Hacker News Reader

Comment by sebiandev | Hacker News Reader

this seems inappropriate. I think its a bad paradigm that just because you use a platform's service, they get intimate details about your usage. And for them to be so bold about publishing the statistics they've stolen from their customers data? Gives me a reason to never recommend my org use this platform.

View on HN

The data is aggregated, and you cannot possibly identify a single user from what's been published. I see no issue here.

I think their point is that there's business value in the usage data and linear is using that value in a way that benefits them but not the customers they got it from.

It reminds me of matt levine's reframing of insider trading where it's not about fairness it's about theft. You're supposed to get secret insights and use them to get an edge. What you can't do is get an edge for yourself with secret insights that your employer got.

So it roughly comes down to "that data is valuable and rightfully belongs to the originating company." Which then makes this a contract diligence type situation.

My company uses Linear. The data presented in this blog post is worthless to me and the company. It can be crudely summarized as “agents and agentic development processes are conducting more Linear operations.” Duh!

Whether you make a good trade with the stolen information is spurious though.

I don't believe this very strongly. Again it's a contract issue not a moral one. But the metaphor still holds I think.

https://archive.is/rVwku - Matt Levine writing about insider trading

lol isn't this what google said and yet..the NSA cometh

I’d rather it was published for free in a blog post than sold without my knowledge. As a linear user. This shit doesn’t matter, everyone in the industry know these kinds of stats are being tracked, I’m happy for a company to be transparent about it.

Why would a company want to leak its processes and workflows to another company in a capitalist system. Seems sloppy and a short sighted transfer of wealth to external stockowners.

Uhh that's how a lot of economic data works too. Guess how we get a lot of jobs data... ADP

Oh hey! My industry. Guess what? ADP doesnt just yoink your data. ADP conducts voluntary surveys on the scale of hundreds of thousands. Voluntary. ADP also pays for it for the most part. Do you think Linear conducted..voluntary surveys here?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com