Show HN: Pls Fix – Hire big tech employees to appeal account suspensions

[jpdpeters]

https://plsfix.co/

I used to work for Facebook and Google and constantly got asked questions like "Hey, my Instagram account got blocked for no reason. Could you help me get it back?". I'd say yes, it would take me 10 min to fill out an internal form and 1 week later the account was back.

Even years after leaving, I still get these requests. So I built a marketplace for them. Let me know what you think!

[constantcrying]

Seems insane. Surely every single company would fire you for doing that. If you put this in its proper term it is "corruption" and you should definitely worry about the legal implications of doing this.

[MaxBarraclough → constantcrying]

Agreed. It's based on accepting personal payment to spend company time and resources doing something other than what the employer wants. Sounds like low-key bribery to me.

I imagine they're aware of this. The FAQ section states that employees are kept anonymous, but also says they verify if it's really a Google employee by sending an email to their google.com email address, which Google can of course see.

[JohnMakin → constantcrying]

For meta/facebook at least it’s long been an open secret that the fastest way to get something done on the platform is to have a connection that works at meta.

[8f2ab37a-ed6c → JohnMakin]

Same thing with Google Ads, often your account will get suspended for no sane reason and you need an insider to reactivate it, or you're starting from scratch. Appealing only sends you through a kafkaesque circle of hell of support staff who are unable to answer any questions or fix anything.

It's effectively a black market that formed because the official channels abdicated from their responsibilities or provide a terrible service even to paying customers, at least SMBs who aren't big enough for a Google to care.

[romanhn → JohnMakin]

Depends on what "something" is. When I was at FB, they were very clear that you can request account help internally only for your immediate family (and maybe closest friends, I forget) - you are, in essence, vouching for them with your employment as collateral. Helping random strangers or even acquaintances was out of the question. In the early days it was possible, but the team responsible for this stuff got overwhelmed.

On the other hand, after I left, I once needed help with a developer-facing page that was broken. For the life of me I could not figure out how to get in touch with a human, so reached out to an ex-colleague and the issue was resolved within a few days. I don't love having to resort to this for many reasons.

[thih9 → constantcrying]

At the same time it’s Airbnb for tech support. It just needs a note that people performing the fixes aren’t employees in this context, they’re independent contractors acting in their own name.

Tongue in cheek. I like how it highlights the enshittification brought by both 1. lack of customer support and 2. by gig economy.

[maxrmk]

On one hand: an action virtually guaranteed to get you fired.

On the other: $150

I used to work at FB and they have a team that tries to catch employees selling access like this. I can’t imagine risking that for what is essentially an hours pay for most tech roles there.

[blast → maxrmk]

yes and it seems unscrupulous to take kickback money for this. on the other hand, as someone who has one of these problems, I'd be only too happy to pay an insider to fix it. It's not just the technical problem (account suspension etc.), it's the injustice of the thing in the first place, and then the rage of being put in an endless hell loop.

[TulliusCicero → maxrmk]

Yeah, as someone who works for one of these companies, no fucking way would it be worth the risk to me.

[multjoy]

How do you verify that the requestor isn't just some Joe/Joeline Schmo who's account has been blocked for no reason, as opposed to someone who has been legitimately blocked, say for CSAM or other legislative reason, or is otherwise operating against the service's TOS?

When Mike Meta gets canned because he's tried to un-suspend an actual terrorist account (because you know that they're monitoring internal mentions), are you on the hook for that?

[xyst → multjoy]

I suppose as a "verified employee" at the company. You could do your own investigation prior to filing the appropriate paperwork. But that would often result in its own paper trail getting generated and leading back to you anyways.

Honestly, the risks here outweigh the benefits. Not sure why anybody would do this in the first place.

"6 figure job with stable income" vs "one time payment of $100 from rando on the internet"

It's a no brainer.

Honestly smells like a sting operation to me.

[harry_ord]

Going by the title I was hoping this was about the choice these companies have made to maze like appeals and support service. This solution solution to the problem is kinda cursed

[hurutparittya]

I had to check if it was April Fools' Day. This is one of the most disturbing posts I've seen in a while. I sincerely hope that people who profit off of this will get fired at the very least.

[MrDarcy → hurutparittya]

If you’re one of the employees who sign up for this, beware. Facebook will surely sue this guy and the payment paper trail will be the first thing he’s required to give over in discovery.

I don’t see how he can guarantee you’ll be anonymous for long.

[matsemann → MrDarcy]

On what grounds could they sue?

[bee_rider → matsemann]

The employees are clearly engaging in fraud by doing non-work activities on the clock. The companies know this because they haven’t hired anyone to do customer service.

[robxorb]

If this makes money, big tech could open a lucrative market for themselves, suspending more and more accounts, and requesting higher and higher "priority fees" to unsuspend them. (Hmm... somehow reminds me of organised crime...)

[djtriptych]

Anyone who's ever worked at any big tech company has got to just have a chuckle at how fast you know you'd be fired for being anywhere near this.

[bee_rider]

It is seems wildly corrupt and unethical if somebody would built a business with such bad customer service that people are willing to bribe their way around it.

[wojciii]

This is no different than corruption .. caused by terrible design from the likes of shitter etc.. I'm sure it will be popular.

I fucking hate shitter for locking me out of my account but I refuse to pay ransom to get it back.

I instead stopped using social media besides anonymous social media and my mental health improved immensely.

[laweijfmvo]

The reason asking an employee is the only way to get an account unblocked is because it solves the most difficult part of the process: verifying the user is who they say they are. When internal employees fill out that form, you're agreeing SEVERAL times that you are 100% sure you know the person and they aren't compromised.

This service throws all of that out the window.

[xyst]

This has to be a sting operation.

No way would I risk my stable 6-figure job for some random to get their account unlocked. Especially not for "$100" lol.

If the account was locked for fraudulent activity or worse, something illegal like CSAM. That paper trail will easily lead back to you. Bye bye job and possible investigation by authorities.

On the upside, at least you will get "free" security from the FBI when you are put on the watchlist.

[bluehatbrit]

This could be great satire. The fact it's actually serious is both surprising and sad.

[icedchai]

This site is bad, but what's worse is it may be the only way to get your problem solved!

[marklar423]

This is a real problem that needs solving, but I can see this sort of thing at scale leading big tech companies to not allow their employees to do this anymore.

[jpdpeters → marklar423]

It's definitely a grey zone. I am definitely keeping all tech employees' info private, nothing is displayed on the site.

If it becomes large, I imagine big tech companies would try to fight it, but let's cross that bridge when we get to it.

[kyle-rb → jpdpeters]

Won't tech companies just post honeypot bounties and see who bites?

[hluska → jpdpeters]

I find this disingenuous. You explain how you verify that the employees work for big tech on your FAQ. It would be trivial for companies of this size to go backwards.

I’m sure your motives were good, but I’d urge you to think this through.

[kentbrew]

Oh, great. Simjacking as a service.

[flipbrad]

EU law to the rescue: https://www.eu-digital-services-act.com/Digital_Services_Act...

[mtnGoat]

Maybe the folks at these companies writing the corny AI that bans people for posting pictures of cups and flowers, are the same ones getting kickbacks for fixing the problem?

I’m sorry, I just can’t help but be cynical about this. These platforms have next to zero actual customer support, the AI inmate is running the asylum and the users suffer the most.

[antifa]

For budgeting purposes, I'm trying to amortize the cost of freespeech. Twitter keeps it simple, free speech is $8/month there. How much do you think I should budget monthly/yearly for account suspension appeals? Do you plan on offering a subscription option?

[matsemann]

This is modern art, highlighting the absurd difficulty of getting in touch with a human that can fix your issues at big tech.

[Euphorbium]

Seems like something from darknet.

[ashrafsam]

we've been struggling with verifying our business on Meta and tried many ways to get around it with no success, do you think you can help with it? can you reach out to founders@activepieces.com?

[jpdpeters → ashrafsam]

I just shot you an email

[ryanmcdonough → ashrafsam]

I reckon advertising the fact you're willing to pay to get around this, which I expect is probably against ToS and the employment agreement with the company name isn't the best choice.

[ashrafsam → ryanmcdonough]

we're not willing to do anything against the ToS, I haven't checked them yet and we'll do things in compliance with policies, I'm just posting a problem and looking for a valid credible solution. thank you for the note!

[alchemist1e9]

Plot twist - this a honeypot operation by a group of tech companies to find employees to fire.

[MingFengLiu]

What a wonderful, terrible thing.

[Terr_]

[Gripe] I'd love to have this for Reddit, where my decade+ account was randomly thrown into Kafkaesque censored limbo.

In short: One more morning I woke up and it was shadowbanned for no discernible reason, I used the appeals page, the appeal was granted with an apology... but it wasn't actually fixed, and I can't contact anyone because the appeals page says my account is already in good-standing.

... And attempting to use another old account to ask for help led it to be killed the exact same way.

Well, at least I'm spending more time on other hobbies I guess.

[DANmode → Terr_]

I'd love the anecdata on what type of commenter you were.

[Terr_ → DANmode]

Almost never posted links/text submissions, but daily comment-discussions to the tune of 524k comment karma. Everything done on one account except for some resume-review throwaways.

Interestingly "new" Reddit shows everything on my user-page as [Removed], but on *cough* proper Reddit you can still see content, although if you try following a permalink you'll see (or rather not-see) that it's shadowbanned. (They also sometimes removed people who replied to me.)

https://old.reddit.com/user/terr_/

[DANmode → Terr_]

Politically interested, Deus Ex, Birds Aren't Real, could read and write beyond cat memes — starting to see why they didn't "want yer kind around" there!

[throwaway81523]

There's an old joke(?) where a guy yells to his neighbor, "Sam! My house is on fire! Quick, who do you know at the fire department?"

[mtnGoat → throwaway81523]

This seems too apply to healthcare and legal matters in most of the US as well.

[RcouF1uZ4gsC]

There is a big difference between helping a friend or acquaintance just being nice to doing something for money.

Once you add money into something, there is a whole level of scrutiny and legal and ethical implications.

Like others have been saying, this is the type of thing that will get you fired immediately. You are not allowed to take your internal access and go into business for yourself selling it.

[kirstenndb]

How do you verify employees? Are they really going to sign up to this?

[jpdpeters → kirstenndb]

For now, I'm verifying them via their work email.

So far, I've gotten decent feedback from my former colleagues and friends in big tech. Most of them take some sort of compensation for helping restore Insta / ad accounts - this is just a more direct way.

[tdb7893 → jpdpeters]

I'm shocked people take compensation for that. I would've felt super weird taking money for it (not least because with how much I make charging for a favor feels like an incredibly crass thing to do)

[killingtime74 → tdb7893]

So you'd do it for free?

[superb_dev → killingtime74]

Yes, of course I would. Would you not?

[consumer451 → jpdpeters]

Do you vet the client side of the transaction as well?

[ilrwbwrkhv]

Yes this is excellent. companies usually provide these services anyway to large clients. This is a win win for both the small clients and the lowly worker drone at Google.

[jpdpeters → ilrwbwrkhv]

Having been one of those drones, I can attest that it will be very popular. :D

Thanks!

[camillomiller]

We think your tone deafness is so outrageous it’s almost comical.

[skeptrune]

Lmao, this is a fantastic idea. Extremely needed.

[jpdpeters → skeptrune]

Thanks!

[pugworthy]

Please add…

Emergency Room staff willing to get you looked at faster because you think you are “really sick”

Building inspectors willing to sign off on your home house wiring because you’ve “done it for years and it’s fine”

Burning Man ticketing because you swear your internet was fine but died at noon on the sale day.

Dang because your downvoted comment was just misunderstood and deserves more upvotes.

/s