I’ve sent an email to the CEO of Expensify [Twitter] | Hacker News Reader

I’ve sent an email to the CEO of Expensify [Twitter]

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36 pointsziodave14 comments

Here is the full text of the email: https://community.expensify.com/discussion/7632/protect-demo...

It looks like he used his access to millions of customer emails to spam them with his political views.

> I know you don’t want to hear this from me. And I guarantee I don’t want to say it.

This whole thing just reeks of narcissism and delusion. And that's saying something, since I mostly agree with him otherwise. I can't imagine this did anything but piss off a lot of people.

Good lord. I've seen 'political' messages, but this one takes the cake. Narcissism is right.

> I can't imagine this did anything but piss off a lot of people.

I had the same reaction. I think Trump is probably the worst President in history so obviously I'll be voting for Biden, but I still agree with most of this person's reply letter.

If a vendor decided to misuse information that I trusted them with, or tried to tell me who to vote for, they'd instantly become an ex-vendor - even when I agree with their opinion.

>Before sending it we had a long discussion, designed to be as inclusive and respectful as possible. In particular, we made a fact check Slack room where anyone can contest a factual claim and argue for/against it, then a group of top employees votes on our official opinion.

Oof imagine working there and speaking up from the "other side". I'd just leave tbh. Or just stay silent. There is a reason a lot of people don't want to talk about things like that in a workplace.

Yes, there are a million ways that a person can be targeted for a removal (marginalised, sidelined, or set up for total career destruction) in an environment that's enforcing a narrow, shifting ideological orthodoxy. Any attempt to solicit a countervailing opinion on political matters in high-profile tech companies should of course be met with extreme suspicion, but unfortunately that's likely to lead to the problem getting worse.

Millions of customers - including many not in the US. He couldn’t even be assed enough to at least segment his client list before spamming them...(said as an Aussie who received his email)

It's a bold stance. It says that because "Team Red," as the tweet puts it, is attacking the foundations of democracy (the OS, if you will), this justifies extreme responses, including the breach of norms, trust, or perhaps even laws that this email represents. This person/company has decided to fight fire (breaking of norms) with fire. Sometimes that works, sometimes you burn the whole forest down faster.

"But this time it's different!" Such, I imagine, are the thoughts of "Team Blue". Next time, Team Red. Repeat ad nauseum.

The tech governance issue here is that a commercial organisation used personal information provided for an unrelated purpose for political lobbying without consent.

Presumably some of the many recipients of the email are both US voters and EU residents with dual citizenship.

In that case would this be a breach of the GDPR?

Yea there didn't seem to be much filtering of the email recipient list... I saw a handful of people on Twitter that said they received the email even though they're not even US Citizens. GDPR violations seem likely.

I am an European citizen employed by a subsidiary of an US company and I received that email. Definitely a GDPR violation.

Neither I nor the company I work for are American (both Euros) and yet every one of us in the company, many thousands globally, have received this email today.

Thankfully it seems to have went directly to spam, as I had to look to find it, but the point remains.

It's indicative of just how broken the times we live in are that the CEO of a financial company feels righteous in abusing their customer's private data in the way that David Barrett has here.

Worse still, he had his official company marketing account go and hype up everyone who replied to him on Twitter applauding his actions here.

It's not surprising to see a tech CEO feeling so empowered to do so, given how widespread similar political behaviour has become in recent years.

One could say that these tech companies have egregiously overplayed their hand in the past few years and personally, even as someone sitting in the middle with little skin in the game, I hope the coming years sees the same entities metaphorically have their fingers, nay the whole hand, shattered. The alarm has been sounded and it is time to reign this industry in.

https://www.visualcapitalist.com/charts-americas-political-d...

The graph is quite explanatory of Team Blue and Team Red. In 2004 the median democrat and median republican were close together as it had been since the beginning 1994. Why did the divide increase so much in 2011?

In fact if you place your finger on the 1994 median republican line. Republicans went slightly to the left and then more or less havent changed since 1994. Now do the same for the median democrat. The democrat party has been the one which changed just before 2011

Identity politics as part of Obama to become 'the first black president' has created a schism. The identity politics has continued into Trump hence why 'he's the best since Lincoln' but also called a huge racist. Huffpost article from before Obama got the nomination and it was still up to Obama vs Clinton.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/the-crisis-of-identity-po_b_8...

There hasn't been are significant identity politics in the USA until around 2008. At least there hasnt been for a long time.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/america-is-suffering-an-i_b_1...

An identity crisis is just the tip of the iceberg. The political divide is coming from the democrats. Hence why you have Democrats like the CEO of expensify threatening civil war.

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