Content Everywhere, But Not A Drop To Drink
parislemon.com
parislemon.com
If this were Android instead of iOS, MG would be condemning Google for exposing the API. And if this were some obscure startup he didn't have a stake in, he'd be lambasting them for being irresponsible and calling for an app store ban. I would expect nothing less from him.
Clearly there's a conflict of interest here since MG is an investor in Path. Either way, his defense of Path's behavior is itself completely asinine; so much so that I'm surprise he was able to physically type the words.
They needed the data to "ease the connection building process." Bullshit. The whole point of Path is that it's the anti-Facebook. That is, you only share your Path with intimately close friends and family. If I can’t pick them out of my address book myself, I've got problems a social app can’t solve. And, by the way, how the hell is Path going to look at my address book and distinguish my best friend from my plumber?
SSL? Bullshit. Just because Path was using SSL doesn't make up for the fact that they were storing a copy of the data without telling the user. A server breach is far more damaging than a man-in-the-middle attack. At the very least, they should have informed the users of the risk they were taking.
"Other apps do it, too." Bullshit. That doesn't make it okay. There are plenty of developers who could copy all sorts of data without you knowing. I'm sure some do, but lots don't. It's a choice. You can choose whether or not to be creepy.
I love MG's writing and I usually agree with what he says, but I think he's letting his loyalties get in the way here, so much so that he’s willing to be hypocritical.
I think this is the whole crux of this issue. Hardly anything is private anymore. Today, people are willing to share data, but they demand control^ over it. If you just ask for the data, people will give it most of the time (especially when they went through the process of downloading your app and/or creating an account for your service). It's when you start doing things in the background that people start to question your motives & they feel like they have been conned into doing something they shouldn't have. A little transparency goes a long way.
^This is, of course, the hard part.
Interesting, coming from a guy who (in my humble opinion) writes as much bullshit as anybody, and actually moved to a personal blog that doesn't allow commenting. You know, so that people can call him on his bullshit.
Ironically, this is probably the best MG piece I've read, as it describes nicely how I've always felt about his TechCrunch writing.
Unlike...99% of forums out there, HackerNews frowns on the "I agree" and "this" type comments. I don't think that was your intention, but since only high reputation posters can actually downvote, you'll get buried if your comment is breviloquent. This has pros and cons, but is a net positive.
Anyway, welcome to HackerNews.
In MG's defense, he himself admitted that he'd done the exact things he talks about in the article.
I probably could have made that first point with a lot less snark. But changing it now probably won't do much good.
If MG had a modicum of self awareness, I'd buy it, but this just reads like a high school senior who knows the real secret dope about how the world works and is just dying to tell you. And also a great example of changing the topic rather than dealing with your/your company's mistakes head on.
It is an asymmetry that is purposefully and carefully maintained by businesses and investors. MG himself could help better "align the sides" by simply publishing or sharing this new info he is privy to. But he won't.
So I hesitate to lay all the blame at the feet of bloggers and journalists. They are doing the best they can with the info they scrounge up or are given.
Daniel Ellsberg's meditation on the limits of knowledge is applicable to this type of situation IMO.
http://motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2010/02/daniel-ellsberg-li...
They helped make this beast.
But founders and fellow entrepreneurs, we need to hash this out internally (pardon the pun): Sure, harvesting address books can gain you explosive growth, but at what eventual cost? Can you really sleep at night? George opted in to address book sharing to find his friends in your shiny new app, but he didn't really think that his CEO would get a push notification saying "'GeorgeTheFurryStud' would like to talk to you!" when his CEO eventually signed up. Even if you're using SSL, even if you're hashing addresses (which isn't a cure-all, being able to intuit connections divulges a lot of info), are your servers really that secure? And what if you're not Facebook? It's highly unlikely that you're even in the league (no offense, none of us are).
Either way, politics is afoot here. Would advise other founders and developers to do what they believe is right & lawful, and not bow to pressure or any of this "no one cares about privacy" stuff, 'cause while the money guys and gals may lose a little investment, we're ultimately responsible for our companies' actions. It's us (and our companies, and our users, and our team) on the line here.
A year or so into that, I realized it was really hard to take seriously any business reporting that wasn't coming from someone who had actually run a business or startup reporting from someone who had actually started a company. My journalist friends would cry foul, but unless you've been the person faced with the daunting task of "finding a market" for a new product or "scaling a sales channel" after one's been discovered, I'm not going to pay too much heed to your criticisms of others efforts to do so.
I think that's what Mr. Siegler is getting at when he says he now realizes all the tech writing out there is full of crap. Some of the bloggers out there own their operations and have built real businesses out of it and so have a lot of authority when it comes to writing about other companies. This does not describe many of the contributors I see on major blogs though, so I take their posts with a grain of salt.
With his article above he's saying "this criticism of a company I'm involved with isn't valid, because these people aren't technically expert". That's wrong because you don't need to be a technical expert to value and appreciate personal privacy, which is the key issue. It's also hypocritical, because he's not a technical expert himself. Like the people he complains about, he makes his money from hype generated around products, without being capable of making his own product.
But everyone wants to be influential, and everyone wants to be read, and the best way to get read is to write what people want to hear, and your writing doesn't need to be especially introspective or well-revised in order to give people their five-minute content fix.
TechCrunch has the most punchable "journalists" I've ever seen, not including tabloids. As for one of their people accusing others of writing shit just for the pageviews, that's staggeringly hypocritical.
Also CrunchFund is a scam. Hire a popular hack, pay him to talk up a new venture, guaranteed business. It's as ethical as insider trading. Bad shit. Leads to lots of crappy "me-too" startups doing better than they deserve.
And all the boards did shrink;
Water, water, every where,
Nor any drop to drink.
^^^
Is there a word for alluding to a classic as though you've read it and yet mangling it enough to broadcast that you haven't?