[taormina]

That is absolutely hilarious. There is definitely a middle ground between today’s “spend $0 on live human support” and “spend X% of YT revenue on the support a platform like YT demands”. There exists an X% where they are plenty profitable. It’s a video hosting platform subsidized by the largest ad network in the world.

[lolinder]

They don't spend $0 on live customer support, they spend X%.

At their scale there will always be high profile stories like this unless and until they spend enough to support every single user who runs into problems with their automated systems. Spending that much is completely cost prohibitive, so we should never expect to reach a point where we stop seeing stories like this.

[taormina]

What’s the job title of that live customer service agent? And how do you reach them? To the observing world, they act like it’s $0. There’s a world of difference in “sure, this is an always an expected edge case” and “oh well, let’s just let our systems systematically screw everyone”. We have this dog and pony show every week. Most days of the week. They don’t only destroy creators who do well on YT, you just don’t usually get critical traction on your Tweet. Then you what do you do? Beg on HN and pray?