291–300 of 430 posts
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?
I've been so dumb to not have tried this kind of bad publicity stunt yet.
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…
You don't need an official Oath or for the company to know or base their employment on such an Oath. Either way, the bottleneck is the employee drawing attention to the company doing something unethical; no Oath has to get in the way of that. There's already a sub-thread on top-secret/weapons/armaments jobs. What about political ethics? And religious? Marriage / gay rights? Porn? "Sexism?"
But more generally: one of the most interesting parts of startups is the tension between "Don't Be Evil" and "Don't Fail". It would be good to be able to discuss this more openly -- "Don't Be Evil" by itself is too utopian. Many of the most successful companies in the world did things in their early days -- or later -- that new entrepreneurs would never even consider -- until of course their own backs are up against the wall.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
OP is using an android phone.
Android's permission system also doesn't require apps to ask for permission before they access your phonebook - it requires you to give permission to install the app, and it tells you the app can view your phonebook, but you have to either trust the app not to abuse that ability or not install it at all. There's no way of telling the difference between an app that can use your phonebook to provide useful optional fun…
For example, I'd want to be able to use the facebook app and many users might even want to have it scan their address books in order to find friends. However, if the app attempts to read my address book when I'm just checking someone's status update that is clearly not okay and I want to be able to block it.
The free pass to pillage my phone upon installation doesn't sit well with me.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
We don't need an oath. We need to stop using Path. We need to get everyone we know to stop using Path. No need to over complicate things.
If you can't send anything except this daft, goofy, unbelievably annoying tweet, maybe you need to find a different way to "engage" with upset users.
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Read data about contacts doesn't sound unreasonable for an app like Path though. Facebook uses that permission to sync contacts if you want, and I don't see any problem with that. Unfortunately, reading data means they can store it, off device, independently of the install state. That's a difficult problem to solve, but I don't think users should be expected to expect this as a result of that permission.
Exactly. WhatsApp wants permission to practically everything possible, because it offers various features on top of these permissions. Yet it never spammed anyone so far from what I can tell.
I'm sure this will be downvoted to hell and back, but still: http://jesuschristsiliconvalley.tumblr.com/post/46539276780/...
Turning off the ringer on your phone is totally legit, though. I don't believe in interrupt-driven communication, unless it's mediated through a machine or some kind of filter. (I'll let a machine notify me if lots of stuff is down, or if one of a very small number of people call me, but that's about it. IIRC, pg's call went to voicemail a couple years ago.