Hahahhaahah what a fucking joke
We are sorry
201–210 of 220 posts
Re: We are sorry
#202Only problem is: It was not a mistake. They did this only to cover their asses and that has been the only concern they've ever had. That they already tried to push the opt-in was of course only in fear of what just happened. I'm sorry, I'm all for public apologies and I truly believe that it is in times like these companies have a chance to really prove themselves and really make a mishap something positive (and come…
Yeah this is like BP making excuses for the oil spill. Anyway, it's every iPhone owner's fault that they give away their privacy that easily without even caring. On the other hand it's Path's fault that they seem to have done this without a real plan (what are we keeping the data for? what are we going to do in case of "PR nightmare"?).
Re: We are sorry
#203I have a real IMPORTANT question...
Did you know that Path by default and always does not store android phonebook address entries on their server?
In facts its against standard android dev practices to the point where its prohibited by Google..
So when Path found out about that in completing the android app why did they continue to insist that it was right on iphone to do so?
Now I would not say the Path CEO is directly lying, but it stinks pretty bad..
Re: We are sorry
#204So what changed really? Yesterday morning Path thought it was perfectly OK to scrape user's Address Book behind their back, and now they suddenly acquired moral backbone and ethics? Please give me a break. What they did today is the only sensible thing there was to try and save the company, so they did it, but should they be commended for that? Hell, no. Would you commend a landlord for dismounting a hidden camera in…
They still think it's okay. It's the users' fault this is a problem. Read carefully: - users brought to light an issue - we now understand that the way we had designed... was wrong - we are deeply sorry if you were uncomfortable Not sorry. Sorry if and only if you took it wrong. - We want you to feel completely in control of your information on Path. You won't be in control, but we want you to "feel" you are. Also: -…
So many people are fooled by these weasel words I am surprised.
Re: We are sorry
#205It is of course stupid that iOS doesn't sandbox and require permission of apps to access the address book. Apple needs to fix this. But it is not enough.
I keep a lot of data about people in my address book in addition to phone numbers and email addresses: birthdate, names of children and spouses, residential and work postal and physical addresses, gift ideas, group affiliations, etc.
I am happy to click "OK" if an app asks for essentially the social graph information that I've already exposed through Twitter and Facebook. I don't want an app to have the other data I've curated. Even if you can trust the app vendor to not be evil, you can't guarantee they won't leak the data through incompetence.
So while Apple really should require permission for apps to get access to the address book, we really need a new model more sophisticated than all or nothing.
Re: We are sorry
#206Only problem is: It was not a mistake. They did this only to cover their asses and that has been the only concern they've ever had. That they already tried to push the opt-in was of course only in fear of what just happened. I'm sorry, I'm all for public apologies and I truly believe that it is in times like these companies have a chance to really prove themselves and really make a mishap something positive (and come…
Ironically, this was exactly the kind of apologetic but side-stepping rhetorics used by still German president Christian Wulff so I call shenanigans and nothing but modern rhetorics and modern PR-management. This is very alike to catching someone red-handed, with the hand still on the murder weapon stuck in the body... and then they make a public apology along the lines of "Through the feedback I’ve received from all of you, I now understand that the way I handled this dispute over $20 million, which are clearly mine by the way, was wrong. But I deeply care about ethics, human life and I honestly believe that body should be allowed to live and as a clear signal to my commitment to human rights, I will immediately retreat my serrated blade from their chest."
> They did it deliberately, there was not a mistake anywhere when implementing this
Exactly - so that's why those "oh I realize that now and really want you all to understand my deeeep commitment to the exact opposite moral values of what I actually did" apologies make me so sick. It completely side-steps the fact that it was done deliberately, 100% on purpose and they basically cover that up by trying their hardest to scrape it under the rug as an "oopsy-daisy!" now and let users feel as if thousands of phonebooks beamed themselves totally magically into their servers and they really had no idea that was happening!
You can simply not be so detached from reality that you do not worry about reading people's phone books like that.
Want to apologize and really speak through actions? Dave Morin, Co-Founder and CEO, step down immediately because you have deliberately violated human rights and now you are just trying to get away with it, IMHO. And as CEO, you are ultimately responsible.
Re: We are sorry
#207Only problem is: It was not a mistake. They did this only to cover their asses and that has been the only concern they've ever had. That they already tried to push the opt-in was of course only in fear of what just happened. I'm sorry, I'm all for public apologies and I truly believe that it is in times like these companies have a chance to really prove themselves and really make a mishap something positive (and come…
I suspect, if you probe more deeply, that some of the Path developers where familiar with how this problem is normally solved and just copied a common design pattern. A large number of IOS applications supposedly upload the contact list to make it easier to find friends server side - I further suspect that many, many of the popular social apps do this. Hopefully at least Five good things will come out of this: 1) Soc…
It seems to me to be more a case of developers taking the easiest option, rather than spending some time considering a more secure, less creepy way of doing what they wanted to do.
Re: We are sorry
#208[deleted]
Re: We are sorry
#209Only problem is: It was not a mistake. They did this only to cover their asses and that has been the only concern they've ever had. That they already tried to push the opt-in was of course only in fear of what just happened. I'm sorry, I'm all for public apologies and I truly believe that it is in times like these companies have a chance to really prove themselves and really make a mishap something positive (and come…
I, like many others in this thread, think this is a fairly gross over-reaction. As engineers, we're trained to dig up problems and create solutions -- and a big part of this process is understanding what data can be made available to you and how you can use it to make your product better. I sincerely believe that they saw the immense potential of having this information available to them and ran with it under the excitement-induced delusion to the effect of, "who could be unhappy with this when it brings so much value to the table?"
I think their flaw was either in not polling their user base before hand or making it opt in to begin with, but I also think that this oversight happened because they truly believed in the usefulness of what they were doing.
Then again, I still believe that Google isn't trying to be evil (nor do I really think they ARE particularly evil for the time being), so take my opinion with a grain of salt.
Re: We are sorry
#210Only problem is: It was not a mistake. They did this only to cover their asses and that has been the only concern they've ever had. That they already tried to push the opt-in was of course only in fear of what just happened. I'm sorry, I'm all for public apologies and I truly believe that it is in times like these companies have a chance to really prove themselves and really make a mishap something positive (and come…
Ironically, this was exactly the kind of apologetic but side-stepping rhetorics used by still German president Christian Wulff so I call shenanigans and nothing but modern rhetorics and modern PR-management. This is very alike to catching someone red-handed, with the hand still on the murder weapon stuck in the body... and then they make a public apology along the lines of " Through the feedback I’ve received from al…
Human rights? If I'm correctly understanding the issue, their software monitored your contact list so they could notify you when one of your contacts joined the service. You seem ready to throw him before the International Court.
That they've wiped their user data and are giving people the opportunity to use their product in a setting with opt-in sharing seems to demonstrate to me, at least, that they still believe that hosting your contact information would add value to their product, but they now realize that concerns regarding privacy are significant enough to warrant using the product without this feature. To reference a parallel thread, I don't think this is a reflection of morality/amorality/immorality, but rather that this never registered in their engineering oriented brains.