[version_five]

Somehow tech companies have normalized "no recourse" decisions, as well as dark patterns (or straight up impossibility) to prevent actual interaction with a person to resolve your issue.

I agree with you that part of the anti-monopoly legislation updates that are needed for platform companies is mandated visibility of a way to contact a person to resolve issues, and fines for exceeding a response time (maybe 20 minutes). I'm a libertarian and normally oppose this kind of thing, but the obvious abuses from every big tech company are too big to ignore and are exactly the kind of thing where government regulation does make sense.

[thaumasiotes]

> Somehow tech companies have normalized "no recourse" decisions

Yep.

> I agree with you that part of the anti-monopoly legislation updates that are needed for platform companies is mandated visibility of a way to contact a person to resolve issues, and fines for exceeding a response time

This would solve several problems that exist. What if legally-mandated customer support came to, say, 30% of Google's operating costs? What if it was 80%? It's not obvious that banning no-recourse decisions is an improvement to the world.

> (maybe 20 minutes)

Well, no, that's ridiculous. Legally mandated 20-minute response times means legally-mandated no-recourse decisions. Only the computer can respond quickly enough to comply.

[version_five]

I definitely see your point. At the same time, I think a lot of "tech" has really derived value by circumventing regulation and norms - easy examples are Uber and Airbnb which seemed great and legitimately "disrupted" tired industries, but it turned out a lot of stuff in those industries was the way it was for a reason, and when companies mature and end up putting that stuff back, their competitive advantage evaporates. That could also be true for ecommerce (broadly defined) - if they can't viable run a business without having x% of customers get shafted because they have an issue where they can't even talk to a person, is that still OK? Maybe it is. Is it OK that a company is able to destroy any competition by not offering personal service, so the people it screws have nowhere else to go? I'm not sure. Maybe it's not 20 minutes (I picked that because I know that if the regs just required a phone number companies would have a 30 hour wait time, or an infinite one pretending you're almost there) but there needs to be some standard - or a credible threat of competition that isn't there with platforms