This is great! We have a toddler and it’s great to know something like this exists.
As a suggestion, I’d rather buy a 5 or 10 pack rather than a monthly subscription. We don’t need this every month but expect to use it more than once
Launch HN: Trustle (YC W20) – On-demand child development experts for parents
81–90 of 145 posts
Re: Launch HN: Trustle (YC W20) – On-demand child development experts for parents
#82Earlier quoted context omitted.
Would your experts 'diagnoze' a child based solely on parent's presentation of issue the child/family is experiencing? In simple cases this may be reasonable, but such common issue as tantrums may be deep and multifaceted. This brings another aspect of the responsiblity of your experts for giving any corrective advice to the parent. What is the ethical balance between giving a wrong advice vs. right advice that didn'…
Great questions! On the first, we're very cautious; we do not do diagnosis. What we do do is support parents in seeking out a diagnosis if that was the appropriate path. Our experts have all either done diagnosis or facilitated them in the past so they're good and knowing when to suggest that. The balance is in making sure we don't give parents a false confidence, but we find that the pairing of an expert with the fa…
A wrong advice may be furnished on insufficient detail of the presented issue, or a biased assessment as could be the case with parent only observation. Yet the effect of such advice will be directed at the child.
> ...we have a very rigorous selection process for the coaches and strong QA...
What is your QA approach? How do you tell a right expert advice from an insufficiently right?
Re: Launch HN: Trustle (YC W20) – On-demand child development experts for parents
#83Earlier quoted context omitted.
They load Google Tag Manager, Google Retargeting Pixel, Segment, Facebook Connect, and SmartLook (which looks like some kind of analytics package). This should not be controversial as this would be found on pretty much any website that runs advertising and does user analytics, it's not really something to get all worked up over. Also, I would probably recommend that small startups not put much effort into complying w…
>> They load Google Tag Manager, Google Retargeting Pixel, Segment, Facebook Connect, and SmartLook (which looks like some kind of analytics package). >> This should not be controversial This is tricky, as handling a person asking for a medical advice is a rather special thing, compared to a person asking to buy a vacuum cleaner. The thing is, all of your medical info will go to all of the above trackers, and surely…
Catalin (CTO) here. I very much understand the privacy concern.
To clarify, none of the communication with your coach happens via the Trustle website.
The part that is full of the standard instrumentation and analytics, as you point out, is our onboarding flow. The info you enter here is - who you are, - when you can talk, - and what parenting challenges you face at the broadest level.
Those are the questions required to match you with your coach. The data in those initial three questions flows into Segment and from there into our analytics tools (Amplitude, Google Analytics, conversion tracking for ads, etc.). And while it's all encrypted, etc., you're right to say that it goes to a lot of places internally. We will not ever sell that info, but analyzing it using modern tools internally helps us understand what our users want and how we can do better.
What comes afterwards is end-to-end encrypted conversation with your coach.
Oh, and Trustle is not a health service provider. However, we strive to treat your data with the same level of rigor that a medical service provider would apply; as opposed to the person selling you a vacuum...
Re: Launch HN: Trustle (YC W20) – On-demand child development experts for parents
#84Earlier quoted context omitted.
> This should not be controversial as this would be found on pretty much any website that runs advertising and does user analytics, it's not really something to get all worked up over. The fact that this is found on so many websites is a controversial thing already. FWIW, all I'm doing here is providing a (however small) market signal. They're free to ignore it; no hard feelings. I am in the target market - a parent…
> The fact that this is found on so many websites is a controversial thing already. It's controversial to you, it's not controversial to the vast majority of people. Given that, the downsides of e.g. not being able to retarget advertising, not being able to understand effectively how users are using the website (with minimal effort), etc aren't worth the costs. Say they were to just have those trackers pre-login and…
> Given that, the downsides of e.g. not being able to retarget advertising, not being able to understand effectively how users are using the website (with minimal effort), etc aren't worth the costs.
Downsides to the company. All upsides to me (you can understand effectively how users are using the website without doing extensive telemetry; in fact, this reduces your chances of A/B-testing yourself into full-blown user-hostility, as is common these days; see also: overfitting, Goodhart's law).
Not to mention: if you need detailed analytics, there are couple of self-hosted solutions available. Not at all that more complex to use, and at least they don't leak visitors' data to various shady third parties. Note that this particular product targets parents of small children and is bordering on "medical information" territory, so an analytics script from some random third party[0] which can track what FAQ options piqued your interests is especially worrisome in this context.
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[0] - I noticed from your profile that you have experience in the marketing industry, and you seem to not recognize Smartlook.
Re: Launch HN: Trustle (YC W20) – On-demand child development experts for parents
#85Earlier quoted context omitted.
>> They load Google Tag Manager, Google Retargeting Pixel, Segment, Facebook Connect, and SmartLook (which looks like some kind of analytics package). >> This should not be controversial This is tricky, as handling a person asking for a medical advice is a rather special thing, compared to a person asking to buy a vacuum cleaner. The thing is, all of your medical info will go to all of the above trackers, and surely…
Catalin (CTO) here. I very much understand the privacy concern. To clarify, none of the communication with your coach happens via the Trustle website. The part that is full of the standard instrumentation and analytics, as you point out, is our onboarding flow. The info you enter here is - who you are, - when you can talk, - and what parenting challenges you face at the broadest level. Those are the questions require…
> and what parenting challenges you face at the broadest level
> The data in those initial three questions flows into Segment and from there into our analytics tools
This is the worrying part. The fact that you're a parent and the particular broad challenges you face are already somewhat sensitive and useful for advertisers. It's fine if this info stays with you internally. It's not fine if your service providers start using it for their own cross-site marketing purposes.
Between individuals, trust works transitively - you trust them, I trust you, therefore I somewhat trust them too, within the scope of our relationship. Between individuals and companies, in the realities of Internet and modern advertising, it unfortunately does not work that way.
(I don't really expect you do anything about third-party analytics on the frongpage; I just want to voice the concerns.)
> we strive to treat your data with the same level of rigor that a medical service provider would apply
Aim higher. I have a doctor in my family, and you wouldn't believe some of the privacy horror stories I hear happen in hospitals.
Re: Launch HN: Trustle (YC W20) – On-demand child development experts for parents
#86Earlier quoted context omitted.
Great questions! On the first, we're very cautious; we do not do diagnosis. What we do do is support parents in seeking out a diagnosis if that was the appropriate path. Our experts have all either done diagnosis or facilitated them in the past so they're good and knowing when to suggest that. The balance is in making sure we don't give parents a false confidence, but we find that the pairing of an expert with the fa…
A wrong advice may be furnished on insufficient detail of the presented issue, or a biased assessment as could be the case with parent only observation. Yet the effect of such advice will be directed at the child. > ...we have a very rigorous selection process for the coaches and strong QA... What is your QA approach? How do you tell a right expert advice from an insufficiently right?
We do lots of things, but one of the most important steps is an in-depth role-play where we go through numerous scenarios. We're not just looking for the knowledge (which given their qualifications and experience they should have) but also for their ability to use that knowledge in the context of a parent's own goals and philosophy. If someone brought their own philosophy or values, and not just their experience and expertize, then we wouldn't bring them on.
Re: Launch HN: Trustle (YC W20) – On-demand child development experts for parents
#87Question for the founders: what are your experts’ certifications? How are you managing state-by-state laws regarding counseling, be that MFTs or PsyDs?
Re: Launch HN: Trustle (YC W20) – On-demand child development experts for parents
#88What's your safeguarding policy? When do you refer families to child protection social services? Do you know the process for doing that in all the places you operate in?
Re: Launch HN: Trustle (YC W20) – On-demand child development experts for parents
#89Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The fact that this is found on so many websites is a controversial thing already. It's controversial to you, it's not controversial to the vast majority of people. Given that, the downsides of e.g. not being able to retarget advertising, not being able to understand effectively how users are using the website (with minimal effort), etc aren't worth the costs. Say they were to just have those trackers pre-login and…
> Given that, the downsides of e.g. not being able to retarget advertising, not being able to understand effectively how users are using the website (with minimal effort), etc aren't worth the costs. Downsides to the company . All upsides to me (you can understand effectively how users are using the website without doing extensive telemetry; in fact, this reduces your chances of A/B-testing yourself into full-blown u…
> at least they don't leak visitors' data to various shady third parties
One would have to be extremely paranoid to think that most mainstream third-party data analytics providers are "shady", most of these providers (Segment, Amplitude, etc) all have clauses in the contracts that specify the end-user (the company in this case) as the owner of the data, and limit their usage of data to providing the services (meaning they're contractually obligated to NOT sell or do anything with the data).
In any case, it's a meaningless distinction, as the company could easily record all this data with native, first-party JS and proxy it to anyone they want on the backend and you would have no idea and no control over such a thing. This is already starting to happen, making all of the fuss about third-party metrics effectively just "privacy theater".
At the end of the day your behavioral data is going to the party whose software you're using, and if you don't trust them there is nothing that is going to stop them from doing whatever they want with that information.
Re: Launch HN: Trustle (YC W20) – On-demand child development experts for parents
#90Earlier quoted context omitted.
Catalin (CTO) here. I very much understand the privacy concern. To clarify, none of the communication with your coach happens via the Trustle website. The part that is full of the standard instrumentation and analytics, as you point out, is our onboarding flow. The info you enter here is - who you are, - when you can talk, - and what parenting challenges you face at the broadest level. Those are the questions require…
> and what parenting challenges you face at the broadest level > The data in those initial three questions flows into Segment and from there into our analytics tools This is the worrying part. The fact that you're a parent and the particular broad challenges you face are already somewhat sensitive and useful for advertisers. It's fine if this info stays with you internally. It's not fine if your service providers sta…
>Aim higher. I have a doctor in my family, and you wouldn't believe some of the privacy horror stories I hear happen in hospitals.
Maybe you should just not use the service if you're so against them marketing and tracking user behavior in an extremely standard way. Maybe you should not, in an extremely self-important and arrogant manner, expect everyone else to conform to your view of how the world should be and tell them to "aim higher" if they don't please your every need.