Jonathan Stark responds to Sam Odio
jonathanstark.com
jonathanstark.com
I cannot understand why Sam's charity raising has raised such an outrage. Here is why.
First, what he did was within the bounds of the experiment. Johnathan provided the Starbucks card to be used in any way people saw fit. Did he take advantage of some flaws within the system? Sure. Did he use it for something that it wasn't expected to be used for? Yes. But that makes him sound closer to a hacker than a thief to me. [1]
Second, this outcome is significantly better than what had before been believed when the $100 drops were noticed on the account. Most people (myself included) figured people were just lifting money from the account for their own means. On the moral spectrum, donating money is about as far away as possible from that suspicion.
The facebook page also fails to elucidate me.
Someone says (paraphrase) "no one should be able to appoint himself the arbiter of how someone else's money should be spent." But isn't Jonathan (or perhaps the Starbucks corporation) dictating this by requiring them to put money on a Starbucks Card - not a VISA card, for instance?
Another person says (paraphrase) "Sam is donating other people's money without their consent." Didn't people give up any control they had over their money by putting it on Jonathan's card in the first place?
Or maybe it's just because (paraphrase) "Sam is flaunting how smart of a hacker he is." If so, I missed it.
To be honest, and unless someone can point out where I am wrong, what Sam has done impresses me more than the initial concept of the card itself. If I had donated $10 to the card and it had instead gone to charity, I would have been fine.
[1]: One definition of hacker: "A person who enjoys exploring the details of programmable systems and stretching their capabilities, as opposed to most users, who prefer to learn only the minimum necessary." Taken from the Jargon File.
Edit: One last thing. I tried to make this post as anti-inflammatory as possible, and if you think I failed, please let me know why.
Secondly, the idea that he actually makes a blog post which suggests buying an iPad and then ends up advising to donate it to a charity. It all makes everything very fuzzy. What exactly are his intentions ? Is he just trying to link-bait? If he done something similar with the penny tray, I am sure he would've been taken to the cleaners by the people alongside him.
Partially, it's the amount he took took, as you say. $100 would have been more reasonable.
I think it was also Sam's tone in his blog post. Perhaps buying strangers coffee is not as worthy as buying food for starving children, but it made people feel good. Sam essentially dismissed it.
I think that's mean spirited. There's a lot of needs in the world, and different people are interested in different things. Do we really want to get into a debate over whether giving money to MSF is better than an animal shelter?
Indeed, I can both donate to stop hunger AND buy a stranger a coffee.
I still don't understand how this is supposed to make anything okay. The experiment was set up to see how people dealt with a system inherently fueled by some combination of altruism and curiosity. I personally assume this means that, among other things, it is looking at some measure of morality. Thing of it is, you can't really construct an experiment about morality or something like it without making immorality (or something like it) within the bounds. (Or, more accurately, you could attempt to but then you'd also be dealing with a measure of how people respond to authority and similar which complicates things.)
Secondly, I think I could say just as easily that being an asshole is well within the bounds of US law. Yet, people tend to respond negatively to people being assholes. What is allowed and what is "right" or "good" or whatever are two entirely different topics.
Your "secondly" part isn't exactly correct, because the US law is not an experiment that people are voluntarily participating in. Its purpose is not to see how things would work. Its purpose is just to work. People don't like it when it doesn't.
Some people "experiment" with leaving produce at the side of the road and having a trust based money box for people to pay. If someone takes all of the produce without paying one day, the experimenter isn't necessarily going to analyze it scientifically and be happy at the seeming failure, but instead think "I can't trust people enough - experiment's over."
Even though Sam's intent to donate to charity is noble, the means by which he set out to achieve this lacked nobility. He took advantage of something that was on the honor system and acted dishonorably by violating the conditions under which the card was to be used. Unfortunately the original Jonathan's card page is no longer around, but as I recall it stated you could use the image to make an in-store purchase or use the number to reload the card.
Using the number and brute forcing the PIN (if I recall correctly) to siphon money off of the card and then use those funds to do something other than the stated purpose goes against the implicit social contract that everyone was participating in.
He just decided this honor system is not to his liking and decided to screw it up. That makes ou an a*hole. After all this time, not realizing his own douchebaggery just makes him look like a pretentious douche bag. The worst kind.
We talk a lot about game mechanics, and games have economies. The interesting stuff often happens where the game economy and the real economy intersect (gold farming for instance).
I think the error is really Starbuck's. They probably shouldn't allow a gift card to be bought with a gift card.
I do agree that it is within the bounds of the experiment. The experiment proves that Sam is a bully who will spend time and effort to ruin the joy of others for his own personal gain.
The fact that he attempted to donate the money to charity does not justify his actions. If he wanted to he could have just donated $600 without ruining the joy for the rest of us.
Sam's own actions have to stand on their own, and I have several problems with them:
1) Being a veteran of the industry Sam had to have known his actions would place the experiment at risk, bringing the goodwill to a halt. That was self-serving.
2) His actions were a misdirection and hijacking of the spirit of the experiment. The experiment was about a coffee card, not a general charity fund, not there for any one person to take over and repurpose. Sure, it was an experiment, part of which might have been stated: "How long can this last before some self-serving jerk ruins it for everybody?" Well, now we know.
3) The whole thing smacks much more of a the kind of self-aggrandizing stunt to be expected from a serial entrepreneur, rather than either real altruism or an interesting culture jam. The "yuppies buying yuppies coffee" line was laughably hypocritical.
giving your own money away is charity, redirecting somebody else's money isn't a charity, it is management at best theft at worst
So unless someone is nice enough to tie up $600 of their own money in coffee just to redress that balance, this Odio fella has just wasted it for the sake of what, self promotion?
I'd say he did it remaining startlingly unaware of the potential consequences and didn't actually think anything through beyond taking the money.
Finally, since he posted his code on github, how do we know other people didn't use it and take money themselves? And how much?
Not sure if you genuinely misunderstood, or you're just being quite boringly pedantic
> Did he take advantage of some flaws within the system? Sure. Did he use it for something that it wasn't expected to be used for? Yes.
Ethical hackers don't take advantage of flaws, they usually try to fix them or disclose them privately in a responsible manner.
> Most people (myself included) figured people were just lifting money from the account for their own means. On the moral spectrum, donating money is about as far away as possible from that suspicion.
Did you consider the possibility that he did this for his own benefit? Instant fame and "moral exhibitionism" come to mind...
> Someone says (paraphrase) "no one should be able to appoint himself the arbiter of how someone else's money should be spent." But isn't Jonathan (or perhaps the Starbucks corporation) dictating this by requiring them to put money on a Starbucks Card - not a VISA card, for instance?
Jonathan isn't forcing anyone to put money on the card. People chose to put money on the card to contribute to the experiment. Feeding African children isn't part of the experiment.
> Another person says (paraphrase) "Sam is donating other people's money without their consent." Didn't people give up any control they had over their money by putting it on Jonathan's card in the first place?
They did give up control legally. We're talking about morality here. People expect their money to buy someone else a coffee.
> If I had donated $10 to the card and it had instead gone to charity, I would have been fine.
Most people aren't fine with that. If I want to give to charity I give to charity, if I want to be part of this experiment I put money on the card.
How Sam spends the money is completely irrelevant in my opinion.
I wouldn't even give Sam that amount of credit. I think the charity donation was an out. A way to get him out of this mess with a minimum of damage to himself. If he hadn't skimmed such a huge sum of money I doubt he would have even gone public about it. I'd imagine he was sitting in a coffee shop, all sense of morals put to the side as he was getting giddy about his cool script that was making him free money. Only after he walked out the door with $600 in pocket did he realize what he had done.
I join others' in disappointment with Odio's abusing the card beyond it's original stated intent per Johnathan. He may feel it's justified but that's up for each person on their own to decide for themselves and he doesn't seem to understand that. And yes, people are giving up control. But when people give money to a school with the intent of it going to a new building and the school does something else with it, you (the giver) have a right to be pissed.
How about if you gave to one cause and someone routed it to a different one they felt was more worthy. Even though most people will argue that Odio's charity IS more worthy, it still doesn't give him that right to decide. If it were money going to WWF and he rerouted it to The American Cancer Society, again, you'd be pissed.
I don't think this is true. I think the only thing he says you can use the card for is to buy a coffee. He certainly failed to prevent the card from be used in any way people saw fit, and maybe that amounts to the same thing.
I routinely have such discussions with my two ASD sons. They are not wired to readily comprehend social expectations. I do a lot of explaining. There is research out there on how "social contracts" get enforced as a moral issue and how violating the socially expected thing gets really extremely negative reactions even when the way the (typically) unstated social contract is violated falls clearly within the explicitly stated rules of a system. My best explanation is that most people don't do a good job of constructing effective rules so the social mechanism for attempting to enforce order anyway is to express moral outrage -- ie make it dangerous -- when someone violates the implied social contract, never mind that it isn't a violation of the actual stated rules. The friction inherent in this situation is part of why laws are enforced by judge and jury -- ie human judgment has to take over to make up for gray areas not explicitly covered by the stated rules.
Anyway, I apologize as I am sure I am butchering my point. I am sharing the observation for your edification because I largely agree with the logic of your post (edit: I agree with your logic even though I am someone who thinks what Odio did is asinine -- my innate wiring is that of a hippie tree hugger, much to the amusement of my sons who aren't wired that way at all, so I do find such things unpalatable, yet I think the solution is "make better rules, damnit" not "react with moral outrage when someone who is wired different from you plays by the rules but does something you wouldn't have done"). I don't imagine my observations will go over any better than yours, so the post is basically intended for you and I hope it is good food for thought for your purposes.
Peace.
Or if someone said "Hey guys I brought this cake in for everyone to have some." and then someone later said "Oh, I stole the cake because I have some friends who wanted some cake. In fact they wanted the cake more than you guys, so I'm glad that you didn't get any".
Well you'd hope that wouldn't happen. Because when it does, it's normally through Facebook and people gaming/cheating the tools it gives you to a similar point. Because people can.
I completely agree that this is more a hack thing than a theft thing, it's within the bounds of the experiment.
I don't see this as self-promotional. Jonathan's open letter now ranks on the first google results page for "Sam Odio". I think this will have a hidden effect on Sam's career. Any hiring manager or venture capitalist worth his salt will learn about what Sam did, and make a value judgement on Sam's character. You only need to look at the Facebook page to see this means bad news for Sam: https://www.facebook.com/jonathanscard
I agree with you there. Although as an outsider looking in to Sam's life with only this one saga to judge him by, I'd call him a morally bankrupt snake (emotionally charged - yes, but my truthful gut reaction).
Well, you know what? Piracy isn't "just like" stealing, nor is it "just like" swapping tapes was in the 80s. Wikileaks isn't "just like" publishing someone's diary, nor is it "just like" the NYT publishing the pentagon papers. And this isn't "just like" Robin Hood, or stealing out of a collection plate, or totalitarianism encroaching on liberty, or a clever publicity stunt, or black hat hacking, or the tragedy of the commons or anything else. It's just... well, it's just like the Jonathan's Card case of 2011.
Analogies aside, did Sam Odio do the wrong thing? I think there are a few important aspects to consider:
What should the donors have reasonably expected would happen with their money and how firm a moral hold do they have on that expectation? I've seen a few people argue that they were essentially throwing the money out the window, but I'm not sure how well that applies. The Starbucks card is more attractive because it's more restricted. Nobody could use it to buy shoes or pay down their mortgage. It was intended for coffee, and I think the people donating expected it to be used for coffee.
So did he wrong the people who donated money? By that definition, yes - but our society tolerates a lot of different kinds of wrong. It's wrong to lie and wrong to stab someone, but only one of those is illegal. If people donate money intending it to be used for charitable coffee, and you use it for a different charitable end, how bad is that? At least, less bad than buying an iPad, more bad than using it for its intended purpose. It obeys the large-scale "paying it forward" end if not the particular means.
The act being wrong from the perspective of the donors doesn't mean it needs to be wrong for everyone, though. Sometimes you can do bad and good in the same action - feeding Ethiopian orphans surely must, by any measure, do more good than giving people coffee. How much bad is justified by how much good? I'm certain that everyone has an answer in them, and probably an uncomfortable one to think about too hard. For me, I think this makes it over the line as enough good to be worth it, but I'm not sure it would if I were more invested in the experiment.
There is an interesting sidenote that I think hasn't been addressed much. Would the reaction have been as bad if he'd bought $600 worth of Starbucks food and given it to homeless people? I suspect not. To me, that suggests that the actual end was less important to most donors than the means. That is, it wasn't a charity effort with a communal coffee card as a side-effect, it was a communal coffee card experiment with charity as a side-effect. Or perhaps the order of those preferences indicates where you stand on the morality of the act.
Take for instance a simple second order impact, someone gets a free coffee of the card and decides that while it was a good coffee, he or she should instead donate 10x that to feed orphans. If more than 10% of people using the card do this, then there's a 1:1 follow on donation effect to the orphans. That is essentially the idea of "pay it forward" as far as I understand it. Sam decided that betting on his fellow humans wasn't a good one (perhaps knowing his own moral failings) and decided to short circuit the process and make decisions for others. This is the essential problem and why it's not part of the "pay it forward" experiment. The theft was not paying it forward, it was paying it out. It was removing the opportunity for others to be inspired to give.
I think you took my olive branch and stomped on it.
The same way Sam violated the social contract of the experiment, I think Johnathan violated the social contract of email.
We all realize email we send could be read by anyone, but still don't want it copied and pasted in a public forum.
What Jonathan did is of course less annoying, but I still nevertheless find it of a similar nature. I think he could have still made the post and just paraphrased.
That "olive branch" comment wasn't intended to be negative. I was saddened by his reply. To address your point: I am not looking for a personal confrontation...just wanting to reach out and make sure he's OK.
Sam, the things you wrote on your blog regarding the whole incident left me speechless at first. It wasn't just because of what you did, it was the tone of superiority and confidence you exhibited throughout that made me really angry - angry enough to attack you very harshly in the other thread. I'm not a confrontational person either by any means, but this actually made me mad enough to explode like that in public. I can only try to imagine how it must have felt for Jonathan.
If you're saddened by his reply, that means you still don't understand the moral bankruptcy of your position. Sam, what you did saddened a lot of people. I believe in the end, it's not Jonathan you need to reach out to, it's your own moral compass.
It's not just that you took the money. You also insulted everyone for being so shallow, when they were trying to be nice. Trying to take the moral high ground is never a good idea, when people think you are wrong. And some people will think you are wrong.
Just use the line: "Yeah, I was wrong to take so much. I'd give it back, but some other jerk will just transfer it all, now that the vulnerability is public. Sorry. So I'm giving it away. But please remember, if I hadn't found out that you could transfer the funds, somebody else would have. These sharing apps are great, but they have to be set-up so that no one person can bring them down. Sooner or later, it was bound to be exploited."
You could also suggest a fix - "this would work, but only if people only donated small amounts. Nobody will transfer the funds if there's just one or two coffees. It would be safe to start the card again if everybody would try to keep the limit under $20.".
Also, you could suggest that the card occasionally put out public service announcements. Aside from warnings about high limits, it could ask the iPhone toting yuppies to throw a few bucks towards the Horn of Africa, which is experiencing the worst famine in years. Or donate to a local charity. But don't make it sound like you are taking the high ground.
I wouldn't have even sent the email. Your public comments are clear enough.
But just in case the replies here arent obvious, your comment reads as self-important and also sounds like you're playing a victim when you clearly aren't. What, he has to go and apologize to you for stomping your gift?
Just in case those reading this don't know: I know Sam and would say this to his face. I'm commenting about this exchange and not about the experiment / hack.
Of course, there are several other ways of contributing to charity but I know the itch to scratch when you dreamed up this "awesome" scheme might have been too much to resist.
"make sure he's OK" - so you emailed jonathan before you put your script in action, didn't you?
"I was saddened by his reply" - One would expect someone who is so easily saddened to have some empathy for his own victims .. or maybe not. Maybe next time, when yuppies buy each other coffee you can keep out or do charity on your own dime?
You've come through loud and clear about your personality. Now it's time for you to make a decision that will affect nobody but yourself: Will you choose to learn from this and be a better person, or will you rationalize it all away and live in blissful ignorance of your own self? I sincerely hope this whole saga makes you a better, more open minded person.
> Q: Is this gift card autographed by the original owner?
> A: I'd gladly autograph the card if it increases someone's willingness to donate to Save the Children.
He wants to know if someone has signed it like a credit card, so it is tied to that person's signature... not for your autograph. Sheesh.
To me is sounds like "Sam" is doing this for personal gain. It feels like promoting, marketing. Because in all the posts about this, referrals are thrown to his business and his brothers. Which to me is wrong in the first place, as it was about the card not their damn business.
Secondly, it was theft wasn't it? The card wasn't his, it was a good that was lend to him. In this case not only him but severals others as well. It was lend in a leap of faith, no matter it was an experiment or it wasn't. It wasn't lend to be stolen from. If everyone steals something they lend, the world would be an even shittier place. Because if that was the case, I am going to try and borrow a car.
So it was illegal in the first place. Second place he used script to monitor the card and its movements. Which is illegal unless he had a wiretap approved. Third, he was not the owner so he committed theft. Fourth, if it was for charity - USE YOUR OWN GODDAMN POCKETS! You sold a business in the past to Facebook, you have more then enough to go buy.
Or am I seeing this all wrong? Could be, as I am far too young to maybe see the greater good.
Not stating my position on this entire debate with this comment; but, to be fair, he was simply monitoring an API that Jonathan himself provided to see the balance, so there was no wiretapping or illegal card accessing to determine balance going on.
The whole experiments novelty is how about accessible the money is, so who cares that you can run some script and rip it off?
How to use Jonathan's card to buy yourself an iPad - http://sam.odio.com/2011/08/12/i-took-625-jonathans-card/
As far as I see, there was an open unprotected commons, and some passer-by just took everything to do with it what he wants. You may rightly find this a sad thing, but you shouldn't be too surprised. This is a well known dilemma, there are enough studies dealing with this. There's a reason why copyleft licenses establish a commons protected by copyright law.
"I think you took my olive branch and stomped on it."
No Sam, an olive branch would have been to return the money with an apology. Better yet, what he did to you is the same thing you did to his experiment.
It would be really interesting to see the same thing but with some way to enforce a limit of say $30 per transaction and no gift cards. From some limited observation of the Twitter feed everything appeared to work well while the balance stayed sub $30 which would have essentially been enforcing the conditions I'm suggesting.
Sam can be seen to be acting as an agent of those in the periphery of the social contract, those who participate in it not because of mutual gain but because of implicit or explicit threat. The central question, IMHO, is one of what their claims are on our moneys (or social experiments). Sam quotes Mill and (again IMHO) legitimately raises deeper ethical considerations. In that sense, Sam's experiment is a deeper and significantly more interesting version of the original one, and the results (including the response) deserve examination - at least once the built-up rage is spent.
https://www.facebook.com/jonathanscard/posts/176232239115101
His email to Jonathan, and his subsequently passive aggressive "olive branch" reply also demonstrate how he's totally failed to get that this is a community reaction, he's abused a commons, for which he is rightly getting castigated.
With any luck, he'll grow up, realise that his narrow world-view isn't inherently superior other people's. If he really wants to show he cares, he should donate his own time, and his own money to worthwhile causes.
Sam - go spend a month somewhere like Uganda, there is a huge amount to do - I can even hook you up with a couple of charity contacts if you want.
Guy: Hey, look at me guys! I did a sorta hack where you can put money on a card and people with smart phones can get free coffees!
Guys: Wow, that's... cool for some reason! It feels good when putting money into this card to think that people with smart phones somewhere can get a free coffee.
Guy#2: Hey! look at ME, guys! I hacked that hack thing that was somehow cool and good. AND I gave peoples' money to CHARITY! Pretty awesome of me huh?
Everyone: Wow dude. Saddened and appalled. You have ruined an altruistic and somehow cool enterprise.
Guy#3: Pfft, all a bit melodramatic don't you think.
Everyone: [scowls. downvotes guy#3]
Later...
Guy#4: Hey guys, look at this article about how iPhone/Android is better than Android/iPhone.
[normality resumes]
- Sometimes we should try stupid things (like trying to get money from a Starbucks card), eventually we will success! Probably this is the same idea with the trend these days: fail often, fail fast, fail cheap (kind of). - Don't be greedy. This one is obvious. If you happen to find an exploit of a system, don't act like a jerk! Tell the admin/webmaster/etc. so he can fix it without further damage. - Anything else HN?