I originally just down voted this comment, but I feel it warrants a response rather than a down vote. I removed my down vote so here are my thoughts.
Big tech, Google and Facebook in particular don't have "weird process gaps". What they have is a willful ignorance of any and all customer service. They are the vanguard of a new economy devoid of any and all notion of customer service. That quaint notion is too expensive in today's economy. Today, "customer service" is provided via a one way email black hole.
The only way anyone gets customer service from any unicorn is either by shaming them in a vial social media post or leveraging an internal contact. There used to be a time where one could call and talk to an actual person who actually worked for the company and might, just might be in a position to help. Those days began to end with the shift to offshore call centers and now have completely vanished thanks to canned email responses. I NEVER in my wildest dreams would have though "I wish Google had an offshore call center to support me".
Years ago, while flying British Air from Nairobi to London I had my camera equipment and dress shoes stolen by ground crew. I called up BA and explained that I had watched a person on the tarmac open my bag as it was being loaded onto the plain. I don't even know if the ground crewman was a BA employee or an Airport employee, but the BA rep on the phone told me she was mortified at what had happened and the next day they couriered a check to me. No bickering, no stonewalling, no email voids, just pure customer service.
That one great experience was snatched from the jaws of disappointment by a timely customer service rep with the authority to help and has meant that I will fly BA whenever it is possible over all other airline options. Would they do the same today? I doubt it, but they did it once and I will always be a fan as a result.
I think this perfectly illustrates the different business models between these companies. On the one hand, a company with billions of users where no money changes hands and each interaction is worth maybe $0.01 in advertising, and on the other hand a service for which you are paying hundreds or maybe thousands of dollars each time.
Don’t forget that just last year we were watching videos of innocent passengers being violently dragged off planes that they paid to be on. Despite some feel good anecdotes, airlines are by no means a bastion of customer service nirvana. Airlines hold 2 of the top 20 spots among the “Most Hated Companies” in the US.
Good customer service, even when your ASP is tens of thousands of dollars per customer, is probably the single hardest thing for most companies.
Whether it’s Airlines, Search Engines, Phone/Computer Manufacturers, Car companies, etc., we’ve seen basically every otherwise beloved brand fall on their face when it comes to customer service at scale. (And that’s when we’re not discovering their products are faulty, dangerous, secretly crippled over time, spying on us, exploiting our personal data,...)
Of course there are weird process gaps. Here we are seeing an account being flagged for incarceration, possibly because the account is actually being attacked by someone submitting fraudulent requests in an attempt to get it closed.
I don’t have a Facebook account and I don’t want one. But if that isn’t a weird process gap I don’t know what is.
Just 3 years ago BA went above and beyond for me when I left a wallet on a plane, but didn't find out until I was in a different terminal (45 minutes later), and couldn't go back due to security/visa checkpoints. BA sent runners to the plane in the other terminal and they physically carried my wallet with all cards/cash in it to me.
I've heard a lot of well-deserved criticism of BA as well, but it does seem like many of their staff are still willing to go above and beyond.
I had a similar thing a few years back. Left my mobile phone on my seat, had already passed various gates and checkpoints and they did exactly the same thing. Within ten minutes I was re-united with my phone. I couldn't thank them enough.
Left my keys on the plane seat, and remembered once I was at baggage claim. All Delta would do is let me fill out some paperwork. I ended up having to have a locksmith come out to the airport parking lot to make a new key for my truck.
You got customer service when you were in fact a customer.
You don't get customer service from an ad platform unless you are a paying advertiser. Complaints from the eyeballs carry less weight than complaints from the money shovelers.
This sentiment is so often expressed, nobody challenges it as not making sense. Who redefined "paying" as meaning cash payment?
If you are a supplier of eyeballs, you are purchasing stuff in exchange for eyeballs. You are purchasing things, so you are a customer. Also, when you pay for an Android phone, you are a paying customer of Google, with cash, credit, or whatever. Lots of other things, but those are the first that come to mind.
“Paying” as in “cash payment” is literally the standard dictionary definition. It’s also where the top line number of any financial statement comes from. You are, in fact, the one redefining “paying” to suit your purposes.
In what way is that relevant? Which one are you providing FB for the privilege of using their service? Do you disagree that the dictionary definition of “pay” is as I described it?
It seems relevant that the idea of paying with things other than cash is pervasive and has been for longer than either of us has been alive.
I usually pay for things these days via an odd ritual in which I insert a small plastic card into a slot, and then, believe it or not, it is actually returned to me.
If I give you something in exchange for a chicken, and you maintain "I did not pay you, because a chicken is not cash", do you think the IRS will be convinced there was no transaction? Or s/chicken/bitcoin/.
So you do disagree with the dictionary definition? Is that what you’re saying? The fact the IRS wants to tax you for bartering with a chicken doesn’t change anything about the English language.
I'm not aware of disagreeing with a dictionary definition.
However, if a dictionary definition is presented to me, and it doesn't include a usage of which I am aware, that doesn't mean I disagree with it even then. It likely just means that something was left out - maybe because people still hope to sell dictionaries, or alternatively because, having given up on selling them, neither accuracy nor completeness is required to sell online ads.
I never "paid" attention to formal grammar in school, but this would seem to be the use of the word as a verb without an object.
As such, definition #13 seems applicable - "money, goods, etc." can't possibly be construed to mean "money and not goods, etc."...can it?
Definition #17 might also apply - you "pay" to use Facebook, oh how you pay...
Anyway, I don't have any particular issues with this entry, and I think the very first definition demonstrates that payment is commonly understood to include "doing something" which is an extremely broad category.
What’s debt do you owe to Facebook that you have to settle as in definition 1?
Definition 17, while fitting, is outside the scope of this current thread.
The point is, Facebook only cares about your experience with their service if you are paying them money. Even the IRS doesn’t care; Facebook doesn’t send you a 1099 for your use of their service, do they? The IRS doesn’t charge them tax on your data, do they? This would seem to indicate that the situation falls outside the “exchange of value for value” type definition of “pay.”
Pointing out that the IRS includes certain things in payment that you don't isn't a claim that some definition they use limits the usage of the word payment. The point is not that everybody should use the IRS definition for words. The IRS provides evidence about what people do in the world; you don't have to (nor was I asking for you to) accept them as the authority.
If I understand your dismissal of definition (1), you are implying that it is significant that definition (2) by contrast only says "money" and uses an example of dollars. I think that's too legalistic and just an artifact of the way things were edited. Dictionaries aren't written to prevent lawyers from finding loopholes, so I don't think you can count on everything being repeated absolutely uniformly. In actual legal documents, they define terms or phrases used repeatedly up front to reduce the repetition, and dictionaries don't seem to customarily do that. So again, definition (1) is evidence about how people behave in the world, not necessarily the definition we are using and from an unimpeachable authority.
No, you do not understand why definition 1 does not apply. The question was: what debt do you owe to Facebook to settle? I claim there is none. Therefore, you are not acting in accordance with definition 1 when providing information to or viewing ads from Facebook.
And if you have a g suite account, even if you're only paying a few dollars a month, you can call a "Google Support" number and get help. They say it only covers g suite services, but I've gotten help with issues with unrelated Google products through it.
In fairness, I did buy a phone directly from Google, and when it died recently, I did get actual support, at least someone to chat with who gave me an RMA. Perhaps I should have asked her my gmail questions.
Yes, google has real people in the support still. They usually ask "Is there something else I can help you with today?" That is a very open question :-)
Well, try this on for size: You aren't a customer of Facebook because you aren't paying Facebook... Facebook is paying you. For the privilege of being able to sell your eyeballs, they pay you a great deal more value in their services. They're putting down a non-trivial amount of cash on providing these services to you that you put no cash down on.
Cutting you off at the scale they are at is just no big deal to them, but you may in fact miss your payment.
What ruins HN for me is that people downvote for disagreement. The rules, last I checked, forbid that --- downvotes are for poor behavior, not because you disagree.
I've not seen any evidence that downvoting patterns have changed on HN in recent years, and the rules haven't changed either. If the community is being ruined, something else must be doing it.
Honestly I'm kind of baffled by (what I assume) is the moderation teams' stance on downvotes. I see so many seemingly reasonable comments with "edit: why am I being downvoted into oblivion". I'm not saying the site is ruined, but I can easily ask: how is that productive?
The whole point of having a downvote system is to correct people towards more productive behavior, no? If people don't know what they said wrong, how can they fix it?
If the the user can't figure out why they're being punished, and someone like me who has been on this site for a long time and is also going "why on earth did that get downvoted", then what purpose does it serve other than as a public flogging device?
Then again, considering that the site design hasn't changed to even have a up-vote button that works on mobile, I'm not exactly holding my breath that anything here could ever change.
Big tech, Google and Facebook in particular don't have "weird process gaps". What they have is a willful ignorance of any and all customer service. They are the vanguard of a new economy devoid of any and all notion of customer service. That quaint notion is too expensive in today's economy. Today, "customer service" is provided via a one way email black hole.
The only way anyone gets customer service from any unicorn is either by shaming them in a vial social media post or leveraging an internal contact. There used to be a time where one could call and talk to an actual person who actually worked for the company and might, just might be in a position to help. Those days began to end with the shift to offshore call centers and now have completely vanished thanks to canned email responses. I NEVER in my wildest dreams would have though "I wish Google had an offshore call center to support me".
Years ago, while flying British Air from Nairobi to London I had my camera equipment and dress shoes stolen by ground crew. I called up BA and explained that I had watched a person on the tarmac open my bag as it was being loaded onto the plain. I don't even know if the ground crewman was a BA employee or an Airport employee, but the BA rep on the phone told me she was mortified at what had happened and the next day they couriered a check to me. No bickering, no stonewalling, no email voids, just pure customer service.
That one great experience was snatched from the jaws of disappointment by a timely customer service rep with the authority to help and has meant that I will fly BA whenever it is possible over all other airline options. Would they do the same today? I doubt it, but they did it once and I will always be a fan as a result.