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My Heroic and Lazy Stand Against IFTTT

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Re: My Heroic and Lazy Stand Against IFTTT

#151

Post by ec109685 »

r00fus wrote: post #47
TeMPOraL wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they actually succeed at that, it's gonna be a laughing season. Every time a company does something and becomes widely successful, their methods are then recommended on business trainings, startup conferences, etc. So if IFTTT actually manages to subdue many services this way, you can expect other startups to think they can build business out of a) hooking up to your service without your knowledge, and b) telling…

Isn't that the Yelp business model? They're notorious for calling up businesses (mainly restaurants) and then offering the business a way to pay to remove negative comments on Yelp (there was a case where some were entered by a Yelp employee!) It's essentially the "protection/promotion" model.

That didn't happen. Please cite.

Re: My Heroic and Lazy Stand Against IFTTT

#152

Post by Jgrubb »

> I am all for glue services, big and small. But it's better for the web that they connect to stable, documented, public APIs, rather than custom private ones.

This is the clincher for me. I spent about 15 minutes looking around IFTTT before figuring out that there were no developer docs because this is a service for enterprise customers, not for us.

Re: My Heroic and Lazy Stand Against IFTTT

#153

Post by hellofunk »

lindentibbets wrote: post #82
timdierks wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On one hand, you can justify the work as a part of making a more reliable platform without per-service shims, but presumably you could have asked the services to adopt a better open API rather than IFTTT-specific integration. But why did you ignore all the commentary on your TOS? Are you endorsing those terms as the company you want to be?

Our API is not yet open, but we very much want it to be soon. I stand behind our TOS and I agree that we can make it clearer.

The fact that IFTTT claims to own all the content that flows through it, even though it did not itself create any of that content, is ridiculous. That alone is reason for no one to ever use this service.

Re: My Heroic and Lazy Stand Against IFTTT

#154

Post by tacostakohashi »

URSpider94 wrote: post #97
andrewfong wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not saying this is good contract writing, but some relevant context would be what the penalty for breaking these clauses are. If the penalty for not maintaining compatability, as stipulated in the contract, is simply "we turn off IFTTT integration with your app", then that seems reasonable. Ditto for the non-assignment clause. Now if the penalty is three dogs and a pony, then nuts to that.

IANAL, but in general the penalty for breaking the terms of a contract, in the absence of an explicit damages clause, are whatever business loss the other party suffers as a result.

Indeed, but are the terms of service a contract? Is there any consideration?

The answer is probably no, they are merely a set of expectations they have around providing their service.

Re: My Heroic and Lazy Stand Against IFTTT

#157

Post by godieyouidiot »

lindentibbets wrote: post #73

I am the CEO over at IFTTT. I apologize for any misunderstanding our communications today have caused. I built the Pinboard Channel on IFTTT and have maintained it for years. I am also a paying customer of Pinboard! I’ve built for hundreds of platforms and any changes to those platforms by default suck. At IFTTT, we've been on the receiving end of platform changes too many times to count. I want to make sure we do it…

Well, you're "do (ing) it better" the way that won't work. The whole point of IFTTT was flexibility -- YOU were the fulcrum of flexibility at the hub of all these other providers. Now you're trying to force EVERYONE to do it your way. Whatever, dude. That is never gonna work. And I think, you're gonna wake up too late to see it. Well, someone else is gonna eat your business. Too bad.

Re: My Heroic and Lazy Stand Against IFTTT

#158

Post by hobs »

ec109685 wrote: post #151
r00fus wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't that the Yelp business model? They're notorious for calling up businesses (mainly restaurants) and then offering the business a way to pay to remove negative comments on Yelp (there was a case where some were entered by a Yelp employee!) It's essentially the "protection/promotion" model.

That didn't happen. Please cite.

Its a fairly well known accusation that has many pieces of circumstantial evidence as well as many lawsuits.

Many business owners have claimed yelp salespeople have called them and tried to sell them the ability to bring down unfavorable reviews or that they would highlight them.

One google search away: yelp wins lawsuit that says they are perfectly within their rights to manipulate their ratings: http://www.dailydot.com/opinion/yelp-extortion-lawsuit/

"Yelp is pay-for-play, and the court says that’s just fine."

Re: My Heroic and Lazy Stand Against IFTTT

#159

Post by nickspacek »

guelo wrote: post #58
nickspacek wrote: post #52

I have to admit I use IFTTT to take an RSS feed from our kid's elementary school and post the entries to a Facebook Fan Page. The idea being to avoid having to teach my wife to use an RSS reader, now she (and another hundred or so people) get the school news without leaving Facebook. I feel conflicted in some ways but pragmatism wins. Anyone know a non-IFTTT way to set this up?

If you're a self respecting programmer you should write the 10 line script your self.

You're right, I did have that on my mind when I was posting and was hoping not to catch too much flak! Someone down the thread mentioned keeping things running, debugging, etc. which is part of what kept me from doing it on my own as I have enough small side projects to debug without adding another.

It really began as me trying to find an exercise in seeing what the easiest way to inform someone who is always checking a specific app already, and I had heard of IFTTT but hadn't checked it out or put it to use myself. I think it's interesting that IFTTT has been successful since it seems like the demographic who would think to convert an RSS feed to Facebook posts (and not code it themselves) would be fairly small.

Anyways, setting it up with IFTTT took me less than 15 minutes and has never given me any problems, except when the auth expired (triggering an email from IFTTT) and I had to reauthorize the integration with Facebook. I wonder if I would have had the foresight to set up email notifications with my homegrown solution?

Re: My Heroic and Lazy Stand Against IFTTT

#160

Post by snowwrestler »

SEMW wrote: post #143
snowwrestler wrote: post #113

> The developer terms of service don't seem to be available by a public URL, so I will quote the bits that stung me. I invite IFTTT lawyers to send me a takedown notice, because that will be the funniest part of this fracas so far. Fun fact: legal language is not protected by copyright and can be copied, modified, republished, or reused.

> Fun fact: legal language is not protected by copyright With respect: are you a lawyer? I'm not, but all the sources I can find written by actual lawyers put this claim somewhere between 'wildly oversimplified' and 'false', depending on jurisdiction and the kind of legal language (contracts vs legislation, etc.). Eg for US law, [0] quotes Nimmer on Copyrights § 2.18[E] as stating that ‘There appear to be no valid gr…

I am not, but I have been previously advised on this topic by lawyers who specialize in IP.

Of course, your mileage may vary and my comments on the Internet should not be construed as legal advice for your specific situation.

Edit to add: The advice I received was in the context of contracts, privacy policies, and terms of service. I don't know about, and didn't mean to include, legal language in legislation or court filings. Important clarification--thanks.

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