I'm re-reading the threads, and I can't stop wondering if this whole mess could have been avoided by simply posting a "Ask HN: As a TripleByte user, would you mind having a default public profile..." question here on HN? Anyway, I still believe that asking your target audience for an opinion is a better way than trying to think instead of them. Steve Jobs might have gotten away with that, but we are not Steve Jobs, or Apple for that matter... Not trying to say that Steve didn't listen to the audience though, I bet he did, but he had some strong opinions on how something should be.
Tell HN: Triplebyte reverses, emails apology
121–130 of 678 posts
Re: Tell HN: Triplebyte reverses, emails apology
#122Earlier quoted context omitted.
To be precise this the email they send you when you request them to delete your account. "We're processing your request and should be done within 30 days. We will verify your request using the information associated with your account. Government identification may be required and we may ask you for more information in order to verify your identify. Any questions? Email us at privacy@triplebyte.com" They didn't need "…
Yikes! Was this today? We pushed a fix for this yesterday, but if it's not fixed I need to look into it.
@ammon, I don't know you, but definitely want to give you a hug about damage control.
You built a company that's obviously valuable and lots of people rely on. Now you have a lot of responsibility. You're going through the "trough of sorrow" with respect to a new feature.
This is what inevitably happens when lots of people come to rely on you. The one thing I'd like to say, which may sounds strange at first, is think about why you really need each piece of data.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/jan/20/shoshana-...
There is now a growing movement including GDPR and California's privacy laws. You can see how duckduckgo is able to make money by advertising around keywords rather than personal data, etc.
You can help lead this movement, by allowing job candidates to have most of the data encrypted, and only reveal it to companies on a need-to-know basis. Push the point where they reveal it further back, and you'll have less friction for new signups. Every time people are asked for data, they'll already have a good reason: someone wants it. To be clear, that includes the candidate's Name, Age, Gender, and other private info.
Re: Tell HN: Triplebyte reverses, emails apology
#123Earlier quoted context omitted.
The negativity towards to original announcement of making profiles public was deserved. For me, the negativity towards the CEO's apology and cancelling the feature is not. Everyone makes mistakes and if nobody would be willing to look past that, then we'd never get anywhere.
At this point in time it doesn't matter if there is an apology or not. Like above mentioned, some would have got laid-off or for some their intentions of job search is revealed. This is much worst of an effect that an apology would do any good. He apologized so what. It is good but damage is done. Can anything be about it ?
Could you maybe describe the damage to users that has been done? It is my understanding that they cancelled the feature before it went live.
Re: Tell HN: Triplebyte reverses, emails apology
#124This is an excellent example of effective apology!
1. Accept responsibility
2. Acknowledge the harm done
3. Describe your understanding of how the mistake was made
4. Describe your understanding of the wronged party's expectations and their significance
5. Close with an unreserved expression of sincere regret
6. Listen
One person can't accept full responsibility, however. Effective leadership requires accountability, and the only way Triplebyte is going to recover their user's trust is to overhaul that accountability in the open. I suspect the company's future will depend on whether the members of leadership and ownership who certainly put pressure behind this response can adopt the message and back it up with structural commitment and transparency.
Re: Tell HN: Triplebyte reverses, emails apology
#125I am not an active Triplebyte user, but I have an account and followed the thread(s). This e-mail (which I also got) seems like a heartfelt apology. They fucked up, realized it and turned the ship around. They listened and that's what counts for me. They listened to the negative feedback and responded to it. Some comments around here are extremely negative of the whole situation. More negative than I think they deser…
I was about to read this apology cynically but I think this is one of the best apologies I've ever read.
Re: Tell HN: Triplebyte reverses, emails apology
#126Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hi Ammon, 1. There is an opportunity. 2. You did lose a lot of trust. 3. You didn't have enough trust in the first place to really take advantage of this opportunity. I would encourage you to think about how you can earn that trust. This comes back to transparency and checks-and-balances. If you want to go that route, you will need to build hard constraints: legal and technological constraints which would have preven…
We are thinking about how we can make a stronger (and specific) privacy guarantee so it's not just a matter of our future intentions. I had a long conversation with my co-founder about this yesterday. We did not get anything together in time to include it in this email. But we're planning to.
That would be terrific!
I would encourage you to not go it alone.
1) There are people who have been thinking about this problem long and hard for a long time. Most are pretty accessible, and would be excited to see something strong here. There's a big pool of knowledge to build on.
2) You don't need to have something finished or polished to start to engage with either those people or with the community. You can toss out an early draft and solicit feedback if you're on the right track (rather than tossing out a fait accompli). You can even just solicit ideas.
Re: Tell HN: Triplebyte reverses, emails apology
#127I’d be very curious how many account deletion requests happened.
This is interesting in that it’s the new GDPR / CPPA era where users were legally protected to request the complete deletion of their data. Something that Triplebyte would have had no obligation to do in the past. Are we seeing a change in that violating user privacy can have a meaningful negative impact on a company?
Interesting developments
Re: Tell HN: Triplebyte reverses, emails apology
#128Earlier quoted context omitted.
The negativity towards to original announcement of making profiles public was deserved. For me, the negativity towards the CEO's apology and cancelling the feature is not. Everyone makes mistakes and if nobody would be willing to look past that, then we'd never get anywhere.
At this point in time it doesn't matter if there is an apology or not. Like above mentioned, some would have got laid-off or for some their intentions of job search is revealed. This is much worst of an effect that an apology would do any good. He apologized so what. It is good but damage is done. Can anything be about it ?
I believe you are misinformed. They didn't go public yet.
Re: Tell HN: Triplebyte reverses, emails apology
#129Earlier quoted context omitted.
The Friday announcement was a result of us pushing to get the profile toggle feature out that the email linked to, and shipping late. Not something I'm proud of (either from an eng management perspective, or, more importantly, from a not violating the trust of our users perspective). It was a rushed schedule. In hindsight I see that the timing of the Friday announcement is ALSO a problem.
Just curious, did you have any engineers/product owners telling you that you should probably not do this feature, especially not push so hard (doing stuff late on Friday that can easily wait for Monday, etc...) to get it out?
This, I'm very curious to know. Did anybody speak up about it? That's what product discussion meetings are for, right?
Re: Tell HN: Triplebyte reverses, emails apology
#130Earlier quoted context omitted.
The negativity towards to original announcement of making profiles public was deserved. For me, the negativity towards the CEO's apology and cancelling the feature is not. Everyone makes mistakes and if nobody would be willing to look past that, then we'd never get anywhere.
It would have gone over a lot better if he didn't spend a couple days on HN telling people they shouldn't be mad about it. And it would have gone over a lot better if he was honest about what happened. He got caught with his hand in the cookie jar and he's all "was that wrong? Should I not have done that?". They knew exactly what they were doing and calculated that it was worth it.
He didn't spend a couple days on HN telling people they shouldn't be mad about it.