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Trust isn't for "little children." Trust is what makes the world go round. I trust that my bank won't close overnight and steal all my money. I trust that the f

Trust isn't for "little children." Trust is what makes the world go round. I trust that my bank won't close overnight and steal all my money. I trust that the food I buy is safe for human consumption. I trust that random people on the street won't attack me because they feel like it. "Hoping for the best" (or perhaps "trusting that people won't screw me over") is actually an extremely good strategy -- far better than not trusting anyone with anything. I can hire third parties to cook my food, do my taxes, handle my banking, even babysit my children after a background check (where I have to trust the background checking company) and a brief interview. If I couldn't trust people, I simply wouldn't be able to function in the modern world. So I have a company, who I have paid to store my data. The company has been good so far, I use their services frequently, and I have every reason to trust them (they've had my credit card info, and my family's for years, haven't screwed me over, haven't lost any other data in all this time...) The company is shutting down, and they explicitly tell me that they will let me download all of my data, including text conversations. I download the data, only to open it weeks later and find that the company has failed to do what they said they would. In this one particular case, the strategy of "trust" has failed. However, in the long run, it's made my life a heck of a lot better.

pmontra 11y ago
Reputation. We pick banks, stores and neighborhoods based on reputation. We trust some of them because they proved to be good and we don't trust others (I bet there are areas of the world and maybe of your city where you won't walk alone in the night.) We get educated to trust according to reputation. Personally I don't trust much Internet services because so many of them die young. I always wonder how many years any of the services I have to use for work will stay with me and how I can move my data somewhere else, in the few cases it makes sense (example: you can export Trello's data, but then what?) My customers and I use them because they are so convenient but I'm sure that sooner or later one of them will die in the middle of a project and we will be burnt. I have redmine wikis from 8 years ago. I'll have Trello's boards for the projects I'm working on now in 2022? But I also don't trust much any "normal" company. I expect that they make their interests first, mine maybe. I buy from them but caveat emptor.

pmontra 11y ago

Reputation. We pick banks, stores and neighborhoods based on reputation. We trust some of them because they proved to be good and we don't trust others (I bet there are areas of the world and maybe of your city where you won't walk alone in the night.) We get educated to trust according to reputation. Personally I don't trust much Internet services because so many of them die young. I always wonder how many years any of the services I have to use for work will stay with me and how I can move my data somewhere else, in the few cases it makes sense (example: you can export Trello's data, but then what?) My customers and I use them because they are so convenient but I'm sure that sooner or later one of them will die in the middle of a project and we will be burnt. I have redmine wikis from 8 years ago. I'll have Trello's boards for the projects I'm working on now in 2022? But I also don't trust much any "normal" company. I expect that they make their interests first, mine maybe. I buy from them but caveat emptor.