
Are You a Human at Google? - dsr12
https://twitter.com/signalapp/status/1097920269484646401
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JohnJamesRambo
Google’s approach to customer service is completely appalling. Amazon is
equally enormous and complex and I can talk any time I like with a human via
chat on their website.

~~~
porpoisely
That's because to google, you aren't a customer, you are the product. Amazon
treats you well because you are their paying customer. Google treats their
customers ( the ad companies ) well.

~~~
benologist
Shouldn't perpetuate this myth, especially to excuse their behavior. Google
took money from Play Store developers to publish apps, and they take payment
in many other areas of their businesses too. That's exactly what a customer is
in most modern economies.

You can actually see them paying lip service to some customer obligations,
like the self-serve refund button on the Play Store when you buy apps because
in modern economies it can be illegal to refuse all refunds as policy, and
their fake support system would make that defacto policy.

Steam got fined $3 million for that just in Australia which represents a small
percent of their users and modern economies, Valve were denying refunds
globally for years and made drastic changes to their refund policy to avoid
further liability.

[https://www.pcmag.com/news/350574/valve-fined-3m-in-
australi...](https://www.pcmag.com/news/350574/valve-fined-3m-in-australia-
over-steam-refunds)

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kop316
One if the Twitter updates alluded to it, but they can make a repository for
F-Droid and have their users use that to get the latest updates

~~~
marssaxman
I'd really rather do that anyway than put up with Signal's self-updating nag-
screen process.

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maxander
There's an entire genre of posts on HN which amount to someone telling a
terrible customer support story about some FAANG-y company, with the result
(and likely intention) that the attention forces the FAANG to turn around,
generously fix the problem, and offer the author profuse apologies and
freebies to show how nice they are.

Not only is it sad that the same thing is now being done by a _well-known
company_ , but what makes it even worse is that this post probably hasn't
gotten enough attention to make Google care.

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libertine
Isn't this getting out of hand?

I mean, this should be a symbiotic relationship because these platforms grew
thanks to the creator's content (apps, videos, etc) and creators grew thanks
to the network effects of these platforms.

When it becomes unbalanced, shouldn't these platforms have the responsibility
towards their content creators because they were given the tools to make their
livelihood on it?

We all know it's a problem of scale, it would be extremely hard/expensive to
have human customer support after a certain threshold - but maybe, just maybe,
if that threshold is reached doesn't that mean that they're too big to give a
proper support, therefore they're too big for a platform?

What's the benefit of a massive platform for users and creators if there's no
proper support/control?

I just think regulators should look at this. Not to break them up (could be a
solution), but to make them accountable for what they've created. Maybe AI
will one day take care of it all, but currently it's not cutting it, and this
trial and error approach to fine tune such systems is more damaging then
anything else.

The pros of "oh it will be great in the future" do not weight more then the
cons of the status quo.

Maybe I'm being unreasonable, I've witnessed waves of this, and came to my
awareness upon the media outrage of brands ads being displayed in ISIS
propaganda and stuff. It was quickly patched when it got to Google's pockets
(though it still have flaws, yet media investment is pretty much assured now).
What about the rest?

~~~
nasmorn
They get 30% if the revenue, how can they not be able to afford the support.
The just don’t give a faang

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rchaud
The more Google behaves like this (slow, lumbering, unresponsive to devs,
privacy issues etc), the more I start looking at alternative OS phones. Google
Maps, Bing Maps, Uber, Insta etc. all have robust web apps these days, and
unlike apps that silently grant themselves permissions upon install/update, a
web app has to ask the user each time.

~~~
metalchianti
Storage is a factor too!

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jialutu
Unfortunately their humans are not much better either, where I've found that
they have a "I don't give a sh*t" attitude. The best way I've found to get
through to Google is to go directly to the person who is responsible for the
product, in which case they will just log a ticket and hope for the best.

~~~
ParanoidShroom
Too bad I have to agree with this one. Their process of manually checking is
really very poor. Looking at Apple their process I never thought it was that
hard, but I'm wrong. It is just very complex.

But as an indie dev that has 50% of all apps currently suspended for bogus
reason, I'm frustrated, angry and looking for a more stable platform.

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your-nanny
This is the height of absurdity. Google get your shit together.

