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Path texts my entire phonebook at 6 AM

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Re: Path texts my entire phonebook at 6 AM

#211

Post by lobotryas »

criley wrote: post #136
mikeash wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Publicity. He writes a blog "Path fired me for not breaking the oath" and then communities like this one will rally around that whistle-blower.

This assumes that Path (or any company) would be foolish enough to make their intentions clear.

If a developer refused to implement a feature due to their ethics then the company would do the following:

* Move engineer to different project

* Set unrealistic goals/deadlines/expectations

* After engineer fails, voice concern about performance

* Set up performance review and improvement plan

* After causing engineer to fail a second time due to unrealistic expectations, fire them due to poor performance

Even if that engineer writes a blog post, enough has happened between his initial refusal and termination as to make conclusive proof impossible. The discussion will be a he-said-she-said affair as his former employer makes a counter-blog post explaining the engineer's poor performance.

A lawsuit is similarly out of the question as most companies have sufficient funds to cause delays in court, thereby causing you to spend all your money on attorney fees and bleeding you dry.

Re: Path texts my entire phonebook at 6 AM

#212

Post by micampe »

creativityland wrote: post #37
crazygringo wrote: post #34

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?

Maybe that's why we've been seeing Path more in App Store top charts recently? Another app doing similar spamming is Circle: http://discovercircle.com - surprised no one talked about that...

Apps can't send text messages without the user knowing it on iOS, you have to tap Send for each one of them, so this couldn't have affected App Store rankings.

Re: Path texts my entire phonebook at 6 AM

#213

Post by nwh »

leephillips wrote: post #122
nwh wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well we know they don't keylog, they can't act outside of their sandbox. Curious if they'd try if they could though.

Unless they've found an exploit. Even companies that are generally law-abiding (Sony) have distributed applications specifically designed to circumvent OS-level protections, to do things the user doesn't want. Given what we know about these creeps, why wouldn't they? You have to have trust to install closed-source software, and that trust should be based on something besides "oooo, shiny".

They might run into troubles doing that. At least one security researcher has a lifetime ban from Apple's developer program for trying things like that.

Re: Path texts my entire phonebook at 6 AM

#215

Post by mikeash »

criley wrote: post #136
mikeash wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Publicity. He writes a blog "Path fired me for not breaking the oath" and then communities like this one will rally around that whistle-blower.

How would this be any different from the situation today, where he writes a blog post titled, "Path fired me for not spamming millions of people's phones" and the community rallies around the whistle-blower?

Re: Path texts my entire phonebook at 6 AM

#216

Post by danielweber »

randrews wrote: post #143
tlogan wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I completely agree with you on "If your company can't exist without being shitty, your company shouldn't exist.". However, here in VC-stanm the behavior like this is considered "hacking the growth" and something which is not considered a bad thing. So unfortunately, you cannot play the game here (ok, you can play but no big money will bet on you) if you not ready to do things like this.

Shitty behavior also does not stop being shitty behavior when you're pressured into doing it.

It doesn't, but it might mean we need to look into how the pressure is being applied.

We can bitch at Path all day, but there exists strong incentive to do this, and people who don't do this will have unilaterally disarmed and be at a disadvantage. We need to encourage the first group to not do this, and encourage the second group to keep it up and not feel like suckers for respecting their users.

Re: Path texts my entire phonebook at 6 AM

#217

Post by samstave »

bitcartel wrote: post #107
crazygringo wrote: post #34

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?

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…

"Shippocratic Oath"

FTFY

Re: Path texts my entire phonebook at 6 AM

#218

Post by tedks »

bitcartel wrote: post #107
crazygringo wrote: post #34

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?

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…

Does this mean that we can't write software for drones anymore?

What about software for missile guidance? Is that okay by this oath?

Or do we as a community value not texting people at 6AM more than we value not killing people?

Re: Path texts my entire phonebook at 6 AM

#219

Post by minimaxir »

smacktoward wrote: post #42
OGinparadise wrote: post #14

Wow, they just paid $800K to FTC for being shady. They are betting that they become so big that these shenanigans don't matter later on.

They're doing it exactly backwards. The Right Way is to hold off on the massive user privacy violations until you become huge. At that point enforcing the laws against you becomes too difficult and expensive, so the government won't bother; and if some random AG tries to do it anyway you can afford to buy whatever changes to the laws you need to get him off your back. Problem solved.

But nowadays, due to all the competition for emerging startups, you can't become huge until you start invoking privacy violations.

It's a Catch-22 of ethical misconduct!

Re: Path texts my entire phonebook at 6 AM

#220

Post by white_devil »

> @stekenwright We’re sorry to hear of your issues and would love to engage. Please message us so we can help

Translation: "Your blog post detailing our scuzzy spammery is getting seen by lots of people. We're uncomfortable with that, and would like to get you to say we're not so bad after all."

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