41–50 of 102 posts
What's the point of "believing", when you don't act on it . This whole story paints a picture of a company without any conviction.
A lot of this discussion seems to boil down to several key issues: 1. Should you ever refuse service to someone because you disapprove of their lawful activities? 2. If so, where do you draw the line? 3. If so, how do you deal with the fact that you can only enforce the policy when a customer's activities are specifically brought to your attention? To answer #1, I'd make an analogy to the social responsibility rules…
Google and Facebook ban people's accounts all the time for doing things they find disagreeable, and they certainly aren't lauded for it. Instead, we all live in a constant state of fear that Google might ban our accounts because we didn't use our real name, or we're showing a middle finger in our profile picture, etc.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You definitely showed all of us that your moral compass is tightly bound to the law. Instead of telling this despicable customer to leave, you gave him the grand tour. Your blog post could have been an explanation of your reasoning and moral outrage, making you look better while providing transparency for your customers to trust.
Do you think that Reddit is immoral for allowing many despicable people to hold conversations about despicable topics? This community is normally all about a free and open internet, where companies like Google, Facebook, etc. aren't trying to control what their users can do with their technology. Trust me, I don't feel good about helping a patent troll. I just don't see any sort of justifiable policy that would allow…
A lot of this discussion seems to boil down to several key issues: 1. Should you ever refuse service to someone because you disapprove of their lawful activities? 2. If so, where do you draw the line? 3. If so, how do you deal with the fact that you can only enforce the policy when a customer's activities are specifically brought to your attention? To answer #1, I'd make an analogy to the social responsibility rules…
I guess one approach is to have a Terms of Service, but in this case, what would it say? "You agree not to do anything we disapprove of." Seems like a tough road to go down.
The content of the post was not at all what I expected. The funny thing about principles is they're easy to have when they're not being tested. For example: "'I really don’t want this guy’s money,' Tyler said at one point. We’re glad not to have it." That's a lot easier to say when the offer of money is no longer on the table. I'm not sure at what point that was actually said, but in the article it comes after giving…
(I work at the Less Annoying CRM) Since a few people have brought up similar points, I'd like to address them here. My gut instinct was to tell the patent troll to fuck off. I still wish we had done that. But that would set a terrible precedent and turn us into something that I hate: the App Store Pretty much everyone here hates how arbitrary and opaque the approval system is in the App Store. It seems like there's a…
(I work at the Less Annoying CRM) Since a few people have brought up similar points, I'd like to address them here. My gut instinct was to tell the patent troll to fuck off. I still wish we had done that. But that would set a terrible precedent and turn us into something that I hate: the App Store Pretty much everyone here hates how arbitrary and opaque the approval system is in the App Store. It seems like there's a…
(further down in this thread you also said):
"Trust me, I don't feel good about helping a patent troll. I just don't see any sort of justifiable policy that would allow for us to act any differently."
Doesn't need to be "justifiable". "Justifiable" to?
You are, as was said by the sheriff played by Roy Schieder In Jaws "the Chief of Police". And you're not a large corporation (yet) where you have to issue a memo which says "don't sell to patent trolls " either.
You can do whatever you want to deflect or keep any business and nobody needs to know about it. You can simply be passive aggressive with any customer. You don't return phone calls. You don't setup demo dates. You don't get back to them without pricing or details or answers to questions they have. Almost everyone will leave and just think you are a typical non-responsive business and they will go elsewhere. Or you can quote them a high price to scare them away. There are dozens of "not in the book" ways you can get people to not give you business. Bad service is only one. It's not that hard. And you don't have to announce it to the world or justify it to anyone. It's done quietly.
This happens everyday in business for many reasons (that don't even have to do with anything objectionable). A salesman will spend his time with someone who is going to give him more business and be lackadaisical with someone that appears to be a trifler. Lawyers will build their business with any client then they will thin those clients by being less responsive and/or jacking up billing rates. The clients leave. They don't announce "you are not important anymore". It just happens.
Added: "jeopardizing our trustworthiness with our real customers"
The point is to do it where the other customers don't know you are doing this. I'm assuming there are many things in your business everyday that you don't reveal to current customers.
If it was me... My ToS would have an ethics clause in it, that if it becomes known to us you are doing something I may find unscrupulous then me and my staff have a right to refuse to help you on a personal basis. I'd hate to make any of my people have to help someone they find unethical. It is a hard question to answer though, but I think harder to answer after you are established, and therefore should be asked by e…
That's actually what we thought at first, but there's a problem. Doesn't that encourage our legitimate customers to not use our customer service? If someone is running a political campaign, they can't risk asking us a question because we might not agree with their beliefs. How can we have that policy without leaving all of our real customers in a constant state of fear that we might ban them because of our own belief…
OR
Allowing for each employee to be able to make that call can find you some middle ground.
Lets take your political campaign example, if a democratic pro-choice advocacy group wanted to use your CRM, but your support guy/girl doing that gets the call is pro-life, she/he should be allowed to say, hey I'm sorry but someone else needs to take this for me, I can't do this. Now really that should be every company, but let it be known in your ToS that you reserve the right to not force an employee to do something they don't find agreeable with their ethics.
If it happens that ALL of your employees hate patent trolls to the extent that none of them will help then simply tell the customer that they won't be able to get help.
I can appreciate how hard of a question it is, censorship versus ethics. But, maybe it'll help to think of it this way, as a company you don't want to censor your customers, but at what point do you realize that in violating your own ethics you are allowing someone else to censor you.
It's a tough call either way, I don't begrudge you the choice you made as it seems you put a lot of thought into it.
You know, jury nullification is a thing. One aspect of this is when there is evidence to convict someone of a crime, the jury may choose to not convict if they feel the law is not just. This is a power granted to citizens (of the USA) to help us govern ourselves in in case our legal system becomes unjust or corrupt. You are in the position of (some) power. By knowingly choosing to to help someone do something unethic…
> This is a power granted to citizens Technically, no. Jury nullification is an unavoidable consequence of the fact that juries are not required to explain their reasoning. But it can only happen when a jury ignores a judge's instructions (which will say to base the decision on the existing law). > it should say Greed is good. [...] Don't get me wrong, there's nothing wrong with making money, but don't try and ration…