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

Tell HN: Triplebyte reverses, emails apology

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

431–440 of 678 posts

Re: Tell HN: Triplebyte reverses, emails apology

#431

Post by remote_phone »

photonios wrote: post #33

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…

Ammon was also a cofounder of Socialcam, known for a ton of dark patterns. He employed similar techniques here. If he didn’t use so many dark patterns I could forgive him.

He made the feature opt-out. He sent out the email on a Friday before Memorial Day weekend hoping no one would notice. He made the opt out button hard to find. He made the process of deleting accounts very hard, saying they required government ID and it would take 30 days.

He knew exactly what he was doing.

He made preparations for the blowback. That’s a fact otherwise he wouldn’t have taken these dark measures ahead of time. What he didn’t anticipate was getting caught and the level of vitriol he would receive.

He honestly thinks he is smarter than us. I think a person can go to the well only so many times before we have to assume they are insincere and lying.

Re: Tell HN: Triplebyte reverses, emails apology

#432

Post by Aeolun »

mrmr1993 wrote: post #380
akerl_ wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The current position is "sorry for breaking your trust, please trust us". It's hard to find it compelling. > Given the prevalence of comments like this, I wonder why any company would ever bother offering an apology or retraction. To project my own opinion onto others: these comments are warranted because an apology has no actual value. The fact remains that Triplebytes can still do this if they wish to, and they are…

> The current position is "sorry for breaking your trust, please trust us". It's hard to find it compelling.

Why is this a hard thing to do? It’s literally what everyone who ever messes something up is asking you to do.

Just because someone once committed a broken build, doesn’t mean I’ll never again trust them with access.

It’s argubly more like “sorry for being a moron, but I hear you. Please give us another chance”?

Re: Tell HN: Triplebyte reverses, emails apology

#433

Post by g_p »

aaomidi wrote: post #314
akerl_ wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 deleted my account. They probably realized they're getting a ton of account deletions and went back on it.

He originally said they got around 2000 deletion requests since sending out the original message. That comment appears to be gone from this page now, but another commenter concurs with my recollection.

It's hard to gauge significance without knowing a number of total users, but I imagine it is a relatively strong hypothesis that there is significant correlation between regular browsing of HN and having an account on his service.

Re: Tell HN: Triplebyte reverses, emails apology

#434

Post by Aeolun »

austhrow743 wrote: post #414
akerl_ wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You offer an apology because it’s the right thing to do. You fucked up and you want to own it and recognise it. Once you realise what you’ve done, respecting yourself as a man/woman depends on doing it. It shouldn’t be for gain. In fact if apologies always led to a positive outcome they would mean less and the world would be a worse place for it.

I think the general expectation for an apology is that it allows you to maintain a relationship you do not want to lose.

Obviously is a bit harder if you hit-and-run someone’s pet dog.

Re: Tell HN: Triplebyte reverses, emails apology

#435

Post by Aeolun »

sbergot wrote: post #352
akerl_ wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

But no harm was done? It’s like he enthusiastically told you he was going to punch you in the face next week and you told him that’s a bad idea, so he stopped.

Re: Tell HN: Triplebyte reverses, emails apology

#436

Post by dang »

Mandatum wrote: post #410

It takes more than one person to design, approve and implement this feature. Ammon is trying to take the heat for a decision made by multiple people. Right now, Triplebyte on a resume doesn't tell me anything very positive. Why hasn't their VP of Growth or the Product Manager of Growth said anything on the subject? People should be held to account. Working for a startup, it's easy to figure out who's to blame for the…

Sorry, but it's not ok to look up people based on their employer and drag them into a thread like that. That's a trope of the online callout/shaming culture, and we don't want HN to go that route.

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

Re: Tell HN: Triplebyte reverses, emails apology

#437

Post by Aeolun »

lonelappde wrote: post #417
japhyr wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your comment was the first thing I thought of when reading today's email. I hav worked most of my life as a secondary math and science teacher, and one of the things we teach all students about communication is "I statements." This email is full of sincere I statements. Whether it comes from reading your comment or just reflecting on the whole situation, this is about the best response I could have imagined a few day…

After digging in his heels repeatedly on Friday against a tidal wave of opposition, Ammon found a "how to apologize" book and banged out an apology, while still devoting paragraphs to defending his mistake and selling his origin myth. Even his well researched apologize reeks of narcissism not respect.

I guess he also needs some amount of reasoning to explain his mistakes. I do too, and it somehow infuriates people if an apology contains anything but ‘groveling’.

Doesn’t it show that I’ve properly reflected on how I could screw up like this so O can adjust my behavior in the future to avoid it?

Re: Tell HN: Triplebyte reverses, emails apology

#438

Post by g051051 »

ammon wrote: post #78
JoeCortopassi wrote: post #31

One of two things happened: 1. Triplebyte attempted a big move against LinkedIn, tried to ease the blow to users by dumping on a Friday before memorial day weekend 2. Triplebyte, the company built around helping people find jobs, truthfully didn't understand that people might have concerns about their current companies knowing they are job-hunting It's pretty obvious it's #1, and that opt-out rather than opt-in was t…

I'd say it was both. I wanted to move against LinkedIn profiles, I thought that opt-out was the way to get critical mass, and I screwed up and did not realize how large a privacy violation this was.

Are you the only person working there? Did no one else say anything about this? It seems impossible given the huge backlash that absolutely no one at Triplebyte stood up and said "this is a mistake".

Re: Tell HN: Triplebyte reverses, emails apology

#439

Post by gbear605 »

EGreg wrote: post #63
gbear605 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TripleByte is literally the perfect example of a company that should be centralized. They work because they have a reputation that companies can trust. Trying to make it decentralized takes away any value that TripleByte provides.

That's exactly right, it does take away that value from TripleByte and gives it to everybody. The value that TripleByte provides is because of the current state of technology. Take for example the telephone industry. We had telephone switchboard operators, and it cost $1-3 a MINUTE to make overseas calls. You could make the same argument: "AT&T is the perfect example of a company that should be centralized. They have…

Unfortunately, TripleByte’s solution has nothing to do with technology. When a company is looking to hire, the reputation of TripleByte means that they can trust that whoever TripleByte gives them is high quality. It’s work just as well if TripleByte didn’t even have a website and required all their candidates to come into their office - that’d just need a lot more capital and be discouraging for potential users. That’s different from the type of trust that AT&T had, where you’re trusting the quality of the software but not their trustworthiness to not lie to you. (Although there is some of that when you’re trusting that generally people can’t listen in on your call)

Re: Tell HN: Triplebyte reverses, emails apology

#440

Post by AgentME »

skinkestek wrote: post #251
AlexCoventry wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think I missed the SO news. What happened there?

They kicked a mod (Monica) who dared to ask questions about the implementation of their new policy regarding gender words. IIRC Monica asked if would be OK if she (or someone else?) wrote in a way that sidestepped the whole issue, for example by writing about "the user" instead of "he and/or she". Again IIRC they leaked information to newspapers, misrepresented the case and issued one or more non-apologies before try…

Is it really surprising that a moderator, who is meant to be enforcing the rules, protesting a "respect trans people's pronouns" rule with "what if I just stop using pronouns" didn't go well for them? StackOverflow should pick moderators that respect the spirit of the rules they're going to be enforcing.
Post reply on HN