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Visa and Plaid Abandon Merger After Antitrust Division’s Suit to Block

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Re: Visa and Plaid Abandon Merger After Antitrust Division’s Suit to Block

#121

Post by zorpner »

skedaddle wrote: post #79
marcinzm wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I thought the typical goal of hackers and startups Hackers and startups are two very different groups with very different ideologies and goals and incentives. No idea why you group them together. Some startups have no technical founders even. >"change the world" and "make a difference" Startups are businesses and like all businesses in the end they wish to make money. VCs, for example, are very clearly investors and…

You're on Hacker News at ycombinator.com and you have no idea why folks here associate hackers and startups?

The point is that this represents a coöption of the term hacker by the venture capitalist community -- it's always easier to convince someone to accept less value as recompense for what they produce by convincing them that they are engaged in a noble or even a personally virtuous (see e.g. "guru", "rockstar") pursuit.

Re: Visa and Plaid Abandon Merger After Antitrust Division’s Suit to Block

#122

Post by chishaku »

Dwolb wrote: post #95
CamelCaseName wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Such a poor comment from Kelly that I almost wonder if it was intentional.

Maybe he wanted to tank the deal once they figured out Plaid scrapes financial portals instead of integrates with them.

because you sign a 5b deal and then do due diligence

Re: Visa and Plaid Abandon Merger After Antitrust Division’s Suit to Block

#123

Post by Judgmentality »

dmix wrote: post #104
novok wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dont worry, visa, amex and MasterCard already do it directly

Doing it on purpose vs via black/grey market trickery is often treated as separate matters. Even if the legal mode is still full of moral issues that society has yet to fully confront. Phishing people's bank credentials has been fully established as a computer crime (not even just bad within civil law).

I adore the idea of the Plaid founders, and everyone else deemed complicit in a court of law (I think this should likely include investors), going to fuck-you-in-the-ass prison instead of becoming billionaires.

Alas, I've lived in Silicon Valley too long to believe that anything moral will ever occur when there's money to be made.

It makes me sad that people actually admire this place for anything other than the geography.

Re: Visa and Plaid Abandon Merger After Antitrust Division’s Suit to Block

#124

Post by throwaway9980 »

purple_ferret wrote: post #116
throwaway9980 wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am sure I will be called naive, but this is shocking to me. I assumed that Plaid was integrating with the banks and not doing this sort of thing because of the people associated with Plaid. Their seed round included Spark Capital and Google Ventures. Their most recent round included Mary Meeker and Andreessen Horowitz. [1] These investors have reputations to protect. This type of thing would certainly come out in d…

A lot of these banks never had any APIs. Plaid made its name basically scrapping the html of account pages. Companies used it because there were no alternatives (no apis)

I understand the situation. Another of Plaid's investors is Goldman Sachs. I naively assumed that Plaid's ability to build their product was likely based on access to private APIs available to them based on their relationships and backing.

If someone came to me and asked me to build what Plaid has built, I would decline the work. I would assume that impersonating a bank would be illegal. I would assume that the banks I am impersonating would treat me as a malicious actor. I would assume that I would go to jail for building a system like this.

Absolutely unbelievable.

Re: Visa and Plaid Abandon Merger After Antitrust Division’s Suit to Block

#125

Post by mattnewton »

seanieb wrote: post #75

I’ve some friends that works there, so I’m hesitant to say this, because I’m sorry for them, but Plaid is a terrible company. Their main product scrapes financial data from unsuspecting users that simply think they’re making a bank transfer and not signing away the privacy and security of their banking, 401k and trading information. https://twitter.com/seanieb/status/1298871471645761537?s=20

I once went to use plaid to apply for a mortgage on one of the new fancy broker platforms. It asked me to type my login credentials.. sketchy , but alright banks and mortgage companies seem to trust them? Then they asked me to disable 2FA on my account and at that point it was indistinguishable from a phishing attack to me. I noped out and changed my bank password immediately.

Re: Visa and Plaid Abandon Merger After Antitrust Division’s Suit to Block

#126

Post by Nursie »

judge2020 wrote: post #103
morpheuskafka wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Also, giving your credentials to any third party, including Plaid, voids the warranty at many financial institutions. If your account gets hacked and your money stolen, you may find out that the zero liability policy no longer applies to you. The trouble is, giving someone your account number also makes it not the bank's problem what they do with that number, even if it was clearly unauthorized by you. There's no g…

Yeah, banks could have done oauth2 years ago but it never happened.

Open Banking in the UK does that now.

Re: Visa and Plaid Abandon Merger After Antitrust Division’s Suit to Block

#127

Post by f430 »

smnrchrds wrote: post #82
seanieb wrote: post #75

I’ve some friends that works there, so I’m hesitant to say this, because I’m sorry for them, but Plaid is a terrible company. Their main product scrapes financial data from unsuspecting users that simply think they’re making a bank transfer and not signing away the privacy and security of their banking, 401k and trading information. https://twitter.com/seanieb/status/1298871471645761537?s=20

They are getting sued by TD Bank for this very reason: > The bank said in the court filings that the interface "dupes" consumers into believing they are entering personal information into TD Bank's trusted platform. > "In reality, however, consumers are unwittingly giving their login credentials to the defendant, who takes the information, stores it on its servers, and uses it to mine consumers' bank records for valu…

Oh man I can't believe they actually pulled this on a Canadian Bank.

I tell my founders to always always fly straight or don't fly at all because if you cut corners or deceive, it will come back to you.

Had they been honest and played by the rules they could be sitting on a massive windfall.

Unfortunately, some VCs and founders think like gangsters and get surprised when things dont plan out. Just because it worked for someone in your circle doesn't mean its gonna work for you. It is a horrible behavior to emulate.

Re: Visa and Plaid Abandon Merger After Antitrust Division’s Suit to Block

#128

Post by Ericson2314 »

seanieb wrote: post #75

I’ve some friends that works there, so I’m hesitant to say this, because I’m sorry for them, but Plaid is a terrible company. Their main product scrapes financial data from unsuspecting users that simply think they’re making a bank transfer and not signing away the privacy and security of their banking, 401k and trading information. https://twitter.com/seanieb/status/1298871471645761537?s=20

Well, better one small company doing that garbage than Visa! It makes it easier to avoid.

Re: Visa and Plaid Abandon Merger After Antitrust Division’s Suit to Block

#129

Post by redis_mlc »

AlexandrB wrote: post #28
jamestimmins wrote: post #5

Whatever you think about Visa or this merger, this would be a major disappoint to Plaid's team members who thought they were in for a huge financial windfall. If that applies to anyone here, my sympathies and best of luck figuring out what's next for Plaid. Hopefully the morale hit isn't too big on the team.

This comment strikes a nerve with me - perhaps because it's "saying the quiet part loud". I thought the typical goal of hackers and startups was to "change the world" and "make a difference". How does selling to Visa accomplish those things? Isn't expressing sympathy with Plaid's staff for not getting a payout effectively saying "sorry that you might actually have to deliver on the lofty promises this time"? It's als…

> I thought the typical goal of hackers and startups was to "change the world" and "make a difference".

I live in SV, and that's almost never the goal.

The goal of most hackers is to make their own lives easier ("scratch an itch.")

Startups often have a mission statement that is big enough to justify the effort of doing a startup and to generate external interest, but building a sustainable business or even a profitable one is first, and social good is ancillary.

What you're talking about are charities, and without auditing, even those don't "make a difference" except to the directors.

Re: Visa and Plaid Abandon Merger After Antitrust Division’s Suit to Block

#130

Post by tyre »

cblconfederate wrote: post #111
hahaxdxd123 wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anonymously is unlikely - how would the government get their taxes?

what if tax is part of the smart contract?

then it would have to know who it is taxing? The same applies.

No, you cannot anonymously tax every transaction at some rate. Tax rates don't work that way, in a vacuum.

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