by pogue | 2025-10-26 03:03:40+00:00
I loathe the loss of human customer service and moderation (of social media, online gaming, etc) to AI. I constantly hear reports of AI misidentifying speech in in-game chat that results in people getting banned. As well as getting randomly banned/flagged on social media for "community guidelines" or some other esoteric nonsense.

Then, of course, when you attempt to contact said company's customer service, there is none to be had. Only chat bots that not only cannot solve your issue, but can give you inaccurate information. So, what do you do then? There's nothing to be done, you're stuck in an indefinite limbo of customer service purgatory, only being able to guess at what to do.

I, myself, was banned off Instagram. I had a private account, so all I did was view other people's posts and occasionally left comments on their posts, never anything obnoxious or rude. Out of the blue, I received an email telling me my account was suspended and I needed to verify myself by giving them my phone number to get an SMS, check a reCAPTCHA box, and send a selfie to show I was human. I did that and it said I would be unsuspended within an hour, but I got an email stating "We reviewed your account and found that it still doesn’t follow our Community Standards. As a result, your account has been permanently disabled."

Of course, there's no one to follow up with and I'm left racking my brain trying to figure out what I could have done to cause this. Did I reply to someone inappropriately? Was it because I was using a VPN? What could I have possibly done?

We've seen that some people who have been banned on social media find that, essentially the only way to get unbanned was to know someone at Meta [1] or get your story published in the media to get their attention [2] or even resort to SLEEPING with Meta employee(s) to get your account issues resolved [3].

Alternately, some Meta employees have turned unbanning people into a side gig [4] [5] as they know that there is no legitimate way to get your account back. When I inquired about this on Reddit, I was pointed to a site that showed offers of resolution to these problems cost in the $1000-5000 range.

It has gotten to a point that the use of AI has turned life into a literal Kafkaesque nightmare. How soon will AI take the place of customer service for actual necessary services like calling your local DMV to make an appointment or even taking over 911 services? The promises made by AI companies about this software making our lives easier has merely become a drive to implement AI into every possible facet of life, not to benefit anyone, but to drive up profits.

This is rent seeking* by it's purest definition.

* [Rent-seeking is the act of growing one's existing wealth by manipulating public policy or economic conditions without creating new wealth.] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent-seeking

[1] When Knowing Someone at Meta Is the Only Way to Break Out of “Content Jail” https://www.eff.org/pages/when-knowing-someone-meta-only-way...

[2] Meta suspended his business's social accounts — it took him a month to reach a human https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/funktasy-meta-ban-9.6932525

[3] OnlyFans Star Says She Slept With Meta Employees to Get Instagram Unbanned https://www.newsweek.com/onlyfans-star-slept-meta-employees-...

[4] Inside job: When an account gets hacked, social media giant Meta offers little support, spawning a shadowy network of brokers and Meta employees who profit from helping users get back online https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-instagram-fac...

[5] Meta reportedly punished dozens of employees for offering an inside line to account recovery https://www.theverge.com/2022/11/17/23464297/meta-allegedly-...