All social media companies with revenue over $1 billion shall devote 3.5% of their stock worth to hiring and training accessible customer service staff.
(The number 3.5 is deliberately minuscule to show you how cheap the CEOs of these companies are.) The most consequential decision of the 21st-century - aside from the waging of wars and immigration policies - was the grand -and penny pinching - conclusion that since social media companies did not sell hardware, they were not in need of customer service. In another post, I will list dozens of instances that arise on a daily basis where human employees being in on policy decisions is crucial. Safety is certainly one. For decades now, your power and Wi-Fi company can be alerted to and act on an outage within minutes, but a multi-billion dollar company like TikTok is slow in removing things like the Blackout Challenge, which has led to the death of over a hundred kids. And some pranksters that are dangerous to others and themselves need to be removed.
One other is that many of us did not and still do not know the ABCs of how to use these services. (Tech bros tend to assume that others possess a similar starting point bed-of-knowledge when it comes to all technology. We don’t.)
Customer service has always been a huge employer of college graduates, artists, and people with liberal arts degrees. It has traditionally been a huge employer for people of color and allow them to get a foothold in the company with a decent salary and stock benefits. It makes it a lot easier for these companies to promote from within, because entry-level positions like customer service show who has initiative, for example, in learning a second language. And these companies clearly lack people of color. Facebook had their Latina cafeteria and janitorial employees walk out twice demanding better wages. We all had to listen to Google, Twitter and Facebook put out stock bullshit responses when they were caught with so few managers of color. They wound up hastily hiring people with academic backgrounds who clashed with them over the issue of racism and wound up being let go. But had they had their own black and Latino employees from the beginning, they would've known exactly whom to promote. Not to mention the fact that if you can afford to give $90 million to BLM, millions to Ibram X. Kendi, offer $1 billion for a promising AI specialist, you can afford to hire customer service people to answer the phone, explain how the product works and humanize the experience. But they didn't. Because this what the moral philosophy let “the market decide” means in real life.
Millions of liberal arts majors are graduating college each year with the worst prospects ever. Economic libertarians enjoying mocking every tenet of socialism, but this raw display of Tech CEO greed is a primary cause for people being drawn to it. Again: There is no intellectual or moral logic that unlike a clothing retailer, a social media company does not need to employ humans who help to troubleshoot. My suspicion is that this precedent was set when early companies like MySpace and Friendster decided not to have anyone answering the phone. Then the larger companies that exist today followed suit.
There is also the matter of the “brown M&Ms.” Many business books use Van Halen's famed concert contract rider, came up with by David Lee Roth, that seemingly trivially asked for for a bowl of M&Ms to be prepared before every concert with the brown ones removed. This actually served a purpose, which was to see whether the other requests pertaining to the safety of the ropes that Roth would descend from were gone over. Yet none of the venture capitalists seem to ask social media CEOs questions such as “Who's your Urdu translator,” or “What is your plan for when things go South?” And now the CEOs of these companies are moving in the opposite direction and trying to replace their bare-bones Trust and Safety department with AI. This after a riot broke in Myanmar during the early days of Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg instructed all his employees to respond with the stock “We didn't know!” regarding the potential dangers that a poorly trained and staffed Social Media company could lead to. Yah right.
Basic rules and company policies need to be posted and equally enforced.
What an irony that while endless brow-beating takes place regarding the deep state, private social media companies are among the least transparent.
We still don't know the basis for being de-platformed, (sometimes due to the maneuvers of people who have gamed the system against us,) and still have no reason method for appealing the decision. This is pure cost-cutting greed. The end result is countless books and public intellectuals pontificating as to how we are Bowling Alone and all the Ted-Lasso-esque attention being paid to “taking care of our mental health” while we live with endless anxiety and uncertainty in terms of what is transpiring with our social media accounts.
Suspend or expel those who make death, assault and rape threats online.
People get arrested for this, particularly after President Trump and Charlie Kirk. Besides, there is no genuine free speech if people who make threats in the middle of a political debate are allowed to remain. This is another arena where having a contact person by phone and email, and not just the farce of AI would lead to greater meaningful employment for people with liberal arts degrees, (regardless of their background or political leanings.) And would lead to a more satisfying experience for those who remain online. I say remain because we don't know how many millions have quit out of the disgust of having to endure these threats. A big deal was made out of the 2000 journalist that were canceled roughly from 2017 to 2023. But nothing about the kids who made trip up the algorithm and find ourselves being kicked off of some social media company a week before their birthday or some special occasion. It is a farce that people were $200 billion can't employ Americans and people all over the world to engage on the phone. The way things work now, only people with connections, such as influencer, Benny Johnson, get a response. The rest of use marvel at the lack of one. Consistently enforced rules will also end the fact that only those with no variety or connections such as Megan Murphy a friend of Joe Rogan are allowed back on platforms such as X. It is also laughable remembering however there is an outcry of someone with name recognition such as a journalist gets deplatformed off of Facebook. Mark Zuckerberg quickly reinstate and claims that a mistake was made. Meanwhile, those of us who are anonymous just have to resign that we are the platform with no explanation or basis for appeal or live with the uncertainty that we may be on any given day.
Charge any of these venture capitalist or tech CEOs 50% of their assets if they move to another country after studying here and starting a company.
We all know the forest of rising tide not lifting any boats in this day and age. Now the crap about the rich paying the bulk of America's taxes has been lied by the fact that more and more are beginning to relocate to places such as Singapore, India, or New Zealand.