Abine gets it right. Supports a product fork.

velvetcache.org

13 points·jmhobbs··3 comments

thanks HN readers - any more suggestions are valuable. the debate between opt-in and opt-out is a fair one. i'd point out that Abine extends exactly the privacy cookie features that are the Foundation of TACO. that said, it was too big and abrupt to please the advanced user, and our product needs a lot of work.

what i'm really interested in is HN's advice in building a sustainable privacy company. one that is one the users side and not corrupted by advertising. plausible?

supporting the fork with updates to the opt outs is good, but the change to the add-on seems gratuitous.

a more user friendly approach would have been to give them the 'downgrade' update, and opened a tab offering the 'enhanced' abine privacy add-on. the update behaviour feels more appropriate for a scammy toolbar, than a useful privacy extension. among their target audience wouldn't this be a turn off?

Yes. Absolutely.

They should have made their new version a new extension. I think they were trying to take advantage of the previous user install base without realizing this is really a power-user addon.

I'm impressed that they are willing to help while they try and get a handle.

Ideally they would do what you said and issue a "roll-back" to v2.0 with a link to the enhanced add on.

I applaud them for their openness and responsiveness, not their marketing tactics. We'll see where it goes from here.

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