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I recommended Quirk to my girlfriend a few months ago. Still haven't tried it myself. You seem to know what you're doing so my only advice is to not take VC mo

by danr4 7y ago

I recommended Quirk to my girlfriend a few months ago. Still haven't tried it myself. You seem to know what you're doing so my only advice is to not take VC money or you'll probably be pushed into making this app a general health app that is a bit useful for everyone instead of very useful to a lot of people, for the sake of money.

flaque 7y ago
Thank you for recommending it! I really hope it's helping. Re:pushed-to-be-general --> 1000%, this is definitely a concern. We're definitely new to this world, so we're talking a lot with more experienced founders who understand how to navigate it better than we do. We also do a lot to setup systems that align the incentives of the business with the incentives of the user; for example being open source is one strong system.
- mattdeboard 7y ago
  What user data do you store? Do you sell user data? How do you protect user data? I trust your founding story, and I truly believe you are acting in good faith, with positive intentions. I think your rationale for a subscription model is wise & insightful. However, recent history has taught me to be cynical. I have to think there's a market for more and higher-resolution emotional profiles to open up new targeted advertising delivery channels. Especially information that can be used to feed algorithms for building higher resolution models of my inner life.
  - flaque 7y ago
    To answer the obvious question: we don't store your thoughts. We store anonymous behavioral info like strings of "USER-a23o13jaf signed on to a free trial." Then our bug-checking system also stores some anonymous device info like what phone you're using, how big it is, the language you're on, that sort of thing. We don't sell your data. That's pretty scummy. We protect user data by collecting as little as possible and not storing it. We don't collect your email or your phone number or anything really. Signup is handled entirely by the stores. > recent history has taught me to be cynical. You should be cynical. I'm cynical. There's no real way for us to convince you to trust Quirk, since people at companies change and because people change. That's why we're so focused on systems thinking rather than just telling you to trust us. We'd rather set the company up so that it's always headed in a direction that benefits customers. This isn't a perfect solution, but it's the best one I can think of.
    - joshspankit 7y ago
      To improve trust: allow each user to see the raw data that’s sent with every request and when. Default telemetry to on as you’re open about collecting it (and it necessary for debugging), but allow people to turn it off completely. You could even store it on-device just in case a user has a problem later and decided to help by sending past telemetry.
asdfman123 7y ago
Does the app store any data in their servers? I'm hardly obsessed with data privacy but I would never, ever, ever want my mental health data out there for some data scientist to play around with and manipulate. Facebook knowing all the dumb crap I do on their platform really pales in comparison to the data privacy issues of an app. If I get a whiff of anything negative, I'm not using it. I'm suspicious already.
- flaque 7y ago
  No, it doesn't store you mental health thoughts on any servers. They're all stored only on your device. The caveats are below: We collect anonymous, aggregate (as in "user-213sdfewfefwa") events. This is stuff like: > "user-awefawewa21312aef" opened the app > "user-efaoiwejf21321few" started a free trial These are used for aggregate stats like "how many people use Quirk" or "do people read the articles?" This is recorded by the phone stores anyway, but we do this both so we can get some more Quirk-specific stuff and so we can combine Android and iOS data. We also collect some base information on your phone. For example, what type of phone you have or what language you're using. This is basically a requirement to debug stuff; since there's a lot of bugs that crop up only on certain OS/Phone/languages. If your phone crashes or there's an error thrown, we use Sentry to report it. This lib will collect some basic info like phone types, IPs, and then the stack trace of course. In the future, we may provide a way for you to share a thought with a trusted friend or therapist. This has been a highly requested feature, especially by folks who would otherwise huddle around their phone during an appointment. To do this, our plan to use an expiring, private link. That means your thoughts will be stored in raw form in a DB and then get deleted within X days. This would only happen with your explicit consent and it's only for a thought you share rather than your whole list of thoughts. It's a button you have to press EVERY time, not an "automatic share my thoughts" sort of thing. We'll also be adding a cloud-sync feature at some point so you never have to lose your thoughts when you switch phones. When we do this, all the thoughts will be end-to-end encrypted; so no Quirk employee will ever be able to see your raw thoughts. Because we're a paid product, we have little incentive to read your thoughts or strip-mine your data. We're in the business of making you feel better; we're not reading your deepest darkest secrets to figure out how to sell you shoes or something. We don't want to know your thoughts. Unless someone explicitly tells us otherwise, we treat them like passwords.
true_religion 7y ago
Don’t take VC money? They are a YC company. That ship already sailed.

by danr4 7y ago

flaque 7y ago

Thank you for recommending it! I really hope it's helping. Re:pushed-to-be-general --> 1000%, this is definitely a concern. We're definitely new to this world, so we're talking a lot with more experienced founders who understand how to navigate it better than we do. We also do a lot to setup systems that align the incentives of the business with the incentives of the user; for example being open source is one strong system.

mattdeboard 7y ago
What user data do you store? Do you sell user data? How do you protect user data? I trust your founding story, and I truly believe you are acting in good faith, with positive intentions. I think your rationale for a subscription model is wise & insightful. However, recent history has taught me to be cynical. I have to think there's a market for more and higher-resolution emotional profiles to open up new targeted advertising delivery channels. Especially information that can be used to feed algorithms for building higher resolution models of my inner life.
- flaque 7y ago
  To answer the obvious question: we don't store your thoughts. We store anonymous behavioral info like strings of "USER-a23o13jaf signed on to a free trial." Then our bug-checking system also stores some anonymous device info like what phone you're using, how big it is, the language you're on, that sort of thing. We don't sell your data. That's pretty scummy. We protect user data by collecting as little as possible and not storing it. We don't collect your email or your phone number or anything really. Signup is handled entirely by the stores. > recent history has taught me to be cynical. You should be cynical. I'm cynical. There's no real way for us to convince you to trust Quirk, since people at companies change and because people change. That's why we're so focused on systems thinking rather than just telling you to trust us. We'd rather set the company up so that it's always headed in a direction that benefits customers. This isn't a perfect solution, but it's the best one I can think of.
  - joshspankit 7y ago
    To improve trust: allow each user to see the raw data that’s sent with every request and when. Default telemetry to on as you’re open about collecting it (and it necessary for debugging), but allow people to turn it off completely. You could even store it on-device just in case a user has a problem later and decided to help by sending past telemetry.

asdfman123 7y ago

Does the app store any data in their servers? I'm hardly obsessed with data privacy but I would never, ever, ever want my mental health data out there for some data scientist to play around with and manipulate. Facebook knowing all the dumb crap I do on their platform really pales in comparison to the data privacy issues of an app. If I get a whiff of anything negative, I'm not using it. I'm suspicious already.

flaque 7y ago
No, it doesn't store you mental health thoughts on any servers. They're all stored only on your device. The caveats are below: We collect anonymous, aggregate (as in "user-213sdfewfefwa") events. This is stuff like: > "user-awefawewa21312aef" opened the app > "user-efaoiwejf21321few" started a free trial These are used for aggregate stats like "how many people use Quirk" or "do people read the articles?" This is recorded by the phone stores anyway, but we do this both so we can get some more Quirk-specific stuff and so we can combine Android and iOS data. We also collect some base information on your phone. For example, what type of phone you have or what language you're using. This is basically a requirement to debug stuff; since there's a lot of bugs that crop up only on certain OS/Phone/languages. If your phone crashes or there's an error thrown, we use Sentry to report it. This lib will collect some basic info like phone types, IPs, and then the stack trace of course. In the future, we may provide a way for you to share a thought with a trusted friend or therapist. This has been a highly requested feature, especially by folks who would otherwise huddle around their phone during an appointment. To do this, our plan to use an expiring, private link. That means your thoughts will be stored in raw form in a DB and then get deleted within X days. This would only happen with your explicit consent and it's only for a thought you share rather than your whole list of thoughts. It's a button you have to press EVERY time, not an "automatic share my thoughts" sort of thing. We'll also be adding a cloud-sync feature at some point so you never have to lose your thoughts when you switch phones. When we do this, all the thoughts will be end-to-end encrypted; so no Quirk employee will ever be able to see your raw thoughts. Because we're a paid product, we have little incentive to read your thoughts or strip-mine your data. We're in the business of making you feel better; we're not reading your deepest darkest secrets to figure out how to sell you shoes or something. We don't want to know your thoughts. Unless someone explicitly tells us otherwise, we treat them like passwords.

true_religion 7y ago

Don’t take VC money? They are a YC company. That ship already sailed.