171–180 of 678 posts
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, o…
I want to do a bunch more of this in the future.
Earlier 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.
1. Versioning of user consent.
A lot of services have been designed around the idea that once a user consents to the terms, they consent to any alternations you make in the future. This is legally very questionable, at least in many countries. Some services manage to keep track of the version of the agreement a user has approved, but then force agreement with any updated version. But in reality there's no need for this - users should be able to granularly consent (and withdraw consent) to different things, as and when it's desired.
In any case given the way this is interpreted in GDPR, and the direction of travel in California and other states, having granular consent seems to be a sensible short term investment to save a lot of pain down the line.
2. Handling data at a sale, acquisition or liquidation.
This one is more tricky, and I believe a Stripe co-founder mentioned this recently on HN as something to look into. Lots of companies see their database as an asset to sell. There's an interesting history of companies like RadioShack, ToysRUs, and others going through this issue and ending up in court over it...
3. Aligning your goals with your users.
It might be a bit idealistic, but it always seems to me that privacy works best when everyone's interests are aligned. I'm not sure how this fits for your situation, but it strikes me users wanting visibility get visibility, and if they get a job you'll benefit, as do they. That seems nicely aligned. And for people who want to be incognito, they remain incognito, but they know you're there. It's probably counter to lots of the "startup playbook", but even these incognito users are likely still valuable, maybe even net promoters, just not currently looking to be seen. So it seems your goals align nicely with users', and there need not be any hyper growth "dark patterns".
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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.
And worse, who is to say they won't do this again later when no one is paying attention?
Do you have personal guarantees they won't?
I 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…
> Some comments around here are extremely negative of the whole situation. More negative than I think they deserve People would have gotten laid-off to this. The dark patterns are just cherry on top. The negativity is well deserved.
This reaction seems way overblown. Its fine to criticize a feature but lets not pretend this is some nefarious plot that would have resulted in layoffs
Why are you under such tremendous pressure? It is this a desperate move of a company finally going out of business or a result of an extreme pressure from the vc side? Who has accessed the data already? Not only directly but indirectly as well? Have you received any compensation or settled any transactions by exposing the data?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I can see how that conclusion gets drawn. Any new feature that is announced can be met with some negativity. Sometimes it just ends up working despite that. It is not surprising to me that at first, they tried to defend their plans. It probably took a while for the backslash to sink in and their own opinions to change. I wouldn't expect every company, even ones that target HN's primary audience to turn everything aro…
Nobody is mad about a "feature". They're mad because Triplebyte made sensitive private data public.
And engaged in a host of dark patterns that made it difficult for people to effectively respond to that, for example by getting the data deleted and cancelling any account they had. The problem wasn't just the original error in judgement, serious as that was. It was the doubling down on it in both the implementation and the handling of the criticism when it was announced.
I’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