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"It starts with author calling his users "fools" for not randomizing useragent" He thought he was getting DDOS'd at first, and his attackers were using one use

by l4yao 9y ago

"It starts with author calling his users "fools" for not randomizing useragent" He thought he was getting DDOS'd at first, and his attackers were using one useragent. In which case, they would have been fools. "Then he realize "This is the biggest opportunity ever!"." It __is__ a great opportunity! For the HN audience, a large influx of users is considered a great opportunity. "They are just numbers for him, a viral mob that will do whatever their god tell them to do." There seems to be a lot of negativity around this. I thought it was hilarious. Would there still be outrage if the users were American instead of Indian? "His final solution - more lies and unethical behaviors" I would hardly call it lies or unethical. 1. he isn't obligated to do anything 2. he ultimately delivered a usable product with a paid option to the service. Sounds like any other freemium app or in-app-purchase

lucideer 9y ago
> Would there still be outrage if the users were American instead of Indian? This is exactly the point. There would only be outrage if the users were American. There would not be a positive response here.
intended 9y ago
Let’s try another more illustrative question - what would the reaction be if he were an Indian in India doing that to Indians or doing it to Americans. There would definitely be outrage. As other people have said, he comes across as lacking humanity. Especially as the people using Jio phones would be the kind of people who are not rich or well off. In fairness to the person, he could just be clueless and doesn’t really think of the people trying to use his service as people. Hmm. That makes him sound worse. I know a friend who thinks like that, And Is not a bad person.... I don’t know - this guy comes across as if he doesn’t realize that he is manipulating people less informed and weaker than him like someone orchestrating ants into following sugar.
- soziawa 9y ago
  > As other people have said, he comes across as lacking humanity. Especially as the people using Jio phones would be the kind of people who are not rich or well off. But that doesn't make his server costs go away. And they must own at least another phone otherwise they wouldn't be able to use WhatsApp Web. So they are probably not as poor as you think.
  - StavrosK 9y ago
    If they own another phone why do they want to access WhatsApp on their cheapo ones so fervently?
    - oeuviz 9y ago
      That is what puzzles me most in the article. Unless one phone that can handle Whatsapp is used by several people I do not get what they are trying to achieve here. AFAIK Whatsapp Web needs to have a phone online and is not provided as a standalone web service.
      - StavrosK 9y ago
        Yeah, that's pretty perplexing to me as well.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
    - xenres 9y ago
      They could have used some else's phone to setup the account
  - intended 9y ago
    >But that doesn't make his server costs go away If it were just the opening part of the article which gave me pause, I would agree with you. But the other parts? Its very hard, even when I am trying to give him the benefit of doubt, to devise a sufficient and forgiving explanation for his behavior. Unless you just ignore entire chunks of what transpired. He used those people to troll his competitors. It sounds like someone realized that he could flash a laser, and make a group of camps walk over someone else's flower bed. Its hard to defend that, and the implication that has for his view on the people he aimed like water from a hose. For the record, I've put some time into knowing what I know about India, the Indian telecom industry, Jio and Jio pricing. I'll say that my educated guess should be pretty close to the mark, but I will change my position if a contradicting piece of information is shown.
- l4yao 9y ago
  Maybe it's a cultural thing. If it was an Indian doing it to Americans, I don't see why there would be outrage. It's just a guy promoting his service, which he did eventually deliver. The Taiwan number 1, competitors number eight bit is hilarious. It's a meme and not intended to be political. "he comes across as lacking humanity. Especially as the people using Jio phones would be the kind of people who are not rich or well off." Would you say the same about apps that serve video ads in order to unlock something in app? Or contests that requests tweets for entry? Or bootstrapped companies with "buy now" websites that only lead to an email signup? "he doesn’t realize that he is manipulating people less informed and weaker than him" Manipulating seems like a strong word. No one was forced to tweet, this isn't a matter of life or death. (It's for getting on WhatsApp after all). More importantly, I don't think anyone that tweeted really cared about the contents of the tweet.
  - intended 9y ago
    Manipulation is correct. You could try to see how coerce fits and you will find that harder to pin. Challenges or re-tweet requests are assumed in good faith or in the context of a (relatively) symmetrical/fair market system. I’m trying to give him good faith and it’s coming up short. I don’t think he is malicious, just not used to thinking at the scale of humanity he was dealing with. By the way - this is also an excellent example of how good net neutrality laws help customers. I am sure JIO would love to block whatsapp. Actually - how is Jio blocking Whatsapp? That’s a more important question.
    - SimbaOnSteroids 9y ago
      I don't believe the phones have the ability to download the application. They look like early 2000's phones, like after the bricks of the 90's but before the flip phone craze.
      - intended 9y ago
        In that case reliance should just buy the guy out. Jio launches a pretty ambitious phone network and decimated the competition. Do note thought that they are considered to be really bad competitors to go up against. They almost always have a focus on good ultra competitive pricing and ways to extract extra money from the consumer. But they are very actively investing in broadband content to drive use of their network.
- l4yao 9y ago
  I think no one would care if Americans were doing this to other Americans... seems like just another day on Social Media Marketing.
- yipopov 9y ago
  >Let’s try another more illustrative question - what would the reaction be if he were an Indian in India doing that to Indians or doing it to Americans. Probably just a lot of people shrugging and saying "I guess this guy doesn't want us abusing his free service for our own gain" and "it was fun while it lasted". All indications pointed towards all these people using his service in bad faith. I went to his website and it's obviously meant for cross-browser testing, not spoofing your user agent, circumventing regional restrictions or whatever it was preventing them from accessing Whatsapp directly.
  - SimbaOnSteroids 9y ago
    Jio phones appear to run a mobile OS that is not supported by whatsapp. Effectively they are using his server to host the whatsapp instance and then only deal with the very front end of the whatsapp code natively.
    - yipopov 9y ago
      I tried bringing up an Android VM and see if I could escape the web browser and get to an app store, but couldn't, at least not by doing anything more than just poking around with the mouse (if the Indians in question had the know-how to do something more intrusive I doubt they would need Browserly to circumvent the restriction in the first place). And it would be strange if Browserly would allow the browser to be escaped and software to be installed, it's practically asking for his service to be abused. So I'm pretty sure what they want is to access the Whatsapp web interface and use Browserly for user agent spoofing, circumventing geographic blocking or some kind of blocking on their phones like a 0.0.0.0 entry for whatsapp.com in the hosts file. Either way it's a major dick move if you ask me, especially when there is no shortage of services built for this exact purpose.
al_chemist 9y ago
> I thought it was hilarious. Would there still be outrage if the users were American instead of Indian? Imagine French facebook users waking up one day to see "If you want to log in, tweet 'I love facebook`". Would there be an outrage? What if tweet would say "Macron is not my president #downwithmacron"?

by l4yao 9y ago

lucideer 9y ago

> Would there still be outrage if the users were American instead of Indian? This is exactly the point. There would only be outrage if the users were American. There would not be a positive response here.

intended 9y ago

Let’s try another more illustrative question - what would the reaction be if he were an Indian in India doing that to Indians or doing it to Americans. There would definitely be outrage. As other people have said, he comes across as lacking humanity. Especially as the people using Jio phones would be the kind of people who are not rich or well off. In fairness to the person, he could just be clueless and doesn’t really think of the people trying to use his service as people. Hmm. That makes him sound worse. I know a friend who thinks like that, And Is not a bad person.... I don’t know - this guy comes across as if he doesn’t realize that he is manipulating people less informed and weaker than him like someone orchestrating ants into following sugar.

soziawa 9y ago
> As other people have said, he comes across as lacking humanity. Especially as the people using Jio phones would be the kind of people who are not rich or well off. But that doesn't make his server costs go away. And they must own at least another phone otherwise they wouldn't be able to use WhatsApp Web. So they are probably not as poor as you think.
- StavrosK 9y ago
  If they own another phone why do they want to access WhatsApp on their cheapo ones so fervently?
  - oeuviz 9y ago
    That is what puzzles me most in the article. Unless one phone that can handle Whatsapp is used by several people I do not get what they are trying to achieve here. AFAIK Whatsapp Web needs to have a phone online and is not provided as a standalone web service.
    - StavrosK 9y ago
      Yeah, that's pretty perplexing to me as well.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - xenres 9y ago
    They could have used some else's phone to setup the account
- intended 9y ago
  >But that doesn't make his server costs go away If it were just the opening part of the article which gave me pause, I would agree with you. But the other parts? Its very hard, even when I am trying to give him the benefit of doubt, to devise a sufficient and forgiving explanation for his behavior. Unless you just ignore entire chunks of what transpired. He used those people to troll his competitors. It sounds like someone realized that he could flash a laser, and make a group of camps walk over someone else's flower bed. Its hard to defend that, and the implication that has for his view on the people he aimed like water from a hose. For the record, I've put some time into knowing what I know about India, the Indian telecom industry, Jio and Jio pricing. I'll say that my educated guess should be pretty close to the mark, but I will change my position if a contradicting piece of information is shown.
l4yao 9y ago
Maybe it's a cultural thing. If it was an Indian doing it to Americans, I don't see why there would be outrage. It's just a guy promoting his service, which he did eventually deliver. The Taiwan number 1, competitors number eight bit is hilarious. It's a meme and not intended to be political. "he comes across as lacking humanity. Especially as the people using Jio phones would be the kind of people who are not rich or well off." Would you say the same about apps that serve video ads in order to unlock something in app? Or contests that requests tweets for entry? Or bootstrapped companies with "buy now" websites that only lead to an email signup? "he doesn’t realize that he is manipulating people less informed and weaker than him" Manipulating seems like a strong word. No one was forced to tweet, this isn't a matter of life or death. (It's for getting on WhatsApp after all). More importantly, I don't think anyone that tweeted really cared about the contents of the tweet.
- intended 9y ago
  Manipulation is correct. You could try to see how coerce fits and you will find that harder to pin. Challenges or re-tweet requests are assumed in good faith or in the context of a (relatively) symmetrical/fair market system. I’m trying to give him good faith and it’s coming up short. I don’t think he is malicious, just not used to thinking at the scale of humanity he was dealing with. By the way - this is also an excellent example of how good net neutrality laws help customers. I am sure JIO would love to block whatsapp. Actually - how is Jio blocking Whatsapp? That’s a more important question.
  - SimbaOnSteroids 9y ago
    I don't believe the phones have the ability to download the application. They look like early 2000's phones, like after the bricks of the 90's but before the flip phone craze.
    - intended 9y ago
      In that case reliance should just buy the guy out. Jio launches a pretty ambitious phone network and decimated the competition. Do note thought that they are considered to be really bad competitors to go up against. They almost always have a focus on good ultra competitive pricing and ways to extract extra money from the consumer. But they are very actively investing in broadband content to drive use of their network.
l4yao 9y ago
I think no one would care if Americans were doing this to other Americans... seems like just another day on Social Media Marketing.
yipopov 9y ago
>Let’s try another more illustrative question - what would the reaction be if he were an Indian in India doing that to Indians or doing it to Americans. Probably just a lot of people shrugging and saying "I guess this guy doesn't want us abusing his free service for our own gain" and "it was fun while it lasted". All indications pointed towards all these people using his service in bad faith. I went to his website and it's obviously meant for cross-browser testing, not spoofing your user agent, circumventing regional restrictions or whatever it was preventing them from accessing Whatsapp directly.
- SimbaOnSteroids 9y ago
  Jio phones appear to run a mobile OS that is not supported by whatsapp. Effectively they are using his server to host the whatsapp instance and then only deal with the very front end of the whatsapp code natively.
  - yipopov 9y ago
    I tried bringing up an Android VM and see if I could escape the web browser and get to an app store, but couldn't, at least not by doing anything more than just poking around with the mouse (if the Indians in question had the know-how to do something more intrusive I doubt they would need Browserly to circumvent the restriction in the first place). And it would be strange if Browserly would allow the browser to be escaped and software to be installed, it's practically asking for his service to be abused. So I'm pretty sure what they want is to access the Whatsapp web interface and use Browserly for user agent spoofing, circumventing geographic blocking or some kind of blocking on their phones like a 0.0.0.0 entry for whatsapp.com in the hosts file. Either way it's a major dick move if you ask me, especially when there is no shortage of services built for this exact purpose.

al_chemist 9y ago

> I thought it was hilarious. Would there still be outrage if the users were American instead of Indian? Imagine French facebook users waking up one day to see "If you want to log in, tweet 'I love facebook`". Would there be an outrage? What if tweet would say "Macron is not my president #downwithmacron"?