Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Instapaper is going independent

blog.instapaper.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 195 posts

Re: Instapaper is going independent

#101

Post by [deleted] »

Chilinot wrote: post #91
howitworks wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't mean to sound trite or dismissive, but the blame should be directed at EU legislators. If I create another software product I will explicitly and permanently make it unavailable to EU residents.

If your product can't follow the GDPR legislation then I'm glad you don't allow EU residents to use it. Since you are most likely abusing the privacy of your customers. While I'm a bit annoyed at the amount of paperwork and side systems that need to be constructed to ensure proper handling of personal data that I have had to implement, I can only see GDPR as something positive for the people.

[deleted]

Re: Instapaper is going independent

#102

Post by Permit »

bad_user wrote: post #17
jakobegger wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Background Info for users outside of Europe: Instapaper has been geoblocked for European users for the last two months.

Pocket ( https://getpocket.com ) isn’t blocked and is now owned by Mozilla. I’m an European and a heavy Pocket user and it had no downtime. That Instapaper blocks EU users is fishy to say the least. What it means is that they are probably selling user data and cannot keep doing it without informing users of it. I can’t express how grateful I am for GDPR.

>What it means is that they are probably selling user data and cannot keep doing it without informing users of it.

It seems like you'd have to willfully misunderstand the requirements of GDPR to argue that the only reason for non-compliance is that 'they are probably selling user data'.

However, if you can instead imagine that two employees might not want to manually manage GDPR requests for a userbase of two million users (in their free time, no less!) then you might come up with other likely reasons for non-compliance. For example, I wouldn't want to architect a backup system that deletes user info from my backups whenever I receive a GDPR request.

Re: Instapaper is going independent

#103

Post by hk__2 »

quest88 wrote: post #98
clapsclaps wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was a hardcore Instapaper premium user from the early beginnings. Nothing stopped me for continuing using the app, BUT the GDPR. When you have duties of protect user's data and you don't comply with it, I'm done. Months ago I changed to Pocket (Mozilla owned) and I'm ok with that. I missed little stuff like the text render and other minimum things. Just wanted to say that because protecting user's privacy is also a…

If you felt strongly about user privacy I'm surprised you waited until GDPR. Why didn't you switch before?

Not OP but I guess the lack of privacy wasn’t visible before GDPR.

Re: Instapaper is going independent

#104

Post by tomashertus »

I have an off-topic question: After seeing their brand new buildings in SF in SOMA area, I’ve been wondering about the Pinterest’s success lately. Does anyone have any resources talking about their current trends, numbers and their business model? Honestly, I lack the context, because I was so annoyed by their spam on the Google’s search result pages that I started to use queries with -site:pinterest.com. So, to me this is completely irrelevant website.

Re: Instapaper is going independent

#105

Post by coldtea »

bthdonohue wrote: post #75
zulrah wrote: post #71

Instapaper is still not available to users in EU. It's been to months. I started to use Pocket because of this and now I don't think I'm coming back.

Hey zulrah, we are working on GDPR and plan to have the service available in the EU as soon as possible. Hope to have you back on Instapaper when we become available in the EU again. Really sorry for the inconvenience.

I don't think you can piss on customers for 2 months and then drop a "sorry for the inconvenience".

And for no good reason.

Just assume the improbable cost of some litigation as a company, like tens of thousands of others (including much bigger and much smaller than yours) did, put up a message to European customers and have them click and proceed as usual to the service.

Or, you know, use the headstart of more than a year before the law was put into practice to get the service in order...

Re: Instapaper is going independent

#106

Post by kristofferR »

throwawaymath wrote: post #86
bthdonohue wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read HN regularly, but I'm pretty much a lurker on all social channels. When there's a conversation relevant to me or the products I work on, I like to jump in to represent the relevant company or products. With respect to follow ups, I usually respond and move on to other things. I do my best to be open and transparent in online communities like these. Moving onto your privacy concerns there are two things I'd lik…

1. If Instapaper "hard deletes" user data when a user deletes their account, what precisely does the License Grant language mean when it states Instapaper has a "worldwide, non-exclusive, perpetual, royalty-free, fully paid, sublicensable and transferable license" to the User Content "including after your termination of your Account or the Services."? This is from "Instapaper Application License", section (a) of the…

Yeah, if Instapaper didn't do shady things with user data GDPR wouldn't take more than a couple of days to add support for, instead of the 2+ years it's been.

Re: Instapaper is going independent

#107

Post by welanes »

raajg wrote: post #49

I use instapaper solely for its 'highlight' feature. Strange that other read-it-later apps don't provide it (at least in their free versions).

Lanes (https://lanes.io) has highlights - although articles are secondary to tasks, for now. Diigo does highlights too, and Feedly.

Agree that highlights are a brilliant feature - the next natural step after saving an article is saving the best bits of that article.

Re: Instapaper is going independent

#108

Post by scarface74 »

paulcole wrote: post #87
scarface74 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He sold it around the time of the tumblr acquisition by Yahoo. Marco was the first employee of Tumblr and even though he didn’t work there at the time of the acquisition he made a few million off of the sale. I guess that gave him some runway to try new things. Besides, it seems like the team from Betaworks has been working on Instapaper since then.

> It's been passed around like a stepchild since birth I'm not sure how your reply relates to the statement I was replying to? I looked it up on Marco's about page and he did run it for 5 years before selling it in 2013. https://marco.org/about I guess I don't see how that's "being passed around... since birth."

He ran it for five years and then the team who ran it has been constant since then.

Re: Instapaper is going independent

#109

Post by welanes »

tschellenbach wrote: post #48

Anybody know any good APIs or projects that help you get the article content for a given url? There is of course Mercury API, but are there any alternatives?

Try Lanes - https://lanes.io. It combines tasks, bookmarks and video annotations and uses the Mercury API under the hood.

Disclaimer: I made this. We've nailed down tasks and now we're focusing on making the read-later/bookmark feature top class. Articles are highlight-able and you can reference articles as tasks (because 'read this article' is a essentially a task) - we find this helps you read more, as most bookmark managers are essentially "here's a thing I like enough to save but will probably never read".

Give it a try.

Re: Instapaper is going independent

#110

Post by comex »

throwawaymath wrote: post #86
bthdonohue wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read HN regularly, but I'm pretty much a lurker on all social channels. When there's a conversation relevant to me or the products I work on, I like to jump in to represent the relevant company or products. With respect to follow ups, I usually respond and move on to other things. I do my best to be open and transparent in online communities like these. Moving onto your privacy concerns there are two things I'd lik…

1. If Instapaper "hard deletes" user data when a user deletes their account, what precisely does the License Grant language mean when it states Instapaper has a "worldwide, non-exclusive, perpetual, royalty-free, fully paid, sublicensable and transferable license" to the User Content "including after your termination of your Account or the Services."? This is from "Instapaper Application License", section (a) of the…

Your quotes from the privacy policy do not describe “targeted advertising”. Indeed, the section you quoted from has this preamble:

> We use non-identifying and aggregate information to better design Instapaper, to suggest popular content to users, and to share with advertisers and publishers.

and this afterwards:

> When information is used in this or a similar manner, we do not disclose anything that could be used to identify the individuals on whom the information is based.

I suppose using aggregate data in that manner could technically be described as “monetiz[ing] using user data”, but it’s not the type of activity most people are worried about (nor, incidentally, something that would implicate the GDPR).

As for the ToS license grant, it’s presumably the type of cover-your-ass wording lawyers always put into those agreements. I’m not a fan of the practice myself, but it’s not really evidence that Instapaper does, or intends to, use user data after deletion. Also, it might be intended to address backups, though I’m just speculating.

Post reply on HN