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Lying about a feature isn’t just a “mistake”.

vntok 6y ago
Lying about a feature is exactly what Silicon Valley's "fake it till you make it" culture encourages. Crucifying Zoom over this while letting virtually every other company in the space (inc. Hangout/Meet and MS Teams/Skype) go free seems quite hypocritical from an HN community that's comprised of many startupers and startup wannabees who spend their professional lives working for entities with similar practices.
- deleted 6y ago
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- markkanof 6y ago
  That’s not what the expression means. If you are a tiny company and a big customer comes to you and says “can you scale to support us”, you answer yes even if you are not 100% sure you are ready. If however you claim to have feature X and you don’t, that’s just a lie.
  - velp 6y ago
    I think I agree with you, but this argument seems like a pretty arbitrary line. How is saying "yes we can scale" when you're not sure if you can, aren't you essentially implying that you have the infrastructure to deliver on that promise? And if you don't actually have that infrastructure yet/built/proven, then you're essentially selling a feature that doesn't exist. It's shades of grey from lying about E2EE, but seems pretty similar imo
    - hhw 6y ago
      Because with presumably feasible level of efforts and resources, you can make a claim that's not yet true, but has a reasonable probability of becoming true by the time you need to deliver your product/service. So you can make that claim in good faith, even if you're not 100% certain it will hold true. That's very different than making a specific claim that you already have a feature right now, that you in fact don't. That claim cannot possibly be made in good faith, as it's currently outright false, and you can never retroactively apply end to end encryption on conversations that have already happened.
    - jacobjonz 6y ago
      /like a pretty arbitrary line/ Really? Do you think they would/could lie on the features of a product that they deliver to a client. If they did, do you think they should get away with that? 'We have that capability' claim is totally not the same.
- neodymiumphish 6y ago
  Did Meet/Teams/Skype claim E2E encryption? The only alternative I ever looked into was Jitsi (because it was the first alternative I started doing research on, and by the time I'd finished researching it there was no doubt that it was more than good enough -- and super easy to build our own cloud instance so that, even though it wasn't E2E, we had total control of the server that managed the encryption), but I don't recall hearing arguments that any of the other major competitors were actually E2E encrypted.
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- anotheracct_ 6y ago
  Because security can jeopardize lives, it isn't acceptable to lie about as a feature.
- yellowapple 6y ago
  And perhaps instead of being lenient with Zoom because "well everyone else lies about features", we should instead be consistent about holding companies accountable for dishonest business practices. (I think I'm preaching to the choir here; just clarifying for anyone else reading your comment)

Lying about a feature is exactly what Silicon Valley's "fake it till you make it" culture encourages. Crucifying Zoom over this while letting virtually every other company in the space (inc. Hangout/Meet and MS Teams/Skype) go free seems quite hypocritical from an HN community that's comprised of many startupers and startup wannabees who spend their professional lives working for entities with similar practices.

deleted 6y ago
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markkanof 6y ago
That’s not what the expression means. If you are a tiny company and a big customer comes to you and says “can you scale to support us”, you answer yes even if you are not 100% sure you are ready. If however you claim to have feature X and you don’t, that’s just a lie.
- velp 6y ago
  I think I agree with you, but this argument seems like a pretty arbitrary line. How is saying "yes we can scale" when you're not sure if you can, aren't you essentially implying that you have the infrastructure to deliver on that promise? And if you don't actually have that infrastructure yet/built/proven, then you're essentially selling a feature that doesn't exist. It's shades of grey from lying about E2EE, but seems pretty similar imo
  - hhw 6y ago
    Because with presumably feasible level of efforts and resources, you can make a claim that's not yet true, but has a reasonable probability of becoming true by the time you need to deliver your product/service. So you can make that claim in good faith, even if you're not 100% certain it will hold true. That's very different than making a specific claim that you already have a feature right now, that you in fact don't. That claim cannot possibly be made in good faith, as it's currently outright false, and you can never retroactively apply end to end encryption on conversations that have already happened.
  - jacobjonz 6y ago
    /like a pretty arbitrary line/ Really? Do you think they would/could lie on the features of a product that they deliver to a client. If they did, do you think they should get away with that? 'We have that capability' claim is totally not the same.
neodymiumphish 6y ago
Did Meet/Teams/Skype claim E2E encryption? The only alternative I ever looked into was Jitsi (because it was the first alternative I started doing research on, and by the time I'd finished researching it there was no doubt that it was more than good enough -- and super easy to build our own cloud instance so that, even though it wasn't E2E, we had total control of the server that managed the encryption), but I don't recall hearing arguments that any of the other major competitors were actually E2E encrypted.
- deleted 6y ago
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anotheracct_ 6y ago
Because security can jeopardize lives, it isn't acceptable to lie about as a feature.
yellowapple 6y ago
And perhaps instead of being lenient with Zoom because "well everyone else lies about features", we should instead be consistent about holding companies accountable for dishonest business practices. (I think I'm preaching to the choir here; just clarifying for anyone else reading your comment)