[ValentineC]

> Nothing has helped, the Google forums are tumbleweed and there's no one to reach out to for what could be an algorithm change or something gone wrong.

The own-brand forum (Google, Microsoft, Apple) seem to be infested by netizens from lower-income countries trying to build online customer support portfolios by providing utterly useless answers.

That, or trying to game the system and getting shortlisted for a free trip to Google HQ for one of their contributor summits.

[mjlee]

I am genuinely curious if anybody knows of a non-trivial problem being solved on one of these forums, at least for a huge company that’s palming off customer support. It just feels like screaming in to the void, only for someone to (deliberately?) misinterpret your question and give you some generic advice.

[omcnoe]

Every suggestion when encountering a Windows OS bug is "run sfc /scannow" - has this ever solved a problem for anyone?

[locao]

It depends on what you call "non-trivial". I found answers on how to circumvent dumb macos bugs on Apple forums at least twice in the last 6 months. One related to displays, I was about to return a new USB-C monitor which wouldn't turn on. A silly issue, but it's a bug on my book, I wouldn't find the answer on the docs.

[mjlee]

That counts! I suppose I’m lucky enough to know of more reliable resources (macadmins.org Slack is an excellent community), and so I turn to them after reading more than a couple of threads on the Apple Support Community. Perhaps it has improved or I never dig deep enough.

I’d be at a complete loss for any obscure Windows issue though.