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Tell HN: Triplebyte reverses, emails apology

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Re: Tell HN: Triplebyte reverses, emails apology

#671

Post by EGreg »

woofie11 wrote: post #668
EGreg wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about this dichotomy: 1. Infrastructure should be more decentralized and let nameless providers compete 2. Information should be available to everyone and let nameless authors collaborate 1 produces a market of prices and competition, while 2 produces a collaborative edifice of knowledge and well architected software.

I'd actually like infrastructure to be at home. When I was in college, my "infrastructure" consisted of a PC running Linux in my dorm room, a good bit slower than a Raspberry Pi. It was fine for managing my documents, email, etc. I'd like information to either be under my control, or managed as a public good by a non-profit or government agency with appropriate checks-and-balances and transparency.

That’s great

A hosting company can be local Or you could host your files on your computer. If you host a social network where others also contribute content then you ARE the local hosting company and now you’re responsible for their data

That should all be a choice.

Re: Tell HN: Triplebyte reverses, emails apology

#672

Post by kerkeslager »

philwelch wrote: post #670
kerkeslager wrote: post #666

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So basically, if you were in TripleByte's shoes, you'd react without conscience? You have accused me of misinterpreting your intent elsewhere, but really I don't know how you expect me to interpret this that would cast you in a more positive light. You're saying you would do unethical things, so I don't think I'm off-base to say you might be unethical.

It’s not “without conscience” to change the default from opt-out to opt-in and it’s not “without conscience” to withdraw the entire feature citing negative feedback, so I think that’s a very uncharitable representation that you’re making.

I'm specifically reacting to akerl_ saying that they wouldn't apologize because there's no selfish benefit.

Re: Tell HN: Triplebyte reverses, emails apology

#673

Post by philwelch »

kerkeslager wrote: post #672
philwelch wrote: post #670

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not “without conscience” to change the default from opt-out to opt-in and it’s not “without conscience” to withdraw the entire feature citing negative feedback, so I think that’s a very uncharitable representation that you’re making.

I'm specifically reacting to akerl_ saying that they wouldn't apologize because there's no selfish benefit.

I think the point is more that elaborate apologies and mea culpas don’t actually help anyone. They don’t help the company that does them and they don’t really do anything for us as customers either.

As a customer, am I going to believe TripleByte is sincere when they apologize to me? Maybe, but probably not. The only way to be sure is to judge them by their actions.

And in this case in particular, there’s not technically anything to apologize for since they never actually rolled out the feature.

Any liar can make beautiful apologies without meaning a word of them. It takes an honest person to demonstrate conscience through their actions.

Re: Tell HN: Triplebyte reverses, emails apology

#674

Post by woofie11 »

EGreg wrote: post #671
woofie11 wrote: post #668

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd actually like infrastructure to be at home. When I was in college, my "infrastructure" consisted of a PC running Linux in my dorm room, a good bit slower than a Raspberry Pi. It was fine for managing my documents, email, etc. I'd like information to either be under my control, or managed as a public good by a non-profit or government agency with appropriate checks-and-balances and transparency.

That’s great A hosting company can be local Or you could host your files on your computer. If you host a social network where others also contribute content then you ARE the local hosting company and now you’re responsible for their data That should all be a choice.

Back in the early '00s, I designed a social network architecture which was fully decentralized. The only people whose information I'd have would be my friends', and vice-versa. I never built it, mind you, it was all a thought experiment. But I still think that sort of thing ought to be how it works.

Re: Tell HN: Triplebyte reverses, emails apology

#675

Post by fydorm »

toodles1628 wrote: post #566
ammon wrote: post #539

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was clueless. The posts I made Friday night were what I thought at the time (which was badly wrong). I was still focused on what I'd been thinking while we were developing the feature (still trying to make it "work"). What it took was a bunch of friends and mentors reaching out Saturday morning (and basically telling me I'd made a big mistake and betrayed the trust of our users). I wish I'd been able to understand…

It seems convenient to be clueless. Certainly makes for a better apology than "Of course I knew the issue but wanted to try to push it through." To me it doesn't seem credible that you as the CEO of a recruiting company didn't realize the issue of "default public" profiles. You literally have a section about confidentiality on the front page of your website so you must have known it was important to users.

I'm just as upset as the next guy, but it's a bit silly to presume that he knew how bad this would be. If that were the case, even if he were a greedy, evil, selfish bastard, he wouldn't have rolled out the feature because he would understand the backlash.

Re: Tell HN: Triplebyte reverses, emails apology

#676

Post by mthoms »

jki275 wrote: post #626
mthoms wrote: post #569

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It's a silly hypothetical, and not worth addressing any further than I already did. You haven't given a _reason_ why it's "silly" and "not worth addressing", you just declared it so. That's not how civilized debate works and not how intelligent, honest, people disagree. >You've now admitted you're not even in the situation, so why debate for it other than internet gotcha points? Because I believe in privacy, ethics…

I’m pretty sure one can find a lawyer to argue any side of any point. That doesn’t make it so.

It makes it much more "so" than a random internet user attempting to argue the opposite without (1) providing any references or (2) putting forth a coherent supporting argument.

Re: Tell HN: Triplebyte reverses, emails apology

#677

Post by ss3000 »

philwelch wrote: post #630
geoelectric wrote: post #623

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can install business processes that give chances for unethical decisions to be reviewed and identified, though. Committees are shit for innovation but relatively effective for squashing interestingly bad ideas along with any interestingly good ones. I read the apology letter as essentially saying he single-handedly drove the idea, in part because he was flailing due to COVID killing their bottom line, and was tun…

I still don’t like the idea of hamstringing the CEO’s ability to make executive decisions because the CEO can’t be trusted to make ethical executive decisions. Processes are fine for preventing operational mistakes, but when it comes to ethics and executive judgment, they’re a poor substitute for having trustworthy people making the decisions.

> Processes are fine for preventing operational mistakes, but when it comes to ethics and executive judgment, they’re a poor substitute for having trustworthy people making the decisions.

Exactly this. The only thing that _might_ actually make me trust Triplebyte with my data again is if their current CEO actually stepped down to a less influential role. If I were part of the board I'd actually be advocating for him to step down or be forceably removed if possible.

He didn't put a stop this catastrophic breach of trust after being made aware of it. Even worse, he seemed to have actively drove this forward in spite of opposition. I'm simply not willing to trust a company where he's the top-level decision maker with data as sensitive as they're dealing with, apologies or not.

Re: Tell HN: Triplebyte reverses, emails apology

#678

Post by ss3000 »

akerl_ wrote: post #306
mosselman wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This e-mail (which I also got) seems like a heartfelt apology. Even if it is heartfelt, I'd argue that if no alarm bells went off internally when they were discussing this feature, they are not the group of people to entrust with information such as this.

Given the prevalence of comments like this, I wonder why any company would ever bother offering an apology or retraction. As soon as a company does something that a chunk of people on the internet don’t agree with, there’s really no way out. They’re going to get bad press regardless of whether they retract, whether they apologize, and whether they say they’re taking actions to avoid the sequence that led to the actio…

An apology is a company's best shot at damage control after a PR disaster. A well crafted one has obvious benefits in that it might win some people back, as can be seen from the people defending Triplebyte in this very thread.

Just because it doesn't work for everybody doesn't make it not worth doing.

FWIW the apology doesn't do jack shit for me.

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