legitimate. The side dealing is the problem.
- armchairhacker 2y ago
  I think it's unlikely if the content is benign and it's not guaranteed anyways. But if the person is posting illegal or very graphic content, and the company knows you unbanned them, I think it would raise questions like "how do you know this person" or "what made you trust them?". Which you'll have trouble answering if all you have is their name, email, and the sparse information they gave for why they should be unbanned. You'll argue "this person hid that side of themselves from everyone" but at minimum it calls your judgment into question, and if the company is aware of this kind of service, they'll probe for more information. Also if someone uses this service repeatedly disguising themselves as different people, it will raise questions why different internal employees kept unbanning them. That would be much more suspicious.
- ceejayoz 2y ago
  > No company is going to fire you because you were trying to help. This absolutely happens. As an example: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/man-fired-stop-kidnapping/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/man-fired-stop-kidnapping/ "You were employed by The Home Depot until June 19, 2017 when you were fired because you assisted the police in preventing a kidnapping."
  - simfree 2y ago
    Being told not to physically intervene in a dangerous situation and then being fired when you disobey company policy is unsurprising. Filling out a form to request another team review an account is entirely different. No one is physically interacting, and the company clearly has a sanctioned happy path for this request.
    - batch12 2y ago
      I think it's the getting paid to do it part that will get people fired.
    - jjmarr 2y ago
      This is tangential, but quoting the Snopes story: > according to Reagan, he was at work on 12 May 2017 when a co-worker told him he saw a man attack a woman in the parking lot. Reagan said he heard the woman scream: "Somebody help me, he's kidnapping my kid, he's stealing my kid!" Reagan told us he then contacted police, who instructed him to follow the man as he left the store area: "They said, don't touch him, don't engage with him, but keep an eye on him. Let us know where he is going so we know where to go when we get there." > Reagan said that after returning to the store he was scolded by a supervisor and was fired four weeks later. Physical intervention didn't occur.
    - johnnyanmac 2y ago
      >Being told not to physically intervene in a dangerous situation and then being fired when you disobey company policy is unsurprising. when the situation involves the police, I'd imagine the situation is different. Hence why he was reinstated after blowback. This isn't an employee tackling a violent customer (which should be allowed, but I digress). If "leadership" gave no reason for the termination or simply said "you left the campus on company hours (outside of break)", they would have been slightly more in the clear (unless the employee sued, of course. That would have been an interesting lawsuit).
- stockboss 2y ago
  The thing is, how would the companies know you're paid to do this, instead of perhaps just being an overzealous employee? Not like this service is going to disclose who is working for them...right?
  - bawolff 2y ago
    I imagine it becomes obvious if you file 1000 of these a month, not to mention probably many of the people wanting this service were blocked legitly, so its more likely bad requests will be filed. Not to mention it is like any crime - not like murders intentionally get caught either, but they still do.
CactusOnFire 2y ago
Perhaps not a joke, but in terms of how arbitrary social media banning is, I would consider this site a sign of "the times".
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
ethbr1 2y ago
> But the worst is that the company stops allowing all internal employees from filling out forms for anyone. That would be a positive outcome. The two-tier system is bullshit and creates a bubble that further insulates companies/employees from feedback about broken processes, because everyone in their social graph is exempt. Far better they have to deal with friends telling them how bad the public appeal process is.
- AnthonyMouse 2y ago
  The official form isn't the real mechanism though. The real mechanism is that somebody in the company is in charge of that system, the general public has no access to that person, but someone inside the company can find them in the company directory and bend their ear. That's the case whether there is an official form or not.
naasking 2y ago
> Someone who genuinely deserves the suspension (e.g. posts illegal content) will use the service. They'll get their suspension lifted I don't know why you think people who deserve to be suspended would be reinstated. You act as if these people have no agency or discretion as to what accounts to reinstate.
- JoshTriplett 2y ago
  Because there's a monetary incentive.
  - naasking 2y ago
    So? Monetary incentives lifted more people out of poverty than any prior system. There is also reputational risk for being stupid and which would get them shut down.
- margalabargala 2y ago
  They would be at first. "Personally knows an employee of the company" is a strong signal that a person is not a bot, and may be more likely to be a decent person, because they are capable of maintaining enough of a relationship with an employee that the employee is willing to do something for them. The employee has already been vetted as trustworthy. So that signal will apply to the first few people applying through this service. Then some employees will get fired, the signal/noise ratio of internal requests changes, and employees can no longer get accounts reinstated via internal forms like this. Basically this service will cause a brief spike in illegitimate accounts being reactivated, and then we will arrive at a new status quo that is strictly worse than the current one.
  - naasking 2y ago
    Sounds like pure speculation based, once again, on the assumption that this will be misused.
    - margalabargala 2y ago
kelnos 2y ago
> But the worst is that the company stops allowing all internal employees from filling out forms for anyone. That feels like a good outcome to me. "I know a guy" should not be a reason to get preferential treatment. As much as I'm sure it absolutely sucks to lose an account on most of these services, I'd rather they stay lost for everyone, rather than get reinstated for people who happen to have connections.
- tavavex 2y ago
  The thing is that this preferential treatment should be the default - people should be able to get their accounts looked at, but as always there are hold-ups and moderator shortages and whatnot that drag waiting times closer to infinity. It's not like everyone else is guaranteed to be banned indefinitely - it's more akin to pulling your friends out of the line and helping them yourself. As long as it's not done at the expense of everyone else, I don't care much for it.
  - rkuykendall-com 2y ago
    The problem is everyone else is guaranteed to be banned indefinitely.
  - TeMPOraL 2y ago
    > it's more akin to pulling your friends out of the line and helping them yourself I.e. a practice universally frowned upon?
ryandrake 2y ago
I guess it depends on what percentage of account suspensions are due to actual bad behavior on the part of the user and what percentage are false positives. My wild guess is the vast majority of account suspensions at a BigTech company are false positives of an overly-aggressive algorithm, so having an insider reactivate accounts is going to be a net-positive, even if a few actual bad accounts are reactivated.

jrockway 2y ago

This seems unlikely to me. No company is going to fire you because you were trying to help. However, accepting money for this service seems pretty much guaranteed to result in termination even if 100% of the accounts you help with were legitimate. The side dealing is the problem.

armchairhacker 2y ago
I think it's unlikely if the content is benign and it's not guaranteed anyways. But if the person is posting illegal or very graphic content, and the company knows you unbanned them, I think it would raise questions like "how do you know this person" or "what made you trust them?". Which you'll have trouble answering if all you have is their name, email, and the sparse information they gave for why they should be unbanned. You'll argue "this person hid that side of themselves from everyone" but at minimum it calls your judgment into question, and if the company is aware of this kind of service, they'll probe for more information. Also if someone uses this service repeatedly disguising themselves as different people, it will raise questions why different internal employees kept unbanning them. That would be much more suspicious.
ceejayoz 2y ago
> No company is going to fire you because you were trying to help. This absolutely happens. As an example: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/man-fired-stop-kidnapping/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/man-fired-stop-kidnapping/ "You were employed by The Home Depot until June 19, 2017 when you were fired because you assisted the police in preventing a kidnapping."
- simfree 2y ago
  Being told not to physically intervene in a dangerous situation and then being fired when you disobey company policy is unsurprising. Filling out a form to request another team review an account is entirely different. No one is physically interacting, and the company clearly has a sanctioned happy path for this request.
  - batch12 2y ago
    I think it's the getting paid to do it part that will get people fired.
  - jjmarr 2y ago
    This is tangential, but quoting the Snopes story: > according to Reagan, he was at work on 12 May 2017 when a co-worker told him he saw a man attack a woman in the parking lot. Reagan said he heard the woman scream: "Somebody help me, he's kidnapping my kid, he's stealing my kid!" Reagan told us he then contacted police, who instructed him to follow the man as he left the store area: "They said, don't touch him, don't engage with him, but keep an eye on him. Let us know where he is going so we know where to go when we get there." > Reagan said that after returning to the store he was scolded by a supervisor and was fired four weeks later. Physical intervention didn't occur.
  - johnnyanmac 2y ago
    >Being told not to physically intervene in a dangerous situation and then being fired when you disobey company policy is unsurprising. when the situation involves the police, I'd imagine the situation is different. Hence why he was reinstated after blowback. This isn't an employee tackling a violent customer (which should be allowed, but I digress). If "leadership" gave no reason for the termination or simply said "you left the campus on company hours (outside of break)", they would have been slightly more in the clear (unless the employee sued, of course. That would have been an interesting lawsuit).
stockboss 2y ago
The thing is, how would the companies know you're paid to do this, instead of perhaps just being an overzealous employee? Not like this service is going to disclose who is working for them...right?
- bawolff 2y ago
  I imagine it becomes obvious if you file 1000 of these a month, not to mention probably many of the people wanting this service were blocked legitly, so its more likely bad requests will be filed. Not to mention it is like any crime - not like murders intentionally get caught either, but they still do.

CactusOnFire 2y ago

Perhaps not a joke, but in terms of how arbitrary social media banning is, I would consider this site a sign of "the times".

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

ethbr1 2y ago

> But the worst is that the company stops allowing all internal employees from filling out forms for anyone. That would be a positive outcome. The two-tier system is bullshit and creates a bubble that further insulates companies/employees from feedback about broken processes, because everyone in their social graph is exempt. Far better they have to deal with friends telling them how bad the public appeal process is.

AnthonyMouse 2y ago
The official form isn't the real mechanism though. The real mechanism is that somebody in the company is in charge of that system, the general public has no access to that person, but someone inside the company can find them in the company directory and bend their ear. That's the case whether there is an official form or not.

naasking 2y ago

> Someone who genuinely deserves the suspension (e.g. posts illegal content) will use the service. They'll get their suspension lifted I don't know why you think people who deserve to be suspended would be reinstated. You act as if these people have no agency or discretion as to what accounts to reinstate.

JoshTriplett 2y ago
Because there's a monetary incentive.
- naasking 2y ago
  So? Monetary incentives lifted more people out of poverty than any prior system. There is also reputational risk for being stupid and which would get them shut down.
margalabargala 2y ago
They would be at first. "Personally knows an employee of the company" is a strong signal that a person is not a bot, and may be more likely to be a decent person, because they are capable of maintaining enough of a relationship with an employee that the employee is willing to do something for them. The employee has already been vetted as trustworthy. So that signal will apply to the first few people applying through this service. Then some employees will get fired, the signal/noise ratio of internal requests changes, and employees can no longer get accounts reinstated via internal forms like this. Basically this service will cause a brief spike in illegitimate accounts being reactivated, and then we will arrive at a new status quo that is strictly worse than the current one.
- naasking 2y ago
  Sounds like pure speculation based, once again, on the assumption that this will be misused.
  - margalabargala 2y ago

kelnos 2y ago

> But the worst is that the company stops allowing all internal employees from filling out forms for anyone. That feels like a good outcome to me. "I know a guy" should not be a reason to get preferential treatment. As much as I'm sure it absolutely sucks to lose an account on most of these services, I'd rather they stay lost for everyone, rather than get reinstated for people who happen to have connections.

tavavex 2y ago
The thing is that this preferential treatment should be the default - people should be able to get their accounts looked at, but as always there are hold-ups and moderator shortages and whatnot that drag waiting times closer to infinity. It's not like everyone else is guaranteed to be banned indefinitely - it's more akin to pulling your friends out of the line and helping them yourself. As long as it's not done at the expense of everyone else, I don't care much for it.
- rkuykendall-com 2y ago
  The problem is everyone else is guaranteed to be banned indefinitely.
- TeMPOraL 2y ago
  > it's more akin to pulling your friends out of the line and helping them yourself I.e. a practice universally frowned upon?

ryandrake 2y ago

I guess it depends on what percentage of account suspensions are due to actual bad behavior on the part of the user and what percentage are false positives. My wild guess is the vast majority of account suspensions at a BigTech company are false positives of an overly-aggressive algorithm, so having an insider reactivate accounts is going to be a net-positive, even if a few actual bad accounts are reactivated.