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Comment by ValentineC

9 hours ago

> 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.

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.

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

  • 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.