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I’m the founder and CEO of Life360. We are very used to criticism but this one feels odd. We have had over 100 million downloads and this use case is the most e

I’m the founder and CEO of Life360. We are very used to criticism but this one feels odd. We have had over 100 million downloads and this use case is the most extreme of outliers. It is a bit ironic this article is highlighting traffickers who went to jail because they stupidly used the app to incriminate themselves. You’d think a trafficker would use one of the many location apps that doesn’t have the same collaborative stance with law enforcement that we do (we store location data and will share it with a legal subpoena). There are many apps that explicitly market the fact that they use encryption in a way that makes this legal discovery impossible. For the rationalists on this thread this article about evil cardiologists come to mind. https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/DSzpr8Y9299jdDLc9/cardiologists-and-chinese-robbers https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/DSzpr8Y9299jdDLc9/cardiologi... PS: while I don’t appreciate the story I do appreciate the reporter gave me a fair hearing. So many journalists these days have no ethics and literally cut/paste quotes to distort the meaning. Thomas didn’t do that here, so kudos to him.

deleted 4y ago
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maxerickson 4y ago
Do you think that beneficial use absolves you of responsibility for harmful use? I ask because you say "We have had over 100 million downloads and this use case is the most extreme of outliers.", which sounds like you might. I would think the better calculation compares the cost of preventing the harmful use to the harm (where focusing on beneficial use is dismissive of the harm).
- xvector 4y ago
  If Life360 has indeed saved thousands of lives as he mentions, then of course the moral calculus is in the company's favor. This is the same drama as the whole AirTag stalking debate.
  - maxerickson 4y ago
    No! The reasonable moral calculus incorporates what is possible, not just the outcomes of what they are actually doing.
    - wilg 4y ago
      Well, to calibrate our calculus, let's say this is the best that is possible. Is it okay then?
- crhulls 4y ago
  Yes, I think it does. I’m not sure where the line is drawn but 1/10 is different than 1/100 which is different than 1/10,000,000. If we are extending the sex theme, how often is alcohol used to limber up a young woman to lower her inhibitions? Having gone to college I wouldn’t even consider that an outlier, yet alcohol is prevalent and almost expected at almost all social functions. Should we move back to prohibition? And it is provable we have saved thousands of lives. So yes, I do think the fact that this an extreme outlier vs the good we provide is relevant and does absolve us. And we do take action as evidenced in this very article - these creeps went to jail in no small part because of us.
  - maxerickson 4y ago
    So to restate my question, I'm asking if you are expending sufficient resources preventing harm. Like if you spent another $5, would you be likely prevent more than $5 of harm? That's what it means for the beneficial use to absolve you of responsibility for the harmful use, you don't have to think about whether you need to spend that next $5.
    - crhulls 4y ago
      My simplistic answer is, yes, I think we are. Going a bit deeper though, and putting aside the question of prevalence, how would you suggest we solve this problem? -We have actively collaborate with law enforcement (sidebar: we are used to the HN crowd going after us for this due to data privacy issues) -We are a "noisy" app - no one can install Life360 on your phone without you knowing -We have a resources page specifically to help people who feel Life360 is being improperly used -We have a "bubbles" feature that allows you to keep safety features active while hiding your exact location -We have a customer support team that passes all reported instance of misuse to our legal team, which contacts authorities as needed. If there were some easy way to do more, we would certainly consider it. But, getting more philosophical, in some ways you are advocating that all for-profit companies pay for their own externalities. In some respects this makes a lot of sense (e.g. pollution, carbon credits, etc). How do you do this though when an externality is extremely rare or almost impossible to quantify? Should car manufacturers pay into a fund that compensates people who are injured by speeding drivers who emulate racing in car ads? Should hammer and kitchen knife manufacturers do more to prevent murders? Should cigarette manufacturers pay insurance companies for their share of increased actuarial costs? Should social media companies pay for free therapy? Life is grey and I don't claim to be the authority on right or wrong, but I don't feel the critique here zooms out and looks at the bigger picture. Odds and ratios matter.
connor11528 4y ago
Are you going to do anything differently so that your software is not used to facilitate sex trafficking?
- crhulls 4y ago
  Do you have suggestions? I am genuinely open to hearing them. I do, however, push back on the fundamental premise that we facilitate sex trafficking. Both Android and iOS have location sharing built into the OS - I don't think the feature is ever going away.
  - connor11528 4y ago
    From the article and multiple police investigations it sounds like your software is used by them to run their illicit businesses. Having users register could be one option. If there's one guy and a bunch of teenage girls on a plan that might be a red flag or worth further review. Perhaps your company could look at all the people that were busted and see if there's commonalities with how they use the app. It's my guess that if multiple people were using it for trafficking and were busted there's probably traffickers using your software right now.
  - ajma 4y ago
    Invest in ML to spot patterns. I don't know specifically how it was done, but I heard that Whatsapp had a hard time with spam after e2e encryption since you couldn't catch spam by examining the text. So instead they started looking for patterns and found things like an account that was less than a week old sending out thousands of messages a week. It's an outlier in usage pattern. I believe credit card fraud systems do something similar. Like if you suddenly make a purchase far far away or in a category that you never do, then it gets flagged. I'm happy to help brainstorm more ideas.
waboremo 4y ago
I'm not sure focusing on the statistics is really a great move when it comes to such extreme cases, especially involving young adults/teens. Going down that route of focusing on statistics, while they are important, is just going to result in further controversy regarding the app as more stories or cases come out - the common thought people will have is "what if that was me/my child?" When that happens, all bets are off, you are not going to logically talk someone down. You highlighted a great point, you should have been hammering away at that when prompted instead of statistics. Unrelated, but Life360's marketing tone is a pet peeve of mine, it lacks a clear perspective. It claims to be about family, but any family features get sidelined in favor of "stalking your kids". Kids just feel obligated to use it rather than it having any specific features for them to really benefit from. This approach is problematic because it makes kids want to communicate less (and btw your website highlights "We don't have to text or call like we used to" as a good thing), and in turn parents become more obsessive. Your entire company is positioning itself as just being about overzealous parents, rather than an actual family app for all members of the family to enjoy and feel safe in. Why not encourage more family communication? Look at how many flocked to BeReal, don't you think families could have done that easily within Life360? A fun way to engage with each other, but without the engaging just being "location data" (for the record, I don't think you need to implement this specific feature, it's just an example of why people feel comfortable outside Life360). Airtags focused explicitly on the individual - here's why you need one, btw here are cute accessories to go with it. Tile within Life360 just gets relegated to "find stuff your family loses". Can I not even buy a cute dog collar that supports Tile or something? It's like you want every family member to find the app and ecosystem so cold and "location data" obsessed only the resident control freak could enjoy it. Apologies for ranting about marketing, but your app has quite a lot of good features that get buried because of how dysfunctional marketing is.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

maxerickson 4y ago

Do you think that beneficial use absolves you of responsibility for harmful use? I ask because you say "We have had over 100 million downloads and this use case is the most extreme of outliers.", which sounds like you might. I would think the better calculation compares the cost of preventing the harmful use to the harm (where focusing on beneficial use is dismissive of the harm).

xvector 4y ago
If Life360 has indeed saved thousands of lives as he mentions, then of course the moral calculus is in the company's favor. This is the same drama as the whole AirTag stalking debate.
- maxerickson 4y ago
  No! The reasonable moral calculus incorporates what is possible, not just the outcomes of what they are actually doing.
  - wilg 4y ago
    Well, to calibrate our calculus, let's say this is the best that is possible. Is it okay then?
crhulls 4y ago
Yes, I think it does. I’m not sure where the line is drawn but 1/10 is different than 1/100 which is different than 1/10,000,000. If we are extending the sex theme, how often is alcohol used to limber up a young woman to lower her inhibitions? Having gone to college I wouldn’t even consider that an outlier, yet alcohol is prevalent and almost expected at almost all social functions. Should we move back to prohibition? And it is provable we have saved thousands of lives. So yes, I do think the fact that this an extreme outlier vs the good we provide is relevant and does absolve us. And we do take action as evidenced in this very article - these creeps went to jail in no small part because of us.
- maxerickson 4y ago
  So to restate my question, I'm asking if you are expending sufficient resources preventing harm. Like if you spent another $5, would you be likely prevent more than $5 of harm? That's what it means for the beneficial use to absolve you of responsibility for the harmful use, you don't have to think about whether you need to spend that next $5.
  - crhulls 4y ago
    My simplistic answer is, yes, I think we are. Going a bit deeper though, and putting aside the question of prevalence, how would you suggest we solve this problem? -We have actively collaborate with law enforcement (sidebar: we are used to the HN crowd going after us for this due to data privacy issues) -We are a "noisy" app - no one can install Life360 on your phone without you knowing -We have a resources page specifically to help people who feel Life360 is being improperly used -We have a "bubbles" feature that allows you to keep safety features active while hiding your exact location -We have a customer support team that passes all reported instance of misuse to our legal team, which contacts authorities as needed. If there were some easy way to do more, we would certainly consider it. But, getting more philosophical, in some ways you are advocating that all for-profit companies pay for their own externalities. In some respects this makes a lot of sense (e.g. pollution, carbon credits, etc). How do you do this though when an externality is extremely rare or almost impossible to quantify? Should car manufacturers pay into a fund that compensates people who are injured by speeding drivers who emulate racing in car ads? Should hammer and kitchen knife manufacturers do more to prevent murders? Should cigarette manufacturers pay insurance companies for their share of increased actuarial costs? Should social media companies pay for free therapy? Life is grey and I don't claim to be the authority on right or wrong, but I don't feel the critique here zooms out and looks at the bigger picture. Odds and ratios matter.

connor11528 4y ago

Are you going to do anything differently so that your software is not used to facilitate sex trafficking?

crhulls 4y ago
Do you have suggestions? I am genuinely open to hearing them. I do, however, push back on the fundamental premise that we facilitate sex trafficking. Both Android and iOS have location sharing built into the OS - I don't think the feature is ever going away.
- connor11528 4y ago
  From the article and multiple police investigations it sounds like your software is used by them to run their illicit businesses. Having users register could be one option. If there's one guy and a bunch of teenage girls on a plan that might be a red flag or worth further review. Perhaps your company could look at all the people that were busted and see if there's commonalities with how they use the app. It's my guess that if multiple people were using it for trafficking and were busted there's probably traffickers using your software right now.
- ajma 4y ago
  Invest in ML to spot patterns. I don't know specifically how it was done, but I heard that Whatsapp had a hard time with spam after e2e encryption since you couldn't catch spam by examining the text. So instead they started looking for patterns and found things like an account that was less than a week old sending out thousands of messages a week. It's an outlier in usage pattern. I believe credit card fraud systems do something similar. Like if you suddenly make a purchase far far away or in a category that you never do, then it gets flagged. I'm happy to help brainstorm more ideas.

waboremo 4y ago

I'm not sure focusing on the statistics is really a great move when it comes to such extreme cases, especially involving young adults/teens. Going down that route of focusing on statistics, while they are important, is just going to result in further controversy regarding the app as more stories or cases come out - the common thought people will have is "what if that was me/my child?" When that happens, all bets are off, you are not going to logically talk someone down. You highlighted a great point, you should have been hammering away at that when prompted instead of statistics. Unrelated, but Life360's marketing tone is a pet peeve of mine, it lacks a clear perspective. It claims to be about family, but any family features get sidelined in favor of "stalking your kids". Kids just feel obligated to use it rather than it having any specific features for them to really benefit from. This approach is problematic because it makes kids want to communicate less (and btw your website highlights "We don't have to text or call like we used to" as a good thing), and in turn parents become more obsessive. Your entire company is positioning itself as just being about overzealous parents, rather than an actual family app for all members of the family to enjoy and feel safe in. Why not encourage more family communication? Look at how many flocked to BeReal, don't you think families could have done that easily within Life360? A fun way to engage with each other, but without the engaging just being "location data" (for the record, I don't think you need to implement this specific feature, it's just an example of why people feel comfortable outside Life360). Airtags focused explicitly on the individual - here's why you need one, btw here are cute accessories to go with it. Tile within Life360 just gets relegated to "find stuff your family loses". Can I not even buy a cute dog collar that supports Tile or something? It's like you want every family member to find the app and ecosystem so cold and "location data" obsessed only the resident control freak could enjoy it. Apologies for ranting about marketing, but your app has quite a lot of good features that get buried because of how dysfunctional marketing is.