[perching_aix]

I'm not sure I'd agree with characterizing heavily asymmetric social interactions, such as customer service folks assisting tens or hundreds of people on the same issues every week and similar, a "necessarily messy part of human interaction for social cohesion".

[svieira]

It is well noted that it is very hard to get in contact with a human at Google when you have a problem. And then we wonder why Google never seems to understand its user base.

[perching_aix]

I don't think these two are actually related, and the automated contact options Google and other megacorporations provide were significantly behind on these developments the last time I tried interacting with them. Namely, e.g. Meta has basically no support line. There was even a thread here a few days ago chronicling that.

[fc417fc802]

Talking to a human doesn't imply that management necessarily cares about you or your usercase. Automated help used to be categorically bad due to lack of technology. Now it has the potential to be good. The ability of the tech and the alignment of the process are entirely orthogonal.