As the web began, the independent websites and forums could exist with whatever relevancy they proclaimed. They used email, even. Some were creators who wanted to be contacted about their work, and some preferred no such thing. It seemed evident that some kinds of work were meant to spawn discussion, and others were provided as-is to stand in place of one.

The why is the why, but the how has changed dramatically in the decades since. Companies like Meta have captured portfolios of social media companies which exist to tax your data. If you wish to give feedback, they put you through rigorous trials with sculpted options they “want” to hear about. You are being served by a hollow-minded list no more sophisticated than a phone menu, unattended by Design.

If you have some other topic then their software engineers simply need not allow it. The software writers aren’t generally in charge of Content. They lay track in front of Product-minded managers who arrive at that Content. It is possible at the right companies with the right managers that the engineers can find opportunity to influence Content or Product, but that is not what is expected of them. Most wouldn’t have the skill anyway.

Customer Service from nationally-centralized services has become this latter type of communication, a barrier to anything more than was provided. It is deployed with a mind to preempt discussion, even when doing so honestly. It is planned, and it is inevitably outsourced. In those settings, it is crucial—for certain values of responsible—to minimize costs of all non-money-making activities.

Audible, the audiobook company with Amazon in 2024 had an offensive Customer Support system, and still will. In general, there is objectively no method of providing feedback that they can read or collate. These companies possess a modern natural language summary miracle technology and they are wasting it on Nothing. They are inept at their goal and their task.

They have no interest in what an individual says. Amazon doesn’t have a bedside manner that implies there was ever any user-facing interest on offer anyway, but they hold an unassailable collection of books that are in demand. They make certain they are the best choice to new and existing accounts, and more broadly Amazon will publish anything directly from users to their book stores.

The best way to get support from a corporation is to be a creator it likes, but we know status is fickle. Faceless YouTube can break you without explanation. PayPal can seize your money without explanation. Audible support not providing a path for app feedback is tiny, and yet the same attitude is present in all examples.

You don’t have their permission to give feedback when they have premeditated how not to receive it. Small and medium companies naturally do their best to support public contact that is efficient, but what are these richest companies in the history of the Earth doing to improve their public contact?

They curtail us, and take no comment. Not only can they do this, they are Designed to. Malicious or not, it is the same wall of silence.

Companies have deployed AI to do their terrible jobs worse. They use generative AI to contribute nothing valuable, circular or imagined. They don’t learn from workflow yet. Conceivably these companies can succeed at making smarter bots, but at present they deploy LLMs as a hallucination-prone shield, while obliterating their own back lines of People.

The attack is from within. You are forced to work for companies that have a capitalist duty to fire you now. They require your loyalty with talk of family or mission, but they do not make good on that internal branding. You will not change those companies. Do not believe in discussion that copes by imagining companies will return to hiring People for quality.

The next wave of AI progress and workflow training will be a second strike made on you, and your time spent hoping will be shown to have been a bad method of preparation. Do not waste your time arguing if AI is good or bad. The issues surely do matter, but they are not solvable without the recognition that this toothpaste does not go back into its tube.

Unsupervised labyrinths are the foyer of every company suffering from giantism, while the facade out front projects reputation and branding to anyone not looking so close. Stoic in the face of feedback, companies sometimes flinch when supposedly useless social media barks and wags the news media.

Customer Service is not coming back because it is not real; It was a social agreement that came from companies and customers needing each other, but by aggregating our behavior the companies have no need of any of us individually.

Without your feedback they still have so much data that they cannot look at it on a small enough scale for you to matter. These are often giants who physically cannot meet such a need without unusual interest, methods and zeal. Other times, they are individuals who deploy giantism tactics early.

Instagram “support” will never speak to you yet the app needs your cyclical attention. It Needs You, but only the slice of you that they can use. The software desires content for the great churn it produces, a senseless instrument tuned to the eccentricities of billionaires who treat their employees like their companies treat us. The harmonics of the notes these platforms blare is insufferable while the billionaires claim they hear music.

We are not sharing the same reality as the giants. They are not correctable because they are coping with their own size. We must defend ourselves from their bumbling, the theft of their (our) data and every new idea they have to clear us away like ankle-biters that won’t leave them alone.

AI can and should empower us where applied though it will have no obligation to. If you see methods of using LLMs in smarter ways, you should experiment with it.

Today, AI agents can’t be appropriately guided. They take static instructions and apply the worst version of one-size-fits-all Design to prevent higher-cost support from being allocated. When you go to the phone lines, the recorded voices wonder aloud whether you know about their perfected website, like so many audio billboards looping their message trying to make you turn around.

Companies offer call-back service for incoming support requests. They claim it does not effect your place in line, and they quote you a wait time of their choosing, say 17-20 minutes. If you reject this Service and stay on the line, you might find it takes less than two minutes to connect.

How do we even interrogate the most basic failings of our Service providers? They don’t even want feedback on their apps, after a point in their giantism.

When we call them, they mine us further for new marketing signals without disclosing that purpose. By God, if they have to Serve us they’re gonna monetize that too, right? In the abstract, even, they are prepared to train on the interaction to improve their ratio of revenue.

Companies will deploy systems that use their definitions of you, and not your own. Your self-image as a Customer is not something they share. They have “Customers” who don’t even have accounts yet because those people are their marks. You are one of their existing blood bags and their only job is to stop you from getting out.

Worse, the aspiration in small entrepreneurs to be like the Superlative Greats leads them to emulate this behavior. Using survivorship biases, they carefully reinvent the chain of thought that leads them to behave like their role models, maximizing profit and shunning what doesn’t make money. Their enrichment is the proximate goal of applying themselves to a business idea.

I listen and discuss with Fort Collins entrepreneurs their shunning non-profit models of business on the basis of missing money. Money leads us everywhere, and can shut down any conversation from the start if its smell is not near enough.

Entrepreneurs seek the Great Valley, strangely attuned to the smell of Green Food at the expensive of most else. What purpose do they imagine, other than additional future nondescript progress.

The symptom of requiring more money is universal among companies and People, and we should find ourselves very interested in the behaviors of all groups when there seemingly isn’t enough. Even those with all the existing money are working hard for its maintenance and growth, devoting it to purposes they supervise, vaguely.

In lieu of Green Food, they will settle for barter, Service for Data. Do not enter into barters you do not need or want. Do not let them hassle you into a pipeline of behavior that they call Happy Paths.

Are you happily pathing within the ant farm or is that just their description of you? What would they even know of your happiness, while they ritualistically blind and deafen themselves to your voice?

You can reach Autumn Ryan to be heard about this subject at [email protected]. Do not transmit sensitive or private information if it’s unsuitable for others to have.