PigeonTransit's Misleading Privacy Claims | Hacker News Reader

PigeonTransit's Misleading Privacy Claims

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35 pointsluu17 comments

I don't know if I'm reading the twitter thread right(I only see 1 post), but I don't see how it is misleading for an app to be owned by google, and for the TOS to say 'we won't share the information with anyone'.

It isn't a given that any data google has it will use or share. For example, they don't look at data you have stored on their cloud file storage service.

I'd actually trust Google more than some random company to stick to their privacy statement.

And finally, I can understand why this isn't branded as a Google product if it comes from area 120, which is an internal incubator.

The issue is "we won't share the information with anyone" is likely to be interpreted by the average user as "we won't share the information outside our cool little startup which makes this awesome Pigeon app", rather than "we won't share the information outside our friendly megacorp Google".

But considering most app terms allow for transfer of data to the purchaser on buy-out, and the fate of many a 'cool little startup' is to be bought out by a large company, momentary independence isn't really a much greater guarantee that your data won't be sitting in a megacorp soon.

You also have to dig pretty deep on Pigeon Transit's web site (https://pigeontransit.com) to see that it's really part of Google.

From the FAQ:

> Who created Pigeon?

> Pigeon is lovingly designed and built by a small team based in New York as a part of Area 120 - a workshop for experimental products.

You then have to follow another link to "Area 120", which takes you to area120.google.com and finally tells you:

> Area 120 is a workshop for Google's experimental products.

It's interesting that Google launched their app on iOS before Android. Also from the FAQ:

> We’re currently focused on learning and testing with iOS users in NYC, but we hope to bring Pigeon to Android soon.

I'm not so sure that a click on "Who Created Pigeon" and then a click on "Area 120" counts as "dig pretty deep".

Not deep as in "deserves a Pulitzer", but plenty deep enough for "intentionally misleading".

The branding and everything else about it certainly doesn't make it obvious that it's related to Google in any way...

But it’s clearly an intentional omission of the relationship between Pigeon and one of the five most recognizable brands in the world.

What's even more interesting is how Twitter has locked the number of likes and retweets.

This hit the front page of HN. Myself and many others liked and retweeted it.

The likes and retweets haven't gone up. Just 17 likes, 1 retweet.

https://twitter.com/OptimizingMe/status/1135731744496209920?...

Shows me 4 + 23. Twitter is pretty bad about caching those numbers, you generally can't see them change easily. Try checking a private Window?

I tested multiple browsers (not logged in, regular and private) and the Android client.

I suspect some kind of IP based metric.

Twitter metrics are pretty real time for me normally.

24 hours later: 8 + 38. Seems fine.

I've been tracing an ongoing pattern whereby large corporations seem to alter reach of tweets that are critical of the corporation, even when the tweets are factual.

I've been critical of Cargill foods including exploring the link between the herbicides and antibiotics in their meat on testosterone. We're talking pubmed links, screenshots, etc.

They seem to have blocked certain keywords like Cargill + my username and have selectively removed the most powerful tweets from Twitter search. On the selectively censored search results, the posts disappear from search during business hours, as if being hand picked by executives.

could that be fake news? (fake views?)

I hardly use Twitter lately but I remember them being more real time. I wonder if they added something new similar to how YouTube freezes views after about 300 views? They still record the views but delay updating them while the algorithm validate them as real views.

"Report a security or privacy vulnerability": https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201220

I understand wanting to raise the word on Twitter, but I really don't think that is a solution for notifying Apple using their established contact process.

Going viral on Twitter is going to get something taken care of a LOT faster than putting in a customer service ticket.

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