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Comment by sbergot | Hacker News Reader

I mean, I can accept an apology when I can somehow understand the initial intention. In the thread the CEO was answering "but stackoverflow also has public accounts!" to people explaining why this was a very bad move. The guy seemed completely clueless. It was like trying to explain that hurting people is bad to someone who has just punched you in the face. And this guy justifies his move saying that he has watched a boxing match and that seems a normal thing to do. And then the day after that he finally understand for some reason? The apology is useless because the harm done is too great.

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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 this sooner based on the original HN thread. But it took me some time.

Why did it take friends and mentors reaching out when hundreds of users had already been telling you the same on Friday?

I don't have a great answer. I guess just an entrenched/combative view of what was going on? I'm not proud of it.

It is because he thinks he is above us, who listens to the cows when you sell milk.

I think the issue is that many (most?) posters can't understand how this decision could have ever been made in the first place and how could it have been so strongly defended? It speaks to some sort of fundamental disconnect about what is acceptable handling of user data and privacy. This naturally leads to mistrust about less visible policies that are in place or will be created. What decisions have been made in the past and/or will be made in the future that are less visible to users that will similarly abuse users personal data? I think everyone appreciates the apology very much, but the unfortunate truth is that this business requires trust and this debacle has eroded that trust in a way that can't be quickly repaired by a simple mea culpa.

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.

Users are obviously not the customer, and recruitment business is shady in itself, sadly. No wonder.

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.

If you are that clueless you shouldn't be running a company.

But no harm was done? It’s like he enthusiastically told you he was going to punch you in the face next week and you told him that’s a bad idea, so he stopped.

The fact that you had to tell him that punching somebody in the face is bad, is sufficient reason for me to never wanting to deal with that person again.

I've definitely punched people in the face by mistake. They even forgave me!

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