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There are a large number of other industries where SOP is to make life difficult for customers in hopes that they give up on asserting their legal rights. Amon

There are a large number of other industries where SOP is to make life difficult for customers in hopes that they give up on asserting their legal rights. Among other ones I can think of: insurance, debt collection, customer service disputes, privacy opt-outs, warranty work, property management, labor law. It seems like these industries are ripe for AI-based startups whose job is basically to be an asshole to corporations on behalf of customers, the same way that corporations are assholes back. If anything, at least consumers will be able to say "Have your AIs talk to my AI."

rwmj 2y ago
You correctly identify a problem then suggest a complicated technical solution. The simple solution is to make these practices illegal by passing laws.
- ttymck 2y ago
  > passing laws. As if that's any less of a complicated technical solution.
  - mrguyorama 2y ago
    The law passing solution has been implemented in tens of states, so apparently it's not that difficult. Meanwhile, how often has a company in the US been reigned in by another company?
    - sirspacey 2y ago
      Often Disruptive services dramatically impact companies at scale The Credit Dispute industry radically lowered the aggressive dark patterns of credit score companies like Experian, as an example.
- salawat 2y ago
  Because money laundering, wage theft, tax evasion, and labor violations never happen, right? Law being on the books does not resolve the central asymmetry here. Again, their full time job is bleeding you. You getting your rights asserted comes at the expense of your time. Hell, when was the last time you got to negotiate a EULA with $BigCorp's legal group? Odds are, never.
  - nequo 2y ago
    > labor violations The NLRB will work to represent your interests. They are doing their job. Go to them if you have a dispute to resolve.
- jrockway 2y ago
  It's difficult to simply make the legal system do this. You have to back it up with investigatory teeth, and the victim still has to file an understandable complaint to start the wheels turning. The legal system also has to be sufficiently "documented" so that people will file the right complaints. The net result is the same as the current system, basically. As an example, insurance covering trans care is required by state law in my state. Is it any easier to be trans in New York than other states? Yes. But you still get very familiar with your insurance claims process and the documentation hurdles. ("We need a letter from your therapist, not your doctor." This exists nowhere in WPATH8, but it does delay the money going out of their bank account while a therapist copy-pastes the form letter. One week to wait for your appointment. One week for them to turn it around. 2 weeks of interest earned by the insurance company. And that's the best case for the patient that already has the necessary support network.)
  - rwmj 2y ago
    > You have to back it up with investigatory teeth, and the victim still has to file an understandable complaint to start the wheels turning. The legal system also has to be sufficiently "documented" so that people will file the right complaints. Correct, this is how it works in many other countries. > [Some stuff about health insurance documentation being complicated] Almost every developed country except the US has settled on some model of a single-payer system with universal coverage. This whole thing with private insurance companies and documentation requirements doesn't have to be a thing.
    - jrockway 2y ago
      Honestly, those systems don't look too good for trans people. The NHS requires you to wait years to go on $40/month hormone replacement therapy. The government passed a law banning prescription of puberty blockers for kids that are undecided on which gender they'd like to be as adults, forcing them to go through the wrong puberty or work around the system. Saw a post on Reddit yesterday that was "I support my daughter but we can't keep her on GnRH analogues anymore because it's illegal here." The consensus was to fly to Spain once a month and pay cash for the injection, or skip puberty blockers and start estrogen early. This is not amazing. The single-payer model is unfortunately too political, and somehow being trans is a hot button political issue right now. It really, really sucks for these kids. Meanwhile in the US, there is a lot of hate, but a lot of insurance companies do cover the necessary care. They even pay for flights/hotels in other states when care isn't available in your state because of political issues. We all like to hate insurance, but seeing those things commonly available in private insurance policies is ... refreshing. You are still going to have to file appeals, but it's better than "the government doesn't believe in trans people so fuck you".
- LorenPechtel 2y ago
  Which defines a line they will toe up to, probably making things worse.
- nostrademons 2y ago
  They're already illegal. The point is that laws are useless without enforcement. There's a wide body of civil law that depends upon the plaintiff to assert their rights. The government isn't going to go monitoring every private transaction to ensure it conforms to every applicable law. We don't want them to do that - in general the government should stay out of private transactions, that's what makes them private. And the law usually requires multiple attempts and back-and-forths to ensure that everyone has had a chance to rectify the situation before it goes to the court system. Again, this is a good thing. But one side of the transaction is much more able to put up with convoluted processes and paper trails than the other. A corporation can amortize the cost of the paper trail across many customer interactions and build systems to handle it automatically. It can hire employees to do nothing but sit on the phone, and build delays into business processes that will make most customers give up. These sort of LLM startups just give the same economies of scale to customers seeking redress. Yes, it'd be easier if the whole process didn't exist - there's an old joke about LLMs generating e-mails to sound longer and more impressive than they need to be, and then another LLM summarizing the e-mail back into one sentence that isn't really what the original person meant. But the problem is that each incentive along the way makes the company better off if they get the customer to go away, while each incentive for the customer makes them better off if they don't go away, and so you get an arms race between them.
  - HarryHirsch 2y ago
    The other problem is that the government is in on the joke. OSHA in my liberal state is about two people. Civil right claims are capped at 300 kUSD for a large employer. The existing laws are plainly insufficient to claim the rights that the citizens supposedly have. The present state of affairs really undermines government legitimacy.
    - danaris 2y ago
      I think it can be dangerous to view "government" as a monolithic entity in cases like this. So many of our consumer-protection laws are written by a tremendously adversarial system: one side does its level best to get solid, genuinely-effective protections in place, and the other side won't let them happen at all until they're hamstrung almost beyond their ability to function.
- Suppafly 2y ago
  >You correctly identify a problem then suggest a complicated technical solution. That's one of the hardest things for STEM types to learn, not everything can or needs to be solved with a complicated technical solution. You see it with HR and interpersonal type things all the time, where some minor communicator could solve the issue, but people start suggesting overly involved technical processes instead.

rwmj 2y ago

You correctly identify a problem then suggest a complicated technical solution. The simple solution is to make these practices illegal by passing laws.

ttymck 2y ago
> passing laws. As if that's any less of a complicated technical solution.
- mrguyorama 2y ago
  The law passing solution has been implemented in tens of states, so apparently it's not that difficult. Meanwhile, how often has a company in the US been reigned in by another company?
  - sirspacey 2y ago
    Often Disruptive services dramatically impact companies at scale The Credit Dispute industry radically lowered the aggressive dark patterns of credit score companies like Experian, as an example.
salawat 2y ago
Because money laundering, wage theft, tax evasion, and labor violations never happen, right? Law being on the books does not resolve the central asymmetry here. Again, their full time job is bleeding you. You getting your rights asserted comes at the expense of your time. Hell, when was the last time you got to negotiate a EULA with $BigCorp's legal group? Odds are, never.
- nequo 2y ago
  > labor violations The NLRB will work to represent your interests. They are doing their job. Go to them if you have a dispute to resolve.
jrockway 2y ago
It's difficult to simply make the legal system do this. You have to back it up with investigatory teeth, and the victim still has to file an understandable complaint to start the wheels turning. The legal system also has to be sufficiently "documented" so that people will file the right complaints. The net result is the same as the current system, basically. As an example, insurance covering trans care is required by state law in my state. Is it any easier to be trans in New York than other states? Yes. But you still get very familiar with your insurance claims process and the documentation hurdles. ("We need a letter from your therapist, not your doctor." This exists nowhere in WPATH8, but it does delay the money going out of their bank account while a therapist copy-pastes the form letter. One week to wait for your appointment. One week for them to turn it around. 2 weeks of interest earned by the insurance company. And that's the best case for the patient that already has the necessary support network.)
- rwmj 2y ago
  > You have to back it up with investigatory teeth, and the victim still has to file an understandable complaint to start the wheels turning. The legal system also has to be sufficiently "documented" so that people will file the right complaints. Correct, this is how it works in many other countries. > [Some stuff about health insurance documentation being complicated] Almost every developed country except the US has settled on some model of a single-payer system with universal coverage. This whole thing with private insurance companies and documentation requirements doesn't have to be a thing.
  - jrockway 2y ago
    Honestly, those systems don't look too good for trans people. The NHS requires you to wait years to go on $40/month hormone replacement therapy. The government passed a law banning prescription of puberty blockers for kids that are undecided on which gender they'd like to be as adults, forcing them to go through the wrong puberty or work around the system. Saw a post on Reddit yesterday that was "I support my daughter but we can't keep her on GnRH analogues anymore because it's illegal here." The consensus was to fly to Spain once a month and pay cash for the injection, or skip puberty blockers and start estrogen early. This is not amazing. The single-payer model is unfortunately too political, and somehow being trans is a hot button political issue right now. It really, really sucks for these kids. Meanwhile in the US, there is a lot of hate, but a lot of insurance companies do cover the necessary care. They even pay for flights/hotels in other states when care isn't available in your state because of political issues. We all like to hate insurance, but seeing those things commonly available in private insurance policies is ... refreshing. You are still going to have to file appeals, but it's better than "the government doesn't believe in trans people so fuck you".
LorenPechtel 2y ago
Which defines a line they will toe up to, probably making things worse.
nostrademons 2y ago
They're already illegal. The point is that laws are useless without enforcement. There's a wide body of civil law that depends upon the plaintiff to assert their rights. The government isn't going to go monitoring every private transaction to ensure it conforms to every applicable law. We don't want them to do that - in general the government should stay out of private transactions, that's what makes them private. And the law usually requires multiple attempts and back-and-forths to ensure that everyone has had a chance to rectify the situation before it goes to the court system. Again, this is a good thing. But one side of the transaction is much more able to put up with convoluted processes and paper trails than the other. A corporation can amortize the cost of the paper trail across many customer interactions and build systems to handle it automatically. It can hire employees to do nothing but sit on the phone, and build delays into business processes that will make most customers give up. These sort of LLM startups just give the same economies of scale to customers seeking redress. Yes, it'd be easier if the whole process didn't exist - there's an old joke about LLMs generating e-mails to sound longer and more impressive than they need to be, and then another LLM summarizing the e-mail back into one sentence that isn't really what the original person meant. But the problem is that each incentive along the way makes the company better off if they get the customer to go away, while each incentive for the customer makes them better off if they don't go away, and so you get an arms race between them.
- HarryHirsch 2y ago
  The other problem is that the government is in on the joke. OSHA in my liberal state is about two people. Civil right claims are capped at 300 kUSD for a large employer. The existing laws are plainly insufficient to claim the rights that the citizens supposedly have. The present state of affairs really undermines government legitimacy.
  - danaris 2y ago
    I think it can be dangerous to view "government" as a monolithic entity in cases like this. So many of our consumer-protection laws are written by a tremendously adversarial system: one side does its level best to get solid, genuinely-effective protections in place, and the other side won't let them happen at all until they're hamstrung almost beyond their ability to function.
Suppafly 2y ago
>You correctly identify a problem then suggest a complicated technical solution. That's one of the hardest things for STEM types to learn, not everything can or needs to be solved with a complicated technical solution. You see it with HR and interpersonal type things all the time, where some minor communicator could solve the issue, but people start suggesting overly involved technical processes instead.