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Comment by multjoy | Hacker News Reader

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?

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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.

The same way problems get resolved when someone's sob story goes viral? Presumably an employee sees it and files a ticket that says "hey this stranger is having problem XYZ." Then a support person investigates and takes the appropriate action.

(Just a guess, I don't know the process at Meta.)

Also, my understanding is that a common cause for an account to become frozen is that the account has been (perceived to be) taken over by someone else. Having an accelerated side channel to restore access to those accounts needs to be implemented with great care.

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