Tell HN: Triplebyte reverses, emails apology • Hacker News Board

Re: Tell HN: Triplebyte reverses, emails apology

#351

Post by weixiyen » Mon, May 25, 2020, 9:08 PM UTC

trfhuhg wrote: post #154

Nothing to see here. Ammon has tried a bold move to chase big money, used a few common tricks (release on Friday night, opt-out and other dark patterns), it didn't pan out and now he's doing damage control. When the dust settles, he'll give this idea another try. This is all from a corporate playbook, but it seems Ammon hasn't read the entire book. There's a chapter there that tells how to systematically manufacture…

He did the next best thing outside of not releasing the feature in the first place. Credit to him, many companies would double down or ignore HN (a very small community relative to Triplebyte's userbase) completely.

Re: Tell HN: Triplebyte reverses, emails apology

#352

Post by sbergot » Mon, May 25, 2020, 9:09 PM UTC

akerl_ wrote: post #306

mosselman wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This e-mail (which I also got) seems like a heartfelt apology. Even if it is heartfelt, I'd argue that if no alarm bells went off internally when they were discussing this feature, they are not the group of people to entrust with information such as this.

Given the prevalence of comments like this, I wonder why any company would ever bother offering an apology or retraction. As soon as a company does something that a chunk of people on the internet don’t agree with, there’s really no way out. They’re going to get bad press regardless of whether they retract, whether they apologize, and whether they say they’re taking actions to avoid the sequence that led to the actio…

I mean, I can accept an apology when I can somehow understand the initial intention. In the thread the CEO was answering "but stackoverflow also has public accounts!" to people explaining why this was a very bad move. The guy seemed completely clueless. It was like trying to explain that hurting people is bad to someone who has just punched you in the face. And this guy justifies his move saying that he has watched a boxing match and that seems a normal thing to do. And then the day after that he finally understand for some reason? The apology is useless because the harm done is too great.

Re: Tell HN: Triplebyte reverses, emails apology

#353

Post by dang » Mon, May 25, 2020, 9:09 PM UTC

sockr8s wrote: post #114

conjecTech wrote: post #101

I've had the good fortune of knowing the TripleByte team personally. I'm not at all surprised to see this being handled in such a sincere and agreeable way. Ammon is a sincere and truth-seeking individual. He's willing to be convinced that his opinion is wrong, a character trait we don't do enough to praise and which I've found to be exceedingly rare these days. Situations like this highlight exactly why I've trusted…

Great job PR dept.

That would be ok as a top-level comment (albeit not a very substantive one) but it breaks the site guidelines to post it to attack another user. Would you mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and sticking to the rules when commenting here? We'd be grateful.

Re: Tell HN: Triplebyte reverses, emails apology

#354

Post by otterley » Mon, May 25, 2020, 9:09 PM UTC

nogabebop23 wrote: post #289

otterley wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I interpret such a statement as expressing sympathy with someone's point of view, but also disagreeing with it.

It's pretty well understood by people far less experienced than the CEO (i.e. me) that you need to split those messages up. Empathy is unconditional. It says "wow, that must be really painful/terrible/scary". It carries no judgement around the accuracy of such feelings, only an understanding that they are real for the other person. Disagreeing comes later after you have shown there are legitimate competing solutions.…

What makes it complicated, though, is that some people interpret "I'm sorry" as an admission of guilt or agreement, so conservative lawyers and others recommend specifying what you feel sorry for so as to not give away the farm.

Re: Tell HN: Triplebyte reverses, emails apology

#355

Post by jacquesm » Mon, May 25, 2020, 9:12 PM UTC

RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #322

The apology is very nice, and I am glad that they are not pushing ahead with this feature. However, actions are what matter. One thing that was brought up in the comments was that if you wanted to cancel your TripleByte account, you had to email the company. This is a dark pattern. If TripleByte really wants to show they changed they need to immediately implement a “Delete my account” button that after requiring you…

And certainly not having to provide 'government issued ID' to the company for the privilege of having your account deleted, especially since none was required for account creation.

Re: Tell HN: Triplebyte reverses, emails apology

#356

Post by dang » Mon, May 25, 2020, 9:14 PM UTC

wolfgang42 wrote: post #280

dang wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm going to inline this text into the top post so that everyone can read it. (Edit: that's done, and I deleted "continued in comments" - normally I'd ask for permission first, but in this case it seemed better not to wait.) You probably split the post up this way because the software told you the text was too long. Tip for the future: you can get around that by clicking 'edit' and adding the rest later. Don't tell a…

Would you mind also doing that thing where the comment is collapsed by default? I spent way too long trying to figure out what was different about this text compared to the email or the top post before I skipped down and saw your explanaion.

Ok, done.

Re: Tell HN: Triplebyte reverses, emails apology

#357

Post by dllthomas » Mon, May 25, 2020, 9:17 PM UTC

skinkestek wrote: post #29

ammon wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My head was still in the place it was when we were developing the feature. I thought it was a communication problem (if I could only communicate how this feature could help a lot of people everyone would understand). Perhaps I'm just slow. But it took some time and repetition for the magnitude of my error to sink in and me to really hear what people were saying.

Good answer. Actually first good answer I remember seeing from any of you so far. I still wonder why you tried the infamous "I'm sorry that you cannot understand" line here?

I don't know... it's not a great response from a company, but sometimes it's genuinely the case that disagreement comes from a lack of understanding. An impulse to try and explain more clearly is relatable.

Re: Tell HN: Triplebyte reverses, emails apology

#358

Post by coldtea » Mon, May 25, 2020, 9:17 PM UTC

akerl_ wrote: post #306

mosselman wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This e-mail (which I also got) seems like a heartfelt apology. Even if it is heartfelt, I'd argue that if no alarm bells went off internally when they were discussing this feature, they are not the group of people to entrust with information such as this.

Given the prevalence of comments like this, I wonder why any company would ever bother offering an apology or retraction. As soon as a company does something that a chunk of people on the internet don’t agree with, there’s really no way out. They’re going to get bad press regardless of whether they retract, whether they apologize, and whether they say they’re taking actions to avoid the sequence that led to the actio…

>As soon as a company does something that a chunk of people on the internet don’t agree with, there’s really no way out.

And yet, tons of companies had done that, and suffered very little. Heck, any company has done something that "a chunk of people on the internet don’t agree with"...

It's not about never doing anything wrong, or it being futile to apologize.

It's about, you don't do THIS kind of privacy affecting changes without publicly announcing it first, and without red flags raised internally that it might not be a good idea.

That's a good thing to instill in companies, whether this one apologized or not...

Re: Tell HN: Triplebyte reverses, emails apology

#359

Post by heavyset_go » Mon, May 25, 2020, 9:23 PM UTC

colejohnson66 wrote: post #241

heavyset_go wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With your attitude, someone could try to something sneaky and dishonest like TripleByte did, but as long as they walk back on it eventually , it's all good. Why wouldn't another company first try to push privacy violating changes on a Friday, when people like you are so willing to turn a blind eye to it if they get caught? They violated trust and it's going to take a lot more than an email apology to get it back from…

Did you read his comments here (on this thread)? It was that they were rushing to have this feature done earlier, but missed the deadline.

Yes, I read his initial comments and the ones here. Those very comments are the reason I am not as willing to turn a blind eye as others are. Those comments showed blatant intent to minimize the privacy violations and TripleByte's dishonest tactics. The follow up reads just like an excuse that sounds plausible to those with an engineering mindset. Given the audience of the blunder, and this site, I'd say that many users' capacities for forgiveness and second option bias are being taken advantage of.

Again, it will take a lot more than some words on the internet to gain back trust from people who care about the fact that they were tricked for financial gain.

Re: Tell HN: Triplebyte reverses, emails apology

#360

Post by gcheong » Mon, May 25, 2020, 9:29 PM UTC

I’m curious to know from anyone who has hired through triplebyte - has the quality of candidates been consistently better in terms of success at the company post-hire than it has through your previous recruiting efforts? Also, for a candidate that comes to you through triplebyte do you consider them vetted and are just interviewing for cultural fit at that point or do you still put them through your own hiring process?