131–140 of 430 posts
Am I the only one that found this sentence interesting/amusing/silly: "I decided the best place to contact them would be Twitter" Why would anyone contact someone on Twitter first? Their contact page (usefulness unknown) is easy to find on their website.
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How could this possibly be a programming bug?
Of course it was a bug. It seems clear to me they were experimenting with some texting functionality where Path would notify users of things, it made it to production with bugs, and some subset of users got this terrible behaviour. Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence.
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This is proven (and risky) way to grow. I really cannot blame them: they have to pay their rent and VCs are nervous. This approach might burn them completely but also can get them to some significant number of users (after which they will issue an apology and pay all fines if needed).
> I really cannot blame them Shitty behavior does not stop being shitty behavior because you have bills to pay. And it's not even in the "understandable under duress" area of shitty; Path isn't a person with a starving child and that dude's contact list isn't a loaf of bread. If your company can't exist without being shitty, your company shouldn't exist.
How about another detail -- the fact that the message said the user had photos to share, when he didn't? There's annoying spam, and then there's straight-out-lying spam -- the "x has sent you a message, you need to create an account to view it" type. Just curious, is there a way to sue/fine a company like this for false advertising, essentially?
This is proven (and risky) way to grow. I really cannot blame them: they have to pay their rent and VCs are nervous. This approach might burn them completely but also can get them to some significant number of users (after which they will issue an apology and pay all fines if needed).
After reading this I don't think I will join anytime soon. I don't really get the reasoning behind this. Path is marketed for the use case I had in mind. Sharing stuff with only a handful of people you know well. Why on earth are they trying to lure all of your contacts in. This would make sense for facebook, not for path.
Anyone knows an alternative to path using my data more responsibly?
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We need to nip this in the bud. Maybe it's time to create a Hippocratic Oath for developers to publicly commit to? A future Path developer could then refuse to implement an unethical "feature" by pointing out that the company had hired them with the full knowledge that the oath had been undertaken. I don't think the company would pink slip the developer, as they would probably want to avoid any attention being drawn…
What difference would that make? Path could still fire him, oath or no oath, and I can't see their decision being much influenced there.
Obviously such an action should be more clearly labelled. If it was, could they whitelist the times it sends out text messages to not do it at 6am? How easy is it to lookup an approximate region for a mobile number?
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We need to nip this in the bud. Maybe it's time to create a Hippocratic Oath for developers to publicly commit to? A future Path developer could then refuse to implement an unethical "feature" by pointing out that the company had hired them with the full knowledge that the oath had been undertaken. I don't think the company would pink slip the developer, as they would probably want to avoid any attention being drawn…
What difference would that make? Path could still fire him, oath or no oath, and I can't see their decision being much influenced there.
The weirdest part of this is that it apparently made voice calls to landlines? Why would they do that, it makes no sense. Unless maybe that's what the phone company does if you text a landline? Never tried it but I would be surprised...
At least BT do this for texts to landlines in the UK. When it was first launched, they used Tom Baker's voice. It was an amazing few weeks.
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This doesn't sound very difficult to verify. Go to play.google.com. Search for path. First result in the app store. Click on Permissions. "This application has access to the following: ... blah blah blah ... This permission allows the app to use the camera at any time without your confirmation. ... blah blah blah ... read your contacts Allows the app to read data about your contacts stored on your tablet ... blah bla…
Can you actually prevent an app from using one or more of those permissions? Like can I give it permission to my camera but not to the call log?