What everyone calls "support" was actually filtering out my best customers

I had a realization looking at how crypto apps handle support, and it turned out to be less about crypto and more about who a product quietly selects for.

The pattern: an app has a problem, so it sends you to its Discord or Telegram. The pinned message warns you about impersonators in the room. Minutes later someone messages you claiming to be support. They were in the channel the whole time. The help desk and the place you get scammed are the same room.

People already in crypto tolerate this because they have internalized the rules, never trust a DM, verify every link, assume every helper is a thief. That is a real skill. They forget they had to learn it, usually by getting burned once.

Here is the part that hit me as a founder. Support that only works if the user is already an expert is not support. It is a filter. It quietly sorts people into the ones who already know the rules and the ones who do not. And the ones who do not are exactly the customers I am trying to reach.

I think this generalizes past crypto. A lot of products have some "support" or onboarding step that silently screens out the exact users they say they want, and the team never notices because the surviving users all happen to be the experts who got through.

Has anyone else found that a thing you thought was neutral, support, docs, onboarding, was actually selecting for a narrower user than you intended? Curious how you spotted it.

Full writeup if useful: https://dev.to/txdesk/the-support-loop-is-fine-right-up-until-crypto-goes-mainstream-3j5p