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The Perks Are Great, Just Don’t Ask What We Do

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Re: The Perks Are Great, Just Don’t Ask What We Do

#51

Post by pavel_lishin »

8912889219 wrote: post #30
chii wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!" --Upton Sinclair

I really think this quote is a bit unfair here. Especially in the startup scene, many companies have quite vague product descriptions. I've worked at a place where it took me 3 months to figure out what they were doing (nothing immoral BTW, just very complex/diverse products).

But for those three months you had no idea whether what they were doing was moral or not, and you didn't check.

Re: The Perks Are Great, Just Don’t Ask What We Do

#52

Post by pnathan »

whenever I am looking at a company, I google it, I scrape Glassdoor, I look for news articles about it. "How do you make money" is usually on the menu of "things I specifically care about". I'd advise others do do the same. Learn well what the company you're talking to does to earn a buck and who they are beholden to.

I avoid adtech, myself.

Re: The Perks Are Great, Just Don’t Ask What We Do

#53

Post by cjbprime »

seibelj wrote: post #46

Interviewed at a company called Rakuten Loyalty in Boston a few years ago. At that time it was the exact same thing, a malware / adware browser toolbar company, and they also sold white label toolbars. Took me the entire interview to figure out what they actually did. Their website [0] now has very little information about what they actually do, with a generic contact form. But an archive.org [1] of their old website…

Hah, wow. I went to JS meetups at their office without realizing that.

Re: The Perks Are Great, Just Don’t Ask What We Do

#54

Post by pavel_lishin »

dec0dedab0de wrote: post #8

I went to a meetup that they hosted once, and it was pretty obvious that they were up to something, but they did have a really cool office.

I visited Limewire's offices, once. Three story office in Tribeca, with giant kitchens that were bigger than my apartment, game rooms, the works.

It seems to me that the more ambiguous your business strategy is, the more you have to show off to convince others that it isn't.

Re: The Perks Are Great, Just Don’t Ask What We Do

#55

Post by TeMPOraL »

al_chemist wrote: post #13

It's good to hear that all the C[ETF]Os of adware business found their employment at Facebook/Google/Amazon.

Yeah, this jumped out at me too. I'm not very reassured about such morally dubious characters working for companies that control most of our digital lives.

Re: The Perks Are Great, Just Don’t Ask What We Do

#57

Post by usefulcat »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #49

I worked at a web development studio. One of our clients was MannaTech, basically a marketing company that sold snake-oil to parents of sick children, claiming it could "cure" everything from cancer to down syndrome. They were under investigation by the Texas DA at one point. We tracked our work hourly, so I donated all the money I made from that particular work to St. Jude's hospital, which actually does cure cancer…

You know it's bad when Texas is willing to investigate.

Source: am a long time resident of TX; it's business-friendly reputation is well earned, IMO.

Re: The Perks Are Great, Just Don’t Ask What We Do

#58

Post by busterarm »

pyrophane wrote: post #36
danenania wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You talk as if the 'rest of us' in tech are so innocent and pure. Spam is small potatoes compared to the ethical violations many big tech companies get up to on a daily basis.

Yea, good point. We live in an age when a whole set of duplicitous practices are now just referred to as "growth hacking"

Ugh, the number of dark patterns trying to cost me money just to purchase a damned ticket on Ticketbastards today.

Seriously by not clicking the right boxes I could have agreed to pay an extra $42 in add-ons/services for a $15 ticket that had its own $6 in fees added.

Re: The Perks Are Great, Just Don’t Ask What We Do

#59

Post by pdkl95 »

ikeboy wrote: post #28
pdkl95 wrote: post #25

> you’d see ads on sites like Wikipedia or Target.com Normally we call that vandalism. They should be facing criminal charges, not civil lawsuits and pressure from Google.

There's no case afaik, because they disclose everything in the original agreement when you install their software. Unethical, sure, but there's little the law can do to prevent people from agreeing to such things. Maybe a requirement for certain disclosures to be made more prominent (like for cigarettes)?

> there's little the law can do to prevent people from agreeing to such things.

True, iff the customer was adequately informed about the offer in a way most people will understand. Contracts are not supposed to be a "gotcha" with extra terms buried in the fine print. If the installer only featured the "bait" and mentioned the adware behind a dark pattern UI or deep in the text of the contract, a judge could (and should) void that part of the contract.

> Maybe a requirement for certain disclosures to be made more prominent

At a minimum.

That said, the issue isn't really with the person that installs the software. There isn't a contract between the adware scammers and e.g. Target or Wikipedia.

Re: The Perks Are Great, Just Don’t Ask What We Do

#60

Post by ErikAugust »

cjbprime wrote: post #53
seibelj wrote: post #46

Interviewed at a company called Rakuten Loyalty in Boston a few years ago. At that time it was the exact same thing, a malware / adware browser toolbar company, and they also sold white label toolbars. Took me the entire interview to figure out what they actually did. Their website [0] now has very little information about what they actually do, with a generic contact form. But an archive.org [1] of their old website…

Hah, wow. I went to JS meetups at their office without realizing that.

AngularJS meetup? Yeah, that office was posh!
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