Expensify's CEO emailed 10M customers urging them to vote for Biden
businessinsider.com
businessinsider.com
While I personally agree with this particular message, it's entirely inappropriate to send it over this channel. Especially considering most end-users, such as myself, aren't paying customers, but are employees of paying customers. I doubt this is going to trigger enough uproar in any tech company to have them switch their expense reporting software, but it does set a dangerous precedent. Are representatives from Jira and Asana going to start e-mailing me asking me to vote a certain way in my state elections?
If we don't push back against this, it will become the norm, and we'll have to deal with a cacophony of e-mails with voting directions from businesses every cycle. If you thought GDPR e-mails are bad, this will be much worse.
[0] https://blog.expensify.com/2011/03/25/ceo-friday-why-we-dont...
It exposes way too much liability to have a vendor you hire lobbying your employees without your knowledge or consent.
I can't even imagine considering doing this myself.
I think this is very different from Facebook or Twitter skew feeds in favour of some political cause.
First of all they are essentially public utilities, they shouldn't regulate speech as long as it's legal.
Secondly they do it without people's knowledge. David Barret's embarrassing email is completely honest and open.
Hard no. There is no legal nor moral basis for this. Absolutely not.
They can control speech however they want in their realm. If they want to censor, it's completely in their right.
That being asked, while I agree with the message, I don't believe sending it was a good idea. It likely won't move the needle at all (most everyone has made up their mind), and potentially alienates Trump-supporting customers.