CEO of Expensify bulk-emailed customers | Hacker News Reader

CEO of Expensify bulk-emailed customers

reason.com

30 pointskevbin15 comments

I wrote back to David Barrett (expensify CEO) because the email felt like a total breach of trust coming from Expensify. I remember thinking "dude, you process my receipts, you have no reputational standing to speak into any matters except my receipt situations. For that, I delete you." the LAST thing I want is for every company to spam me with their political views. Yuck.

Most interesting excerpt from the article: “But the great advantage of limited-purpose institutions is that they let us achieve their limited purposes while still disagreeing on other things. Everyone gets this instinctively when it comes to "Sir, this is a Wendy's." Sometimes mundane things like lunch take precedence over great moral conflicts: not because the conflicts are unimportant, but because we shouldn't hold up the drive-thru line until the great conflicts are resolved. It's precisely when the issues are important—and divisive—that we need limited-purpose institutions most.”

This is such an egregious violation of trust because end-users don't even choose to use Expensify. An exec makes that decision and everyone in the company has to use it, so when Expensify spams an end-user, it's like Expensify has violated the trust between the employee and their leadership, the trust that leadership will carefully choose the partners that receive access to user data and contact information. If this email had just gone to the Expensify admins, the people at the company who actually had a relationship with Expensify, it would be vastly different (still annoying as fuck, but not a your company should not exist kind of trust violation).

Question: Isn't there US regulation around sending out mass emails and the consumer having to opt-in to receive such emails?

If so, would this breach that regulations since sending non-account related information to account holders feels like this company just used their internally collected email list for mass unwanted spam.

Laws about unsolicited bulk email don't apply when there's a substantial business relationship between the sender and the recipient, as there was in this case.

> If you are a US citizen, anything less than a vote for Biden is a vote against democracy. That's right, I'm saying a vote for Trump, a vote for a third-party candidate, or simply not voting at all — they're all the same.

I completely disagree.

I understand how you can characterize "not voting" as "supporting the status quo". But, there are varying degrees of "support", and this is pretty much the lowest degree of "support" imaginable.

David Barrett is trying to paint this as "with us or against us" when in reality there's a spectrum of support. By not voting, you are standing just SLIGHTLY off center in one direction.

It's not all the same.

Agreed.

> If you are a US citizen, anything less than a vote for Biden is a vote against democracy

If no candidate appeals to you, exercising your right to vote but spoiling your ballot sends a message far better than not voting or being bullied in to voting for somebody.

The fact he doesn't even mention spoiling your ballot as a valid option speaks volumes about how much critical thinking he put in to that brain-fart.

Do these people think they are exempt from being fascists?

What message is sent with a spoiled ballot? How's that different than just not voting at all?

You're exercising your right to vote and having your voice count. The message is simple: None of these candidates have my support - do better.

Not voting is widely interpreted as someone being apathetic.

previously (not of this article, but given the edited title I assume the intent of the submission is not that specific article):

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24868030

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24865128

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24868076

I dont know why random companies think its okay to pull this stuff.

Songkick pulled this shenanigans too. Also all the banners everywhere.

Does this person actually think he did anything other than piss off his customers? If they were voting Biden, they will continue to vote Biden. If they were voting Trump, they will continue to vote Trump and on top of that cancel their contracts with his company

Only half the population actually votes. Elections are won / lost on voter turnout, not convincing undecideds. You just don’t know which half is voting.

His point is to get people to vote.

Did you read his email?

80% of the content was directly addressing people who disagree with him.

Two sentences were dedicated to addressing people who already support Biden.

His point was vote for Biden or you are wrong. Very explicit.

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