[aeturnum]

My "oh google maps" story was that I was hanging out at a new cider bar in my neighborhood and asked the owner why I couldn't find it on google. They said they got a message that they'd been banned for listing boosting - which they said they didn't do any had no idea. So I reached out to an acquaintance who knew a lot of maps people. Some investigation later it was entirely unclear why the bar was banned - it was some conflict with overlapping systems deep in the map bowels - and the bar is visible again. It's just good luck that the owner happened to talk to me and I happened to know someone who looked into it!

[rcbdev]

This kind of support should be mandated for any digital utilities company such as Google.

The difference between small business success and insolvency was based on the shier luck of being graced with the presence of someone in contact with the priesthood of Google, where no real contact from the plebian citizenry is allowed.

Exactly this kind of thing is why the EU feels the need to regulate the shit out of U.S. big tech.

[inigyou]

I think in the EU this is mandated. Every algorithmic profiling decision must come with an explanation and human appeal, under GDPR?

[vovavili]

Legislating costly support for a free and accessible service is how that service stops being free and accessible.

[rcbdev]

You need to legislate effectively.

This is something U.S.-Americans often do not (want to) understand. The misconception often is that just because their legislative efforts are an ineffective, lobby-ridden crapshoot, that the free market is automatically the best answer to everything.

You can affect really good and positive change through lawmaking, the entire point of it is to regulate and intervene when the wellbeing of the populous and fair competition is in jeopardy.

[inigyou]

If you can't afford to run the service without shitting all over everyone, then you can't afford to run the service.

Same argument for the living wage.

[lurkerforawhile]

they have four trillion dollars buddy they'll be okay.

[lotsofpulp]

The price of the most recent transaction of a share times the number of outstanding shares is not equal to spendable cash.

[vovavili]

These are exactly the kind of companies that have enough data and analysis to avoid bleeding money.

[lurkerforawhile]

so externalizing environmental and social costs is fine, as long as the numbers are big enough?

[vovavili]

I am not sure how any of this follows.

[areoform]

These things can accumulate and ruin lives. I'm surprised that there haven't been more class action lawsuits against "errors" like these. Because it might seem like a benign accident -- but how many people have lost important parts of their lives – banking, photos of their children and more – because "computer says no?"

Eventually, these systems will be mostly artificially generated, and perhaps the machines will have fewer error rates than the humans. Perhaps not. But how many humans will understand the machines well enough to ask these questions in the first place?

Machines were supposed to free us from bureaucracy. Not freeze it everywhere with few avenues for escape.

I have had an encounter with something like this via Wise / Transferwise. It has been half a decade and nada. And I estimate that it has cost me north of $20k+ over that time.

Google, Wise and heck Maps were started with the ambition of adding something to the world — e.g. Google's original "organize all knowledge" mission - but over time cruft accrues and these companies rapidly accumulate negative side effects / drift away from their core mission.

When was the last time Google / Alphabet / whatever did something that involved improving access to the world's knowledge? They've degraded their search to the point of uselessness and beyond. Slowly alienated their best researchers and engineers. And done their best to turn away from the entity that made Google Books — "we'll scan all the books for the good of all humankind."

[inigyou]

Google just lost a lawsuit by an unnamed big media company in Germany because its AI kept telling people the media company was a scam. This is the only form of feedback that companies like Google actually listen to.

[andsoitis]

> I have had an encounter with something like this via Wise / Transferwise. It has been half a decade and nada. And I estimate that it has cost me north of $20k+ over that time.

What happened? I also use Wise.