Since yours is software its much easier to give away freebies. Discount codes, special features, early access features, etc are much easier to do than a physical product. Also its a great way to get feedback and generate buzz on the project.
Echoing the other comment, I would agree to avoid giving out equity. The customer is far less vested in your company's success than you are.
Turns out it's Apple itself that "sells" my data. Most likely because of I have Siri enabled with location access to "frequent places" or "important locations"... I'm quite disappointed. I thought this data wasn't shared with third parties, but as usual I didn't read the TOS/Privacy word by word...
A bit confused regarding your formatting requirements there... but basically fitment and quality are most important to me and I'm not sure it's in your list. No, I don't know what Digital Clothing is. This is an engineer centric crowd so your responses would probably differ from other channels..
Thanks for your voice! I know that suggested things do not reflect all values and may not respond to yours perfectly but we are focused on particular things.
I might be the same as you, except like 3 years ahead. I too felt the exact same way, so I left my cushy job (which paid pretty well) to start my own thing.
3 years later, and still bootstrapped, I'm starting to see why things are the way they are. Not trying to sound too depressing, but at the end of the day, money is what matters, and the status quo is the most optimized form of money-making there is. Profit-seeking trumps everything; even if you create the next PageRank algorithm, in order to have value it still needs to be monetized.
I also realize the whole "everyone else is a conman" thinking is quite wrong. PMs do provide value (of course, some more than others); it's just harder to see as an engineer, since it feels like we're doing all the hard work.
This might go against the grain here, but my advice: change the attitude, unless you want to remain depressed.
> This might go against the grain here, but my advice: change the attitude, unless you want to remain depressed.
Great advice. It is up to you to decide how you feel about your situation. There are no perfect answers, just ones that fit you better. Find the set of trade-offs you can live with.
> I also realize the whole "everyone else is a conman" thinking is quite wrong.
While true, there are a good number of people with agendas that aren't in your best interest. Take a queue from those people and look out for your best interest. Move on when you find something that fits you better.
I hadn't seen this discussed yet, but how did Google know that Podcast Addict was indexing corona-related content? What was the mechanism that triggered the ban? The developer's twitter said that he didn't include any corona keywords in the play store metadata, nor in the source code. The consensus seems to be that some automated system was too aggressive in banning.
My best guess is that the source for the info used to ban PA would be the reviews, i.e. someone posted a review mentioning "great podcasts about corona" or something. But I can't imagine it's that simple, because then I can just put "corona" in any review and get somebody's app banned.
Unless Google has some other way of tracking PA's content?
From them: "The Facebook SDK automatically initializes when the app is opened. When the SDK is initializing, it fetches app settings from Facebook. If you want to block all network requests to Facebook, you can disable automatic initialization." If you want to turn it off, you're supposed to set in your app's plist <key>FacebookAutoInitEnabled</key><false/>.
If people are claiming that the SDK is still fetching despite adding that key, that could be breaking some compliance and consent laws...
> If people are claiming that the SDK is still fetching despite adding that key, that could be breaking some compliance and consent laws...
It is still a violation of GDPR as I as the user never have the chance to consent (or not consent!) to any data transfer to Facebook. But as no one seems to be willing to go after FB... sigh.
but that's the point: It can be. Just add that key to the plist file and the SDK won't initialize and won't do any requests by default.
This is absolutely on the app developers. Not knowing what an SDK you linked does or doesn't do doesn't absolve you from GDPR (or any law for that matter)
This is on FB for not being forthcoming and stating very clearly that the SDK is doing that in their docs.
Is it documented somewhere? Sure, probably.
But if your SDK is doing something _very unusual_ and goes against platform conventions and best practices, and 99,9% of the people integrating the SDK _have no idea_ about it, it's your fault for not explaining what and why you're doing it.
For the average user out there, the fact is, most people only care about privacy when there's a breach/outage/scandal of some kind. Otherwise, the average person is not going to have "zomg fb is spyware" on their mind.
If apps start charging money, there would be a significant drop in the # of average user installs. Then the app would only make money off of privacy focused users, which is comparatively small.
>For the average user out there, the fact is, most people only care about privacy when there's a breach/outage/scandal of some kind. Otherwise, the average person is not going to have "zomg fb is spyware" on their mind.
Because they don't know.
Like every industry, there are practices involved to which the layman is oblivious. It is important to remind ourselves that the reason the majority of users aren't vocalizing their concerns with these unsavory practices isn't because they don't care but because they don't know.
The 'not knowing' part happens when the outrage is then transferred to any app which does integrate the FB SDK (like zoom). We as developers have sortof taken for granted that the FB/Google/etc SDKs can do no evil. Maybe that attitude should change, because public opinion certainly has.
>The 'not knowing' part happens when the outrage is then transferred to any app which does integrate the FB SDK (like zoom).
Sorry, I'm lost here. Can you elaborate?
>We as developers have sortof taken for granted that the FB/Google/etc SDKs can do no evil. Maybe that attitude should change, because public opinion certainly has.
Previously, you mentioned
>If apps start charging money, there would be a significant drop in the # of average user installs. Then the app would only make money off of privacy focused users, which is comparatively small.
I don't have any reason to believe sales would lessen if a formerly "free" application began charging. The difference, however, I have no idea. You mention "significant" which is, of course, relative.
It isn't difficult to see the incentive at work in this scenario:
a) I could charge a nominal fee for use of my software, foregoing the unsavory practices discussed in this thread, and make X amount of money.
b) I could sell my user out and potentially make more than X amount of money. How much more? I don't know, but more.
Didn't Samsung literally get caught uploading screenshots of content played on their TVs to some server? Maybe it was some other company?
These days, unless you take drastic measures to defend yourself from spyware embedded in consumer technology or forgo it all together, it seems that you'll be subject to this kind of surreptitious abuse as a matter of course.
Worse than that, audio recordings from people's living rooms:
"Please be aware that if your spoken words include personal or other sensitive information, that information will be among the data captured and transmitted to a third party through your use of Voice Recognition."
Yes, Vizio already got caught and sued over this behavior.
> Starting in 2014, Vizio made TVs that automatically tracked what consumers were watching and transmitted that data back to its servers. Vizio even retrofitted older models by installing its tracking software remotely. All of this, the FTC and AG allege, was done without clearly telling consumers or getting their consent.
> What did Vizio know about what was going on in the privacy of consumers’ homes? On a second-by-second basis, Vizio collected a selection of pixels on the screen that it matched to a database of TV, movie, and commercial content. What’s more, Vizio identified viewing data from cable or broadband service providers, set-top boxes, streaming devices, DVD players, and over-the-air broadcasts. Add it all up and Vizio captured as many as 100 billion data points each day from millions of TVs.
> Vizio then turned that mountain of data into cash by selling consumers’ viewing histories to advertisers and others.
"We use anonymized data to provide a positive advertising experience, enable ad-supported TV networks to keep their shows free, and partner with TV manufacturers which reduces the price of TVs for you."
Some of them even connect to any available open wifi without being configured to do so, so even keeping them from phoning home
is difficult/impossible if your neighbor is careless.
Funnily enough there's another thread on HN for someone about to embark on this journey: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23475890