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To me this appears as a way to outsource customer service to an external entity funded by a cash flow to which Meta does not need to contribute. The courts are
by c-linkage 2y ago
To me this appears as a way to outsource customer service to an external entity funded by a cash flow to which Meta does not need to contribute. The courts are always going to exist, Meta is always paying its lawyers, so why bother hiring extra people to staff a support line?
And by making support have to go through the legal system you've already cut out 90% of the support calls you would normally take.
Financially, the entire arrangement is a huge win and cost saving for Meta while at the same time completely overwhelming the publicly funded small claims court. This is not dissimilar to how many Walmart employees require government Aid because Walmart won't pay them enough do not require it.
- netsharc 2y ago> overwhelming the publicly funded small claims court I'm guessing there's no court fees that the losing party has to pay? It would seem fair to tell the troublemaker to pay for the judge's and other court employees hours...
- analog31 2y agoAt least my state requires the losing party to pay court costs. Let me guess that big companies simply don't pay.
- jjmarr 2y agoEven though it's much more expensive to lose a lawsuit over an issue than it is to resolve it through customer service, most people choose not to sue. Facebook can fulfill all of their current legal requirements by simply not showing up to any court hearings, losing by default, and paying whatever someone won. If that is cheaper than providing real customer service, they will do it. And real lawyers cost $100s/hour so if the amount FB has to pay is less than that they're losing money by showing up! This applies to all companies, but the average Facebook user doesn't even pay for an account and are of even less value than a typical customer support line user (notably, the article says a benefit of "Facebook verified" which costs $15/month is actual support).
- renonce 2y agoNot showing up is an arbitrage opportunity which means everyone can sue Facebook and get a win for free, which would not be sustainable.
- chris_wot 2y agoPity the people who are not U.S. citizens. Meta is the worst.
- latency-guy2 2y agoIs the arbitrage opportunity worth it? It doesn't seem like it is considering the limiting factor being the court system, and you can't really arbitrage off cheaply off miniscule enough violations to profit more than a few one off cases. Damages must also be present, so maybe a service to service offering where one party disparages you online and then you take Meta to court for not suspending that party would work, but thats fraud, and if found out you risk quite a bit for sums that seem to not really exceed more than $15,000 across the US (from the article).
- dfadsadsf 2y agoBig companies not paying court fees is not a thing in any state.
- lesuorac 2y agoAlso big companies not paying court fees in the state they have a ton of assets in is not going to be a thing either. No way FaceBook is going to let somebody foreclose on their data center over court costs.
- thechao 2y agoI think I remember that California is a tilling state? That'd be epic to have the Sheriff auctioning Meta assets from their own doorstep.
- qingcharles 2y agoCourt costs are HEAVILY subsidized by the government that has jurisdiction over them. I would guess nobody is paying more than around $400 to sue Meta in Small Claims, and if the case drags on for months or years with continuances and (if the court allows it) discovery, then it is going to burn a ton of time from the various court staff, building upkeep, web site maintenance and all the other things that keep the courts running. I've had Small Claims cases that have run to thousands of hours of court time over multiple years.
- mcherm 2y agoIf you read the article, the second paragraph tells about someone whose costs were $700 (significantly more than $400), and even explains why they were so high: the need to travel to California to appear in person.
- cryptonector 2y agoAt some point the courts might start complaining to the legislatures and the congress. Or they might start adding punitive damages to their rulings.
- zdragnar 2y agoGenerally speaking, I don't think small claims courts can add punitive damages.
- cryptonector 2y agoWhere they can it's a statutory provision. For example, litigants who bring lots of nuisance suits.
- thegrimmest 2y agoNo company has (nor should have) any mandate to "customer service" beyond what the market demands. Dispute resolution is what courts are for. Meta already pays taxes that fund courts. If courts are unable to keep up with demand generated by the modern digital economy, let's fix that. Making losers pay court fees would go a very long way towards solving the problem. Re: Walmart, the other option is to just cut the aid. People won't work if they are not able to sustain themselves (calorically) on the pay. The best way to avoid these antipatterns is to stop enabling them. --- Edit in reply to: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40744676 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40744676 (rate limited): There is another solution to this problem: reputation. There inevitably will emerge a spectrum of reputability among eg. used car salesman. It is your responsibility to manage your risk in regards to the reputation of the person you are transacting with, attend to the specifics of your deal, and to do your due diligence. So much is obvious in the world of business. Also, in a world of prompt dispute resolution by efficient courts, with losers paying fees, shady businessmen who repeatedly violate contracts will quickly find themselves out of business. The problem we have is that our courts work on an 1800s timescale. We can fix this. Re: social media, standards are already emerging. For instance the much contested device attestation standard attempts to fix exactly this problem. It'll work itself out in a decade or two, no intervention required. > one of the roles of government regulation that can create a net economic gain I disagree in principle. The role of the government of a free society is to create a nonviolent liberal ecosystem. Not to interfere in the outcomes that ecosystem produces.
- doctor_eval 2y ago> People won't work if they are not able to sustain themselves (calorically) on the pay. A better alternative is simply to require companies to pay a living wage. The outcome is better, because you don’t lose the safety net for those who still need it.
- thegrimmest 2y ago[flagged]
- 2y ago
- bmitc 2y agoThat's exactly it. These corporations are leeches on society.
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 2y agoThe economy will continue to improve the more this leeching can be minimised and ultimately eliminated. Interest rates have effectively forced Silicon Valley VC to stop funding more leeches, but society is still left with some truly gigantic ones to deal with; they have embedded themselves into the system. Their removal will take time, and patience. Lots of work to do.
- robertlagrant 2y agoHow are they leeching?
- sambazi 2y agoby outsourcing liabilities to the public
- robertlagrant 2y agoBut are they actually doing that? In this case people are using it for that, but I could also use small claims court to get the attention of a plumber who won't send me a quote. That doesn't mean that plumber is outsourcing to small claims court.
- sambazi 2y agoyes, most of the economy actually works by privatizing gains and externalizing losses. in your example it would probably be you abusing the court system for something that it is not intended for yet obligated to handle
- robertlagrant 2y ago
- garrettgarcia 2y agoYou're saying that spending thousands of dollars in court settlements and man-hours for each of these cases is somehow advantageous to Meta?? That they want to be sued? If they bothered to appeal, I expect Meta would win most of these cases. As long as there are very few of them, it's not worth the cost. Trying to twist the situation to seem like this is somehow a good thing for Meta is well... twisted. Also, as someone else pointed out already, Meta pays taxes which pay for those courts. The guy flying in from New Jersey does not.
- TZubiri 2y agoMeta Lawyers have to do something. Dealing with account recovery cases, is a much better position than many other types of liabilities
- jeremyjh 2y agoThey would contract this work and pay a few hundred an hour. Internal counsel would not be cheaper since they staff based on the demand. None of this is free, it’s just less costly than customer service.
- tomcam 2y agoIf they wanted to handle this using minimal automation, they could. > That they want to be sued? Q.E.D. It has been demonstrated by their system design.
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago> Q.E.D. It has been demonstrated by their system design Have they been getting sued until recently?
- garrettgarcia 2y agoIf they could handle it using minimal automation, they would. They can't, so they don't. Figuring out which real human owns an account that was never verified to belong to that human in the first place is not easy to automate, if possible at all. It's expensive, error-prone, and time-consuming. And if not done carefully, it makes it far easier to steal accounts than it already is. I understand that many commenters have magic wands. Unfortunately, Meta does not.
- TZubiri 2y agoWtf? No. This is just the legal system in operation, if it were by facebook they would not offer this type of users, they have to be ordered to by the judicial system. There is no deliberate decision to do this at the judicial level, there is only a decision not to willingly do it at all.
- cscurmudgeon 2y agoDoesn't Meta pay taxes? https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/META/meta-platforms/total-provision-income-taxes#:~:text=Meta%20Platforms%20annual%20income%20taxes,a%2096.18%25%20increase%20from%202020 https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/META/meta-platform....
- dfadsadsf 2y agoThe article says that small claim court has $100 filing fees - considering that every case is heard for 10 minutes, it sounds like small claim court should be able to mostly if not completely self-fund.
- throwawaycities 2y agoAt the scale of these tech companies and the number of customer service issues the courts would be overrun and this hurts the other cases. Courts can’t scale, even at $100 per small claims case filing fee they are losing money, Courts aren’t meant to be profitable businesses nor even self sustaining, they provide a public function and service paid for by tax dollars.
- robertlagrant 2y agoI doubt many people would pay $100 to have their customer service question heard. No one's doing that for "how do I reset my password?"
- wintermutestwin 2y ago10 minutes is nowhere near the correct timeframe and $100 is nowhere near enough to cover the court’s costs.
- xhkkffbf 2y agoEven if it's 20 minutes -- which it often isn't -- that's $300/hour. If that's not enough to cover costs, well, maybe the costs are out of line.
- londons_explore 2y agoIt isn't this. It's because if meta mistakenly gives the wrong account to the wrong person, the potential losses are huge. Whereas if a judge gives the account to the wrong person, meta isn't liable. There is nothing else they can do when someone set up their Facebook account 15 years ago and has lost their email address and phone number from back then.