Jonathan's Card shut down
jonathanstark.com
jonathanstark.com
And... duh. The take-a-penny, leave-a-penny trays only work when more pennies follow the rules than don't. If somebody comes along every day to empty out the tray — even if they're bringing it right across the street to the Salvation Army — they're going to take the trays away. That's just not what they're for, and if they're not working there's no reason for them to exist.
The net result in the end being that the homeless are still homeless, life is a little bit more of a hassle for shoppers who don't have the right change, people are a little bit less connected with each other, and the dick who was emptying the trays feels like he's "made his point," whatever it was supposed to be.
But all of that being said: This only applies when abuse makes the system unsustainable. Is it? Craig's Cup thinks not: http://www.facebook.com/Craigscup The "experiment" is far from over.
Are you kidding me? Starbucks doesn't give a shit that someone was syphoning off money. A few hundred dollars is chump change to them. What they care about is the thousands of people "defrauding" their rewards program designed for use with a single customer. I'm sure their TOS restricts use to a single person as well.
"We think Jonathan’s project is really interesting and we are flattered he chose Starbucks for his social experiment."
"At 7 p.m. PT Friday, Starbucks reluctantly pulled the plug on Stark’s pay-it-forward social experiment following allegations of fraud or misuse. ...
Adam Brotman, vice president of digital ventures at Starbucks, phoned Stark earlier Friday evening to inform him that the card would be deactivated. Starbucks, he says, was rooting for the experiment from the sidelines, even though the company’s terms do not permit the use of shared registered cards. 'I’m sad about it, first and foremost, because we were legitimately cheering on this experiment,' Brotman says. ...
Once the exploit was public, however, Starbucks felt compelled to deactivate the card."
*I enjoy volunteering, donating, paying it forward, etc., I'm just trying to illustrate a point.
You're right, and at the same time we have a functioning society where people love and grow and the sun's still shining, and I experience kindness more frequently than the opposite!
Or maybe they suddenly realized themselves that criminals could have been moving money through them for years. I'd say it's almost certain that a Starbucks lawyer pointed this out and the executives didn't like the idea. Watch for changes to Starbucks' money card program.
Are you normally able to redeem these cards for cash? My (limited) experience is not only no, but sometimes the amount is rounded up to the nearest $currency_denomination as well.
Sam had the option of taking the gift card and selling the card and keeping the iPad. He exposed the vulnerability. If he hadnt you would have paid in for the card, but someone would have abused the system, and not disclosed it.
Here is a though experiment. There is a widely used piece of software which has a vulnerability. There are bad guys who are going to abuse it. A guy comes and abuse the system, to prove the vulnerability and expose the vulnerability. I s he good or bad? full disclosure vs responsible disclosure
As far as what Sam did in particular, it'd be entirely different if Sam came out and said, "Hey, look! I was able to write a script that has syphoned off $625 from the card and put it into Starbucks gift cards. I could then turn around and sell those cards on eBay and turn them into cash. I'll be putting the money back onto the original card, but I just wanted to expose the exploit." Instead, he followed through with turning it into cash and wrote a snarky blog post about how yuppies buying yuppies coffee isn't all that interesting, and he had decided to redirect the experiment to "will someone buy a Starbucks gift card for full price."
I think we were all aware that the system could be abused to buy yourself an extra coffee every once in a while, if you happened to be in Starbucks when the card had money on it. We were all aware that you could overspend, either on yourself or "for charity" (witness Sam's comment about buying food for homeless guys.) If that was the only vulnerability, most of us would think it acceptable -- most of the time money you put on the card goes to brighten an honest person's day, but occasionally someone games the system.
Until the exploit was posted, I was not aware that it could be abused by skimming $50 at a time onto your own card within moments of it being deposited on the main card. This is an unacceptable level of exploitability -- if you put money on the card, it's very likely that it will go to a scammer of some sort.
I'm glad Sam exposed this far-more-serious-than-most-of-us-realized vulnerability. I'm not pleased with how he went about it (particularly the game he and his brother seem to be playing; Daniel's startup deposited exactly $625, the same amount Sam took.) I'm not pleased with the "yuppies buying coffee" vs "starving kids in Africa" comparison. But I'm glad this particular exploit has been exposed, which means we now have the opportunity to set up a better-and-safer version of Jonathan's Card.
If I rob a bank and give the money to a family who desperately needs it, I am a very different person from the person who steals it to purchase a ferrari.
Legally , there may be no difference. Ethically and morally there is a huge difference in my opinion.
Oh and to steal to feed your own family is a different case altogether. You are not acting like a pretentious douche.
Also, this behaviour doesn't scale. If everyone was allowed to steal bread because he/she is hungry, the whole trading system would probably collapse and make everyone hungry.
Well, there is the Robin Hood appeal that he only stole from the rich. Robin Hood (in the movies) gets away with that because the rich are also evil and due to the time difference, obviously not 'us'.
In this case, I think the fact that he stole from people like 'us' is causing the problem. I think people would react differently if this card were held by Mexican drug lords.
I guess reactions to this wealth distribution differ according to the measure in which one a) relates to these Starbucks customers, b) finds said Starbucks customers somewhat guilty for being (relatively) rich and not doing enough for helping out the poor, and c) finds the Salvation army a good enough way to help out the poor (what if his charity would be the famine in Africa?)
His surname, in Italian, means "hate" or "hatred".
Snopes explains this sort of thing better than I can: http://www.snopes.com/business/misxlate/nova.asp
People can still hate him, for exposing this vulnerability. People can still hate him for turning this into something mean, rather than something altruistic. People can hate him for showing that some of us will abuse this.
I am not sure why anyone would be surprised by this. Even if this was not true, people can hate Sam for totally non logical reasons.
To try and ease his mind over the implications of this, two justifications are offered:
1. his script only works when the card contains at least $50 (not that it's hard to change), at which point it's ok to proceed.
2. his own exploited proceeds will be donated to a charity that pulls sufficient heartstrings to hammer his point home (accompanied by sympathetic picture). However, of the $600+ he siphoned, there is no certainty that the balance taken will be the balance donated. Because it's on eBay.
Further to that, it's a shockingly cynical move. This guy isn't donating his own money to charity. He's taken everyone else's money, laundered it a bit through eBay (with requisite fees applied), and then donated whatever he gets from that.
Maybe he fancies himself as a modern day Robin Hood, sneering as he does at the typical Starbucks clientele. His methods and justifications are worthy of whatever criticism they get.
I think the point was missed in his description. I think the experiment was about being generous and spreading goodwill, and the coffee was just a medium for passing that on. I am happy to see that this positiveness has spread on in the JonathansCard facebook comments, for example people buying a free lunch for strangers.
Sam Odio destroyed this positive spirit. How do we know 625 is the total amount that was taken? The blog post mentions 'him (and others)' indicating a group of people taking money. I would like a record of all the 'thefts' so I could line it up with the transaction log from Jonathan's card.
A guy like Sam comes along, notices the door is unlocked, and steals your TV -- donating it to the Salvation Army -- to make a point.
He could have just said, "Dude, your door is unlocked."
Stealing from the Starbucks card is simply stealing from the Starbucks card. Stealing to give to charity doesn't make it right, noble, "interesting" or anything but stealing.
What 'vulnerability' did he expose, that wasn't already STARING everyone in the face? The card was no more 'vulnerable' than an unattended tip jar or an unattended farmstand. This was like taking money from a 1-year old.
Ooooh! Look at the big boy Sam! He's so smart, he showed how you can rip a child off!
To me, Mr. Odio seems like an attention whore who got jealous that Stark's experiment was creating a buzz.
I'm sorry if this sounds like an adhominem rant, but I'm sick of people who will piss in the punch just to make a point that there's someone thirsty in Africa.
Ebay sale is at: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=16063...
It would be an interesting series of social experiments to limit the card in these various ways, and see which limitation helps the uptake, and which hurts it. Fascinating!
http://www.facebook.com/Craigscup
http://www.facebook.com/dccupofjoe
http://www.facebook.com/notes/paying-it-forward/paying-it-fo...
It's so wonderful that people picked the idea up! Another interesting result of Jonathan's social experiment! :).
Anyway - how much of the donation actually ended up feeding starving children I guess is neither here-nor-there; at the end of the day giving to charity is usually about how it makes you feel.
http://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=search.summary...
There is no use in condemning Odio unless you have a plan to fix the security hole he highlighted. Otherwise you are going to shutdown the open and honest takers and willfully ignore the quiet and dishonest takers.
If you could only purchase actual physical objects (ideally, only fresh food, rather than, say, a coffee-maker), that would go a long way toward preventing misuse.
Scenario: I want to thank someone. Instead of giving them a gift card with an arbitrary dollar value that they will inevitably need to round out with their own money, I can give them a gift card and say "your next drink is on me."
And I get billed/deducted in the background. This would make Jonathans card work as intended.
Incidentally I have previously pitched this idea to employees at Starbucks corporate, to the Starbucks "idea" forums, etc over the last two years. My core scenario is I want to have a stack of these cards and give out free drinks to random people. :) $5 gift cards make things too cumbersome.
Having it be $2 was a lot more useful than having it be for a large coffee - I don't drink coffee, and I ended up using the $2 to subsidize a bagel.
A lesson taught by example. Great work.
I don't necessarily agree with the reasons Sam cited for running his own take on the experiment, but I have to say I'm sort of surprised by the general reaction by so many -- then again, these reactions are just another outcome of the experiment. I find the following and dedication to this movement utterly fascinating. He made a statement regarding people's generosity (or illusions of generosity?) and the resultant attacks on Odio himself are even more intriguing.
By your definition it would have also been fine if Sam had actually gone out and bought himself and iPad. Technically fair game? Would that have been ok? Probably not to most people. Not because of the rules, but because we all have our own view of acceptable behaviour.
In this case, he gamed the system and in the process poured water on some people that were having fun. I don't buy that it's a social experiment more than someone trying to be clever and game a system. So yeah. Fair game, but I can see why they're annoyed.
That's fair. But would you be more inclined to think of it as a social experiment if it wasn't limited to Jonathan's physical gift card? To elaborate, what if you consider the Jonathan's Card spinoffs and broader reaction to Odio's actions?
The "experiment" was to see if a system based purely on goodwill, like take-a-penny, leave-a-penny, can survive. And in fact, it largely can, as the growing popularity of Jonathan's Card showed. That there are people who will abuse the system does not excuse the people who abuse the system— that's absurd.
I'm baffled by your surprise at the reaction. Are you likewise surprised by the fact that people don't like the guy who comes up to the bowl labeled "Free Candy" and takes all of the candy, leaving none for anyone else? "But I'm just demonstrating that any system based on goodwill is open to abuse!" Well, yeah. We know. People hate that.
"But I'm giving the candy to underprivileged children!" That's good for them, then. We hope they enjoy it, dick.
You might even draw the parallel to a white hat who publicizes a vulnerability rather than quietly exploiting it for profit.
edit: He did skim quite a lot to prove the concept. Maybe he was seriously considering that iPad.
"Hey man, you left your front door unlocked. Anyone could have done that."
I know. I leave my front door unlocked with the expectation that, in general, people won't. You're one of the bad guys.
"Hey, that's unfair. It's not like I'm profiting from it. I gave it to the Goodwill."
Next time you're feeling charitable, donate some of your own stuff. That's what I do. It's all the good feelings, without any of the stealing.
Well it's like a guy coming up to a bowl of free candy in a place where everyone already has their pockets stuffed with candy, then going to some other place where people haven't got any candy and giving the candy to them.
Oh and the kicker, the guy who took all the free candy made sure, it seems, that the candy bowl was stocked up already and didn't take any more candy than was put in by his friend.
... and then there was uproar, because dammit, giving that free candy to people without any candy was not part of the intention of the sign "free candy", the people fervently agreed that free candy should only be for those who have lots of candy already.
Then people posted abusive messages because they hated being pointed out to that giving free candy to people with lots of candy was probably not really as generous as all that ... or something.
The merits of that action aside, we don't actually know that's what he's going to do with the money from eBay. We do know that he's going out of his way to convert it to cash, and we also know that he's gone out of his way to make himself seem less trustworthy. Given that cash is fungible and he wants to promote the idea of giving to charity, you'd think he would have given what he expected to make off the card to charity and pointed that out up front, if giving the money to charity were really his intention.
I'm not one of those willing to call what Odio did theft; it's merely rude and underhanded. But I do wonder if people who do business with him in the future will not pause to remember that he's proud of being someone who will exploit the exact letter of the rules to his own advantage (probably mere self-satisfaction in this case, but one does wonder why he didn't do the donation first...), even when the spirit of the thing was otherwise. It seems possible that he has given up considerable future income in return for the personal satisfaction he derived from stepping on someone else's fun.
He walked up to a pile of money just sitting their being used for a suboptimal purpose, and he took it and put it to good use.
What Sam did (we presume) in giving $500 to charity is noble. It would be much nobler if he had used his own money. What you and others are doing by rationalizing it is essentially saying that none of us has a right to any frivolity so long as there are people starving in the world, and taking things is okay as long as you give them to someone who needs them more. I got pickpocketed on the subway— but you know what, I was just gonna spend that $70 on a new pair of sneakers anyway, and I bet the thief needs new shoes much more than I do.
Which, really, has some validity to it. But that's a way, way larger social issue than the one at hand. If we grant, as we must, that it is okay for an American to drink coffee, what Sam did is a dick move.
> Sam literally did the opposite of contribute to the experiment. There is nothing he could have done which would be more disruptive.
>
> The "experiment" was to see if a system based purely on goodwill, like take-a-penny, leave-a-penny, can survive.
I think this actually parallels how many entitlement programs work: they are set up for truly altruistic reasons, but bad actors enter the program and make it difficult for the program to remain sustainable. A subset of people will always manipulate a system where they can get something for nothing.
They form a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy.
I mean, come on, what's the alternative? "There exist no exploitative jerks in the world"? We already know that's not true, just to cite http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sociopath as one (very large) example. Maybe Jonathon has learned some stuff from his experiment, it went exactly as I expected.
It works for a while, because at first people make grand gestures to show how cool they are to each other, and they outnumber the abusers, but as the fame wears off, so too does the benefits of making the grand gesture, whereas the benefits of sponging never go away. It doesn't mean life is hopeless nor does it mean the bad will always outweigh the good in the world, it just means you need some more structure to things before you can expect net positive outcomes, and that structure will take some experience, and reflections and refinements based on that experience, to best manifest.
Although this is a whole other discussion, the experiment had a few more implications than that, and Odio pointed them out.
>I'm baffled by your surprise at the reaction. Are you likewise surprised by the fact that people don't like the guy who comes up to the bowl labeled "Free Candy" and takes all of the candy, leaving none for anyone else? "But I'm just demonstrating that any system based on goodwill is open to abuse!" Well, yeah. We know. People hate that.
I should say I'm more surprised at the magnitude and nature of the outrage. There's lots of thoughtful commentary, but at the same time, I've read lots of blind hatred towards Sam. The community around Jonathan's Card appear to be outraged and are touting their moral superiority over Odio. He may have been a dick, but to me, it appears like so many were acting as if Jonathan's Card was their only act of goodwill - and many were acting like this was going to benefit those in need (debatable). Sam said it was about 'yuppies buying other yuppies coffee.' He was pointing out an issue that other people who were taking advantage of the cards were not doing. Unfortunately he chose to game the system.
The Jonathan's Card experiment is not over, and what people do next is the critical result of the experiment.
The latter makes me feel happy, and makes me want to be generous, too.
But i still like the idea in a symbolic sense.
Science doesn't concern itself with morality, but that doesn't mean it exists in a moral vacuum.
I think you have to label the car "free car" leaving all the doors unlocked and with the keys in the ignition.
Then when someone sells the car and gives the money to charity everyone organises a lynch mob it seems because apparently selling the car wasn't part of the experiment you expected it to be driven.
Of course experiments are best when they have unexpected outcomes and it would be unexpected in a "bad neighbourhood" for someone to act altruistically in this way with a free car.
So yes, it's an experiment but the guy was violating the stated rules.
At the end of the day I find it hard to defend Sam Odio's actions no matter the scope of the experiment. As is often the case, I think he had a potent mix of greed (for money) and ability (to siphon money out of the gift card). Ultimately he ended up with over $500 and gave himself a reality check - anyone in their right mind would feel they have been at least "very surreptitious" if they were in his shoes. Sam wanted an out, and donating the stolen money to charity is the easiest way to spin his actions in a selfless view. From the wording in his blog post you can see he's no better than the so called yuppies he's trying to teach a lesson. The first thing going through his mind was "This is enough money to buy an iPad". Spoken like a true materialist? Not a single mention of the people who contributed that money in the first place.
And finally, just what lesson was he trying to teach here? That sharing spare change is greedy? Let's not forget that Sam treated himself to a coffee with his loot.
I can't help but feel he's getting what he deserves by having his name plastered on CNN and other media. When we dig beneath the surface his actions are truly revealing of his shady character.
I am not. What I am saying is that he (or, more precisely, "what he did") is part of Jonathan Stark's experiment.He never said he set the card up so poor people can drink coffee, he set it up to observe how people will "utilise" it and test if such a thing can actually work.
It's not like it's the end of the world either, if all these people that LOVED the card can't live without it they can sure think of a way to replace it. Prepaid coffee is one.
"It's obviously not in the spirit of the experiment, It's not what the money was put there for. The point of this is to be wide open and trusting, and to expect the best of people. If [Odio] thinks this is good, and that people will see it that way, it's up to him to decide."
- http://edition.cnn.com/2011/TECH/web/08/12/jonathans.card.ha...
As I see it, it was meant to be like a spare change tray. Not a slush fund for someone to steal and then donate to charity when they realize what they've done.
Imagine something similar happening "in real life". Imagine a group of 1,000 people who have come up with a cooperative, good-faith system for some shared goal - say, setting up and decorating a fairground. The group is happy with how things are going. Now one person comes along and takes it on himself to subvert their system, in order to make a point about the frivolity of fairs, and in the process frustrates the goals of the group. What do your ordinary social instincts tell you about such a person?
Of course, since they're saying that "Starbucks has informed me that they will be shutting off the card", it's also possible that Starbucks has some reason to shut it off that's entirely unrelated to that.
But I suppose we'll never know the true story. Whatever the case, I think it's a sad shame.
(I also hope this doesn't kill Jonathan's spirit.)
Thanks.