Hey I'm working on exactly this with https://histre.com/
1. The comments aspect of this doesn't really jump out at me from the landing page.
2. The words "knowledge base" scare most people.
3. "You will be our customer and we promise to treat you the way we’d like to be treated too… with respect" is much more ominous with ellipsis than it would be with an em dash or a colon.
Why would I ever give you my data? Because you promise not to sell it? Sorry that's not going to fly.
I'm not an anonymous person. I've been a Hacker News user since the very beginning. I share my contact info in my profile. My reputation is my livelihood. I've never done anything shady and don't intend to start now :-) So I'd like to believe that people see that judge for themselves whether to trust me or not.
Knowing who is behind a product, at least for me personally, makes a difference. Just a couple of days ago I started a Youtube channel to openly talk about my thoughts: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCHkgOonAQd5haT8HHJhpg6g
But yeah I hear your concerns, and I respect your decision to not use my app.
Another thing to highlight here: Histre is a paid product. I'm bootstrapping it. I think that it is the "free" products that go the adtech route. By charging the users, I'm making it clear that it is their money that supports Histre.
Usually poison pills are to trip up parties without controlling interest, so I'm curious what kind of legal framework would making something like that unchangeable.
- Companies display a willingness to force agreement to new policies in order to continue using the service, even for paid customers, and often on questionable or void legal footing.
- The fact that it's a paid service right now might not be a strong enough signal. Even large device manufacturers (e.g. HTC) have retroactively patched ads into paid-in-full, physical products. What's to say that you won't have to pivot to make Histre succeed?
- What happens if you are bought out or otherwise personally leave the product? Even if success doesn't affect how you act on your commitments, what's to keep others from malicious actions?
- Adding to the above (re-iterating an ancestor comment), if you're successful enough to need employees you won't have a hand in every decision. How then is privacy still protected?
Privacy aside, if Histre goes under what options do customers have for, e.g., exporting their data?
Re exporting data: I'm working on that. There will be org-mode export first. Then json.