Meta now officially outsources support to the legal system | Hacker News Reader

Meta now officially outsources support to the legal system

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140 pointsgndk50 comments

Cries for help from customers of huge companies without any customer service like Stripe, Meta/Facebook and Google have become a common occurrence here on HN.

It seems like Meta now found an elegant solution.

I just noticed that the "account quality" page, which shows information about your ad account's compliance, now has a new section:

What can you do?

Go to court

You may have the right to challenge our decision in your country's courts.

PS: If anybody can help with my restricted Facebook ad account, which was disabled with no prior warning and no specific reason given, please let me know. My small business unfortunately relies on it.

I someone harms you and won't apologize and correct the mistake, then you must take them to court or they will simply keep doing it. Nobody but a court can help you. Nothing else that you or anyone here can do will get you the results that you want. This has always been true, even before Facebook pointed it out on their website.

Talk to a lawyer about it. A reputable lawyer won't charge you for an initial consultation, and they may know of any shortcuts that exist (such a contacting a regulatory agency, if one exists). Ask if closing your advertising account qualifies as tortuous interference, if that concept exists in your jurisdiction.

At least they're being honest now. Previously they would have pretended to have their own dispute resolution process staffed by humans that you might have spent hours trying to follow.

To make it easier for people to potentially help, which country are you in? :)

Germany, which, after some research, seems to be a plus in cases like this because of some consumer friendly court decisions we recently had here :)

The other way to view this is their ad network is a liability and they need to make clear bright lines.

No one wants far right fascist propaganda on their platform.

I'll play devils advocate here, but to me this doesn't sound like meta is saying take us to court over your ability to not advertise. It sounds like they were likely required to place the notice saying that you could take them to court over this.

Maybe I missed some other information?

Remember, Facebook ran ads in 2016 that likely violated tons of American laws regarding political targeting.

All I see here is the: if you really think you're not violating the law, present that in your jurisdiction.

Facebook is in so many countries that they aren't going to spend millions on lawyers to back up their policies. So they do the most conservative analysis possible and let the advertisers do the rest.

I can't imagine any other way if you want to reduce liability.

> I can't imagine any other way if you want to reduce liability.

Wild _crazy_ idea — it's really out there, but hear me out: You do as much business as you can do properly; support et al.

Sorry man, we are talking about advertising, not child molestation.

Hmm possible, but I haven't heard of any such regulation or court decision. I guess something like that would have made bigger news.

Like some other commenters mentioned, this is actually helpful for affected people/businesses because they might not know that they have legal recourse against Meta's decision. But still sad that they are not able to handle the whole appeals process better.

You said before that you are acting as a business here, so I don’t think these apply, but just to mention it.

(1) A trader who maintains a website or uses terms and conditions shall, […]

1. […] inform consumers of the extent to which it is willing or obliged to take part in dispute resolution procedures before a consumer conciliation body […]

I imagine there is equivalent legislation for B2B, this one applies to consumer matters.

Or maybe the notice is a catch-all for exactly this law.

DE: https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/vsbg/BJNR025410016.html#B... EN: https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/englisch_vsbg/englisch_vs...

I disagree that outsourcing support what is going on.

This is Meta's way of hammering home the finality of their decision. They want you to realize that there is no hope in pleading, calling, writing, or begging. Take them to court or go away.

Of course, they aren't concerned if they got the decision wrong unless your business happens to be Nike or Coca-Cola.

From my layman's understanding of EU/German law and what I read today while selecting an attorney to handle this, it's actually unlawful to make this decision without giving a specific reason and/or providing advance warning.

But they don't want to reveal the specific reason to prevent giving out information to actual abusers and/or don't actually have one, because some blackbox algorithm made the decision.

So they just reinstate the account to make you go away, but only if contacted through an attorney who argues the above. At least thats how I interpret the past successful cases that dealt with this.

> it's actually unlawful to make this decision without giving a specific reason and/or providing advance warning.

This is interesting! Can you share any more detail?

I tried to find a good source, but now I'm not sure anymore if it's really on EU level.

But there definitely was a 2021 decision of the German Federal Court of Justice (BGH, highest court). It was about normal "posts" on FB in the context of hate speech and its moderation, not ads/ad accounts, but might still be applicable.

I can only find German articles so you might need to use a translation service. https://dejure.org/dienste/vernetzung/rechtsprechung?Gericht...

This is a reasonable summary: https://www.cbh.de/news/geistiges-eigentum-medien-it/bgh-zur...

Translated quote from their last section:

While criminally relevant communication content may (and probably must) be removed immediately, the BGH takes the position that an internal complaints or counter-complaint procedure must be established in the case of violations that are not criminally relevant. The operator of a social network cannot simply throw a user out the door in the event of behavior that is not criminally relevant, but must announce an intended blocking with reasons and give the user concerned the opportunity to comment. The same applies to the deletion of contributions.

Another article: https://www.lto.de/recht/hintergruende/h/soziale-netzwerke-f...

And translated quote:

If Instagram does not provide a reason for blocking, i.e. the blocking of the profile is unfounded, it is illegal and must be revoked (cf. LG Munich II, judgment of December 16, 2020, Az. 11 O 5166/20; LG Bielefeld, judgment of March 30 .2021, Az. 5 O 63/21)

I’m that case I’d suggest you actually do take up a lawyer

There is also the EU's Platform to Business (P2B) regulation from 2020. But from my understanding it doesn't apply to advertising, only direct transactions on the platform. So in the case of Meta, this would be "Facebook Shops" / "Instagram Shopping". Convenient loophole.

Suspension and Termination of Service

If the platform decides to restrict, suspend or terminate its service to a business user, it must give the business user a statement of reasons. In the case of termination, this statement of reasons must be given 30 days in advance.

Handling of Complaints

Platforms must establish an internal complaint-handling system for business users. This system must be easily accessible and free of charge.

The platform must process all complaints within a reasonable timeframe and communicate the outcome to the complainant in an individualised manner.

See https://www.ccpc.ie/business/help-for-business/guidelines-fo... and https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=celex%3A...

I imagine you're right. I also imagine that actual abusers will be highly unlikely to get a letter sent from a lawyer, but they could easily contact support if that was an option.

Sincere good luck dealing with Meta.

(Must be nice to have laws like that)

If a particularly large set of FAAMG support cases need to be handled by the courts, we’ll need to increase taxes and expand the court systems to accommodate these cases.

My tax dollars shouldn't subsidize bigco's support system

Wait till you hear about your tax dollars subsidizing bigco's poverty wages.

Ah yes, the famous FAAMG poverty wages ;)

You joke, but they do indeed pay poverty wages to a lot of their staff. Google and Facebook have their content moderators work at essentially minimum wage, and Amazon has order pickers pee in bottles to keep up with the expected volume. Apple has their products manufactured by Foxconn, which is well-known for installing anti-suicide nets on their buildings.

Not everyone is a well-paid software engineer, you know.

While you're spiritually completely correct, they're all going through legal hoops to separate themselves from these employees.

I.e. they outsource the work to an agency which get contractors to do the work for them.

Over the years we've had such controversies from all multinational corporations.

I'm just pointing this out as I noticed your comment being grayed out, and hopefully the person that downvoted you did so because of this technicality, and not because you had the audacity to critique Apple

> they're all going through legal hoops to separate themselves from these employees.

I hope you don't mean to imply that it doesn't absolve them of the moral/ethical responsibility.

I wrote this

> I'm just pointing this out as I noticed your comment being grayed out, and hopefully the person that downvoted you did so because of this technicality, and not because you had the audacity to critique Apple

And you're asking that question, really?

Walmart.

So they can tax companies directly.

That will eventually come out of my paycheck.

I honestly can't tell if you are being serious or trying to make some joke. If you are being serious, what you said makes no sense to me.

Why do you think taxes that are applied to companies will instead be a tax against your paycheck?

Note: increased cost for products is not what we are talking about. Pretending a tax on everyone is the same as a price increase on an optional product misses the point entirely. So please, answer the question.

But more optimistic/: meta will stop being a front for antisocial messages that local jurisdictions wouldn't support.

In some countries, Facebook is the defacto internet.

Google are the same here. They prefer to just not deal with most problems unless they detect it's common enough to look into. It's all driven by the numbers. If you request support for something it probably costs multiple months of several customers to even look at the single support request so it's cheaper to just cut you out.

Where this gets really ugly is when one of these software behemoths have a monopoly on a service that you need access to. Google Ads is a good example. If you are rejected for advertising on your website you may have no other viable advertising options available to you and your monetization through ads is DOA.

I also use Google Ads and in my experience the customer service for ad buyers is a bit better than Meta's. But that's setting the bar very low and I read that they are equally impossible to reach should your account ever get disabled.

The advertising monopolies of Meta and Google are definitely a problem. The main issue is that all the big online advertising channels basically cover a different audience and/or portion of the buying cycle. So Facebook can not be replaced by Tiktok or Google ads and vice versa. For many businesses, especially smaller ones, only a few advertising channels work profitably (I'd call it channel/offer match), so if you get disabled, your business is dead.

Of course, it's also helpful if you only pay minimal taxes on your monopoly profits, compared to your customers who have to suck up the normal rates.

So, Facebook is basically saying:

"Fuck you, sue me if you dare. (And don't bother us anymore expecting any help, because F.U.)".

Nice, but considering the abysmal support of Google, FB, etc., the only surprising aspect of this is that it was not done sooner.

Considering that until some time ago there was no alternative, if you were banned, it was the end of it, no possibility of appeal, I would say that having a third party act as a judge is not a bad idea. I am in favor of the change.

These large corporations outsource a ton of stuff to regular people, customers or not, and governments. This democratic republic has been captured by money, greed, and corporations. It's dystopian and backhanded.

This is a very misleading title. Informing you of that you might have legal rights is not the same as “outsourcing support to the legal system.”

That is actually really fair. You know what to expect.

Is it possible that they are legally forced to show that text?

From what I've heard, this really works and most people either don't know about it or don't believe it. This could end up really helping people.

Will a court force Meta to do business with you? I’d be surprised if that is the case. If you do try to bring them to court, I’d expect they use every capability they have to completely disable your access to all Meta services. Not just ads, your Facebook accounts, instagram, etc.

I have no idea from a legal standpoint. It's certainly a fear and I guess the main reason why people like me are reluctant to go this route.

why would they? you have no legal right to do business with meta

Hope so. Just started the process and noticed this new section after going there to copy some information for my attorney.

After months of unsuccessful cold emailing and filling out every form I could find, this is my last resort. Probably should have done it earlier.

It's sad that this is apparently the only way to get somebody to take a look.

why this seems like all other recent "get rid of the small people/business" like at twitter, reddit etc?

5 years ago i speculated to a friend that one day these behemoths will be the-internet, and will cut it out on their wish (Or algo-rhytm, all the same). news, music, ads, whatever - it's their territory now, get-off-my-lawn

Let's see how far it goes..

These companies must profit handsomely through cutting customer support.

not really the point, but i am curious what ads they have a problem with

Me too, but they probably won't tell me.

Actually, the disabled personal ad account has been inactive for 9 years. These were just some experiments I did back then to test out the platform when I first got into online marketing.

Since then I have always been using a business ad account, but due to the restriction of the personal account, I can not manage ads in any account.

I ran exactly 3 ads in the personal ad account, each of them for only a few euros:

1) Page likes for my UEFA Euro 2012 fanpage during the event (it literally says "Click like if you support the German national team!" lol)

2) Website clicks to a protein powder shop

3) Website clicks to a fitness course

Just checked and found that I still have the confirmation emails for those ("Your ad has been approved"). Didn't find any rejection emails for this account, so I assume there were never any declined ads in the account.

Maybe the fact that I used a promotional 50€ ad credit that FB gave out back then tripped up the algorithm nearly 10 years later.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

The fuck? Why should anyone advertise on facebook with so much risk to your business?

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