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Comment by shubhamjain | Hacker News Reader

I can imagine the author of the original tweet grinning wide at the marvelous stupidity of the entire media world. Just a little inspection is enough to realize how ridiculous the whole controversy is.

The 'spying' here is nothing more than using an analytics service called Clevertap. I haven't come across many apps/websites that didn't do so, in one way or the other. It's a fucking industry. If tracking the activity of an app's users would amount to spying, then I guess entire fleet of third-party SaaS services would need to go (Mixpanel, Amplitude, Zendesk, Intercom).

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I do not subscribe to this kind of news, nor do I support the political viewpoints of the various parties in India. I agree with you on the crux.

Having said that, Non Politically, I do not support 'analytics' solutions and find them morally wrong. In that moral line, I wont justify wrong industry practices even if everybody does it.

Exactly, what's funnier is that CleverTap is an Indian product with a majority of their team being based out of India (including the top management).

I reckon they became a US based company post funding or more recently... and because of that Modi has received a lot more fire from the media.

>If tracking the activity of an app's users would amount to spying, then I guess entire fleet of third-party SaaS services would need to go

If you were to explain this current behaviour to people from around 25 years or so ago, the vast majority of them would view what is these days euphemistically described as analytics, as definitely being a form of spying. The fact that it has been turned into a large commercial industry does not change what the behaviour actually is. That the NKVD was a routine part of Soviet society didn't excuse them and the same reasoning will not excuse modern marketing culture either.

But people from around 25 years ago (and to this day) have always been accustomed to this "form of spying". If you walk into a store you are typically followed around by the store staff who are always there to help you in case you aren't able to find something you are looking for. Technically this is a "form of spying". But we do not protest. We instead label it "hospitality". Once you become a "returning visitor" to the store, the store staff get to know you really well and treat you like a VVIP. This is nothing but analytics in the real world. It just so happens that the information collected about you isn't as structured as the virtual world.

I guess by conflating multiple terminologies into one basket we are probably doing ourselves a bit of disservice.

>If you walk into a store you are typically followed around by the store staff who are always there to help you in case you aren't able to find something you are looking for. Technically this is a "form of spying". But we do not protest.

Two things. Firstly, it is an entirely fatuous argument to try and claim that overly attentive shop assistants are somewhere in the same ballpark as modern digital analytics. They are not even playing the same sport.

Secondly, please do not consider getting a job as a shop assistant here in the UK, as overly attentive shop assistants are one of the few things that we actually do protest bitterly about, almost to the same degree as inaccurate weather reports, or people not properly understanding queuing.

> stupidity of the entire media world

Half stupidity and Half sinister. The journalists and the opposition would apparently want to use the lack of tech literacy among the broader population against them.

Also, it's driven by fear. As in, the opposition doesn't want the BJP to have a app which they can push notifications on election day :)

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