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Can Ello Legally Promise To Remain Ad-Free?
In a previous article about Ello, I wrote:
There is, in short, nothing to stop Ello from doing what Facebook does whenever they make a significant change to their Terms of Service: presenting users with a dialog box next time they sign in, saying, "These are the new rules, by checking this box, you are agreeing to abide by the new contract which you're not going to read."
After the story had been filed, I had a second thought and wrote to Ello's PR department, asking:
Why not just make an irrevocable commitment in the TOS, to remain privacy-friendly, or ad-free, or whatever else it is that Ello wants to promise users? Something like, "This is a binding, irrevocable commitment that cannot be modified in future updates to the TOS." That wouldn't make the venture capitalists happy, but it might address some of the concerns of the users.
Coincidentally, just as I was sending that email, Ello was issuing a press release announcing that they had re-chartered as a Public Benefit Corporation (PBC), bound by a charter which is intended, precisely, as an irrevocable commitment not to run ads or sell user data.
However, as user WWJohnBrowningDo pointed out in the previous story's comment threads, the Delaware law defining a "Public Benefit Corporation" states that the charter can be modified, or the PBC status nullified, or the company bought out by another entity not bound by the original charter, with the approval of a 2/3 supermajority of shareholders. (Go here and scroll down about halfway to the section beginning "Notwithstanding any other provisions of this chapter." It's also called out on the site about benefit corporations that is linked in Ello's press release.)
So, my non-lawyer face-value reading of the situation is: Previously, Ello could only change its policy and run ads with the approval of 51% of shareholders, and now 67% is required. That's an improvement but hardly an eternal guarantee. Either way, the majority could be achieved if enough of the original founders and shareholders give in to temptation, or if the exit-hungry venture capitalists get enough seats on the board to outvote them. (I ran this past a few Internet privacy lawyers to ask if there was any more nuance to it than this -- in particular, whether a company could make a "binding promise" in their PBC character, then toss it out with a 2/3 supermajority vote and get away with it. They said they had no idea.)
So, even if a PBC charter is not an irrevocable promise to remain ad-free, perhaps we can give them credit for trying to make such a promise, to the maximum extent legally possible. Or did they? This is just off the top of my head, but: What if they had said, "To each user signing up, we promise that if we ever start running ads or selling user-specific data or otherwise violating this charter, we will pay $1,000 to each affected user."
Now that's no longer merely a "charter" but is now an actual obligation to an outside party. And a contractual obligation to an outside party cannot be nullified by a 2/3 majority or even a 100% majority of shareholders. (Imagine: "All shareholders in favor of canceling our agreement to pay back the money we borrowed from FooBarBank, raise your hands.") On the other hand, this depends on whether a court would find the contract to be enforceable.
Regardless, even if Ello never voted to rescind their charter, another potential loophole is that the charter contains no formal definition of what constitutes "charging for advertising". Ello's stated business model is to offer optional special features that users can pay to use. But conceivably they could add paid features which essentially amount to the ability to advertise to other users, such as the ability to send mass messages to thousands of recipients. (I doubt Ello would do anything as crass as to let you spam thousands of random strangers. However, in most social networking sites such as Facebook, you cannot even mass-message thousands of people who are in your Facebook friends list. That's the kind of feature that some Facebook users, and some Ello users, would presumably be willing to pay for.) Or Ello could charge extra to have a special "badge" appear next to your name, or your company name, in search results. Or, like CouchSurfing.org, they could offer to "verify" your identity by charging $25 to a credit card in your name. And if the paid features really do remain Ello's sole source of revenue, then their developers may find themselves under subtle pressure to degrade the experience for regular non-paying users, while offering increasingly attractive perks to the paid ones.
Aral Balkan, one critic of Ello's venture-capital cash infusion, told me pointedly: "Their original statement smacked of misdirection. 'Look, we just got over $5M in additional venture capital but don't worry about that because...' I still don't trust them, sorry. They're closed source, centralized, (currently at least) free to use, and they've just taken an order of magnitude more VC after the influx of users they experienced. It sounds like typical Silicon Valley fare to me. If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck..."
I don't think it's a matter of "trust" -- I have no reason to doubt that the founders behind Ello are good people -- but when you dangle millions of dollars in front of someone, they can find rationalizations and loopholes that are consistent with their vision of themselves as a good person. And of course since hosting the Ello platform will cost money, if they don't make enough of it back from selling paid features, they will eventually make the kind of passive-aggressive announcement that is issued routinely by formerly free or ad-free services: "Look, we either have to start raising money somehow, or the service has to be shut down completely." And then regardless of how most people respond, they can say after a few days, "We have received an outpouring of support from users who said they would be willing to view ads as long as it keeps the service alive" (without saying what percentage of all user responses expressed this sentiment). Then the ads go up (I'm calling it thirty-six months in advance: some pundits will grandiosely refer to this as "destroying Ello in order to save it"), and then we're back to Facebook all over again.
Man, this guy sure does have a lot to say about a lot of things, and for some reason is allowed to use Slashdot as his personal blog.
what the fuck is Ello? And why this is news?
please ?
finally I can make an opinion about something again.
Shut the fuck up.
Sincerely,
Everyone in the Known Universe
Microsoft could infiltrate the FSF and issue a GPL 4. All those GPL "OR ANY LATER VERSION" are at the whim of the FSF being a benevolent organization in the future.
Conspiracies are hard to pull off.
Where did this joker get his law degree from?
Why would anyone be interested in his navel gazing blog posts?
A social network is only social if it lets people in.
Yay! Bennett's back!
Now, the one thing you note is that Ello could charge extra for special features... Privacy obligations could be tied into those features, where they have a penalty if they breach. But in a system in which users pay specially so that they remain anonymous, isn't it implied that non-paying users have their demographic information sold? In which case, isn't Ello doing exactly what Ello said they wouldn't?
Basically, all of this navel-gazing is stupid. If you want to avoid ads, don't use free services that have ads. Or, if you're going to use free services, accept that the service provider has to make back their costs somewhere, and your eyeballs are a valuable asset.
First: Can someone get Bennet a fucking livejournal. Jesus Christ.
Second: yes. yes it can. By becoming a B corporation it can make ad-free high security social networking its mandate, but should it run aground of shareholders and explicitly the legal definition of a corporation (that it continue to provide increasing profits yearly) it can become a co-operative where the users become the owners. In business this is called a poison pill and is often coded into the sale, merger, or buyout in such a way that it cannot be avoided. If there were a takeover, this option would kick in and as owners, the users could decide they simply dont want ads anymore. as a majority minority stakeholder, the users would crush the board.
another option is to open-source everything. Not just BSD, but GPLv3 or Affero. GPL codes forkability is a land mine that no corporation wants to step on. Ello will have to provide continually excellent service and listen to its customers, or forks of the project will begin to take root (mysql, dokeos, foswiki for examples) and bury the host company.
Good people go to bed earlier.
Nope. the likelihood of them remaining ad free is about the same as not seeing any more Bennett Haselton navel gazing posts about solutions to first world problems.
Time to offend someone
Of course, we really should throw in an "adjusted for inflation"
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
Of course nothing is binding. Not even a prenup.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Read on for the rest ....
We Can Only Hope
They can always go bankrupt and come back under the same name.
IANAL and all that, and the fool that has himself as a client is nothing compared to the fool who takes legal advice from Slashdot.
Yes, they can legally promise that (it is not illegal to say that they promise that).
No, their service is not legally bound by that promise forever. There are many instances and eventualities that could change it. And probably will if they get sufficient market share.
Ok, so they break the contract they made with you. Then what?
You're entitled to your money back: $0.00
If you have a good lawyer, you'll also get the money they made selling your data: $1.50
If you have a really good lawyer, you'll get treble damages. $4.50
If all this happens because they go bankrupt, you still get $0.00
Have fun with that.
If they are bought by an advertiser, they don't have sell the information to someone to use it themselves.
Ad-free, no analytics for sale, free-as-in-beer proprietary centralized social network, eh?
Who is paying for hardware, software, rent, and electricity, investors? When do they get a return? Yeah, yeah, B-corp - where does the money come from?
Is this a serious venture or a spoof by Facebook to show people that thermodynamics cannot be ignored? Or the Tonika/Disapora* crowd trying to show the value of a distributed system?
I'm assuming this is addressed somewhere and just happened to be skipped by the press coverage I've seen.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Can we get over this, please?
The fact that a supermajority vote can potentially allow Ello to someday run ads still leaves Ello 167% less obnoxious than Facebook.
Seriously, this reminds me of the 2004 election again, where a draft dodger managed to successfully demonize the war record of an actual veteran. WTF, seriously - Does The Zuck write copy for Slashdot now?
Can Ello Legally Promise To Remain Ad-Free?
Clearly this is just an attempt to get the userbase up. If completed, and data centres are required, these "promises" will soon disappear.
You've read and regurgitated many of the points which were made in the article about this last week, and which were made by many of us.
I'm awfully glad we have you to read through the discussions and save ourselves from doing it.
Seriously, since when do we have someone whose job it is to read and summarize discussions? Are you getting paid for this shit?
If I can exclude timothy, then why the hell can't I exclude "stories" from Bennett? Because, really ... he adds nothing of value here.
We've become the fscking Bennet Haselton show lately, and it's pathetic and means the "editors" are even more lazy and useless than before.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Bennett Haselton writes... and writes... and writes some more.
What he writes may be insightful, I wouldn't know. His essays are so long winded that as soon as I see the unending diatribe my eyes skew into the bedazzled glare of a Japanese kid sent into a Pokemon educed epileptic shock. If I'm lucky, my wife will come along and slip some medication under my tong while carefully prying the crushed mouse from my iron grip.
Who fucking cares what ello is. Don't use social networking, its lame.
Business model is:
-sell users data, al a google, facebook, etc.
-give lend the user data to a 3rd party.
-build up users and "dont be evil" then sell and change all that.
-sell ads
-give ads away free, but donate to a certian amount.
either way, all your data is theirs and you will see ads.
Can you make Bennett Haselton an editor, so that everyone that doesn't care about his articles can simply exclude them? He's becoming the new Jon Katz -- and Katz was the reason why we eventually got the "exclude by posting editor" feature in the first place.
How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?
AKA slashdot, what a joke
As I understand it a contract is only valid if there is some form of consideration paid and a there is a defined length of the contract. So unless Ello users pay a fee in exchange for the contract guarantee there is no consideration and it would not be an enforceable contract. If the user paid $10 and had an actual contract that stated the ToS for the life of the account then that could be worth something.
How does he have time to write all this garbage?
Filter error: You can type more than that for your comment.
there were two stories on ello last week, one this week...
I think it's news because most of us have abandoned Facebook, but aren't living socially on Google+, so there's VC money being tossed around like popcorn to try to create the next safe haven where early tech adopters like us will congregate. (And yet, somehow, we're still here on Slashdot...despite BH.)
My curiousity peaks when I hear 'ad-free'. And.. something other than Facebook - anything, really, is a really, really, good idea.
Political correctness is really just herd psychology pushed by insecure people who desperately seek social conformity.
BE NETT!
BE NETT!
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
It seems that it shouldn't be hard for a lawyer to craft up a change to the ToS for the site that:
- Grants Ello the right to use/reproduce user content (a normal everyday part of ToS), BUT
that right does not survive a change to either the corporate charter or the ToS without being positively re-affirmed by the end user.
In other words, Ello can use/reproduce your posts, like they need to.
- If they change the charter, users need to re-affirm "yes, you can continue to use my existing content"
- If they change the ToS to remove that language going forward, users need to re-affirm "yes, you can continue to use my existing content"
Combine that with some language about "no change to ToS or corporate charter can be binding without a 90 day review period for users", and you've got something with some teeth.
Please do not feed teh Bennett.
The only way that you can make this sort of a promise is if you give up control. For example, in your Terms of Service, you can't have any clause, sadly standard now, that says you can change the terms at any time. You can't have wiggle room in your ToS to allow for either changing the service itself, or just changing the terms. Just think about how rare this is for an "online service," the vast majority are rules by fiat -- you agree to what changeable rules are given to you, or you don't use the service at all.
It's like assigning your code the GPL license and giving ownership to the FSF. It closes down the possibility that you -could- close source the code after the fact. Now a server is a different kettle of fish -- it requires uptime, maintenance, bandwidth, while an open-source project could live forever floating around from maintainer to maintainer. So while Ello -could- remain ad-free, they could also just go bankrupt and shut everything down, leaving all contacts stranded and having to use other services to reconnect.
Ello is a social media site with 30% of Facebook's users (who still use Facebook) and zero useful features.
It is sort of like an investment ghost town where people bought a bunch of houses based on a promise but never moved in because there is no infrastructure hooked up.
[Ello's] charter can be modified, or the PBC status nullified, or the company bought out by another entity not bound by the original charter, with the approval of a 2/3 supermajority of shareholders.
What if they had said, "To each user signing up, we promise that if we ever start running ads or selling user-specific data or otherwise violating this charter, we will pay $1,000 to each affected user." Now that's no longer merely a "charter" but is now an actual obligation to an outside party.
[...] another potential loophole is that the charter contains no formal definition of what constitutes "charging for advertising" [...] conceivably they could add paid features which essentially amount to the ability to advertise to other users.
(That was easy)
This post contains no rudeness or derision of any kind. All arguments are friendly. Terms and exclusions may apply.
I know this one!
Carlill v Carbolic Smoke Ball Company [1892]
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Once you can schedule events in a workable manner, I would quickly jump ship from FB. The fact that G+, Diaspora, and now Ello didn't have this feature on launch is why I think they all failed.
why the fuck do his rambling get published? he is an idiot.
slashdot = stagnated
The only sauce I know of is apparently that coming from Bennett Haselton's penis into the mouth of our dear DiceDot audience leaders. One mouth per post
If they decide to add advertising down the road and you don't like that, you could, I guess, STOP USING THE FUCKING SITE.
You useless twat.
... elsewhere.
There is no sig.
This legal opinion written by a lawyer.
Oh no, it's actually not. Bennet should learn how to program and then add some value to the world, instead of giving opinions and hoping someone else will.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
This greasemonkey script will hide any bennet haselton shit from the main page and the "older" pages (http://slashdot.org/?page=1).
http://pastebin.com/Dr4VkXFU
It just shits through the DOM looking first for the article list wrapper (firehose) then shits through its immediate children looking for article tags, shits through the articles looking for the nested divs that contain the content, then matches content (both the flat node and innerhtml, just in case) for "bennet" or "haselton" (as whole words). If found, it hides the article.
Remember to redirect beta to the real site.
The whole point of converting to a PBC is to place the fiduciary duty to your investors behind your duty to provide a public benefit.
Sure, it's less obnoxious than Facebook. But, really, what isn't?
But, as many of us pointed out the other day ... this promise from Ello is essentially worthless, and therefore not really something you can put any stock in.
It's a vague, empty promise, which isn't legally binding on anybody in any real sense.
So, it's worth about as much as saying "I promise I won't c*m in your mouth".
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Oh, it's "bennett" not "bennet". Script works as-is, but may block legitimate "bennet"s.
You've been warned.
I would really like, and so, likely would many, many others, see Websites, both business and personal, free of ads. Bandwidth for sites is basically free, as most Web hosting companies give unlimited bandwidth now, so that's no longer really a cost factor. Ads are a bad business model and what with more and more people, myself included, blocking them (malware vector), their shelf life is limited. I tell everyone I know and that will listen about AdBlock Plus, Disconnect, and host files.
On Twitter, this "feature" is known as a Promoted Tweet. You pay Twitter some money and they put your tweet at the top of a bunch of people's feeds regardless of whether this person follows you or not. I've seen promoted tweets appear in my stream for entities whose philosophies I completely disagree with but they appear there because they paid Twitter money. This might be a way that Ello could get by the "no advertising" rule - just redefine what is an "ad." i.e. "We're never going to show banner ads. This is just a message for a product/service/company that we were paid to put at the top of everyone's feeds. That's COMPLETELY different than showing you an ad!"
(I actually signed up for Ello but only to reserve my commonly used pseudonym. Since my sign-up, I haven't used it at all.)
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
> All those GPL "OR ANY LATER VERSION" are at the whim of the FSF being a benevolent organization in the future.
There are quite a lot of people, myself included, who released software while GPLv2 was current and feel that FSF went a little bit evil with v3. Even to the extent that I agree with Stallman regarding bad patents, I don't think it's right to retroactively pull that into a copyright license. To me, that's precisely the same as if he'd added "you lose your license if you vote Democrat". Democrats may or may not be a bad thing, but Stallman doesn't have a moral right to impose his views regarding political affiliation upon my software.
I chose the license because I agreed with what it was - the position it took regarding copyright and secrecy. I allowed for "any later version" to allow for _revisions_, adjustments, to the wording. I didn't do that to allow Stallman and friends to attach their unrelated personal preferences to my work.
What does their TOS say about the line for ice? And can it be shortened? Will they step up and promise to always have short lines for ice? Can anyone really make such a promise? Oh, why won't someone think about the ice for once!!!
Thanks for referring to CouchSurfing. For many years the people in charge of CouchSurfing pretended the project could never be sold out [0]. And that's exactly what happened. It became a B corporation, but actually a C corporation. A Benefit corporation means a little bit more than the B corporation label, but the website Ello is linking to is actually also ran by the same B Labs that gives out "B corporation". I'm sure there's lots of confusion about the whole B/Benefit thing but if Ello really wanted to be for the public good they would have become a 501(c)(3) with an "irrevocably dedicated to charity" clause in their by-laws. [0] http://wiki.csexport.org/en/No...
Bennett will be struck by lightning...
In having recently read the above story on Confident Idiots [http://science.slashdot.org/story/14/10/28/204240/we-are-all-confident-idiots], I think its safe to say that Bennett qualifies...
Why can't I block posts by Bennett?
Next week on Bennett's blog^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H Slashdot!
[shifty look]
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Anyways I think their business modal is sound. I would gladly give facebook 20 dollars a year for some extra features. This whole "everything should be free even if it takes servers and people to run" is silly.
And is it "sift"... if so, best typo ever :)
Sigs are so 1990s. No way would I be seen dead with one.
They're going to make it up on volume. It's been long enough.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Some services retain the right to "change the deal anytime in the future." It is of course possible to go the other way, as in "we WON'T change this EVER." To be legally binding, put it in a contract. Sign a contract with the users/customers, and it can't be changed. Not by owners/investors anyway. Well, they can go bankrupt and whoever takes over can then choose to keep providing the service under new rules. But then it will be a different company.
Read on for the rest. He's quoting himself now. He has a wiki page that mostly cites articles he's written.
Can soylent news legally promise to remain Bennett Haselton free? Yeah, I think they can.
Copyright (c) 1990 - 2014 Dice. All rights reserved. Use of this comment is subject to certain Terms and Conditions.
Not a typo. Check the variable names in the script.
I too wish for his insight into everything. It would be especially appreciated in this story about the Dunning-Kruger effect.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
How is this different from any other opinion columnist?
Just make a social networking site with no ads, no back alley sales, no access to anyone PERIOD! But you have to pay monthly subscription. Wouldn't you pay for a social networking site like a Netflix subscription for them to guarantee privacy? I would. Somebody patent this and be a billionaire already, chop chop!
I'm no lawyer, ;), but the 9th Cir. once allowed an invasion of privacy claim to go forward against the original owners of a an adult website with Privacy Terms that stated none of the members' info would ever be shared or disclosed to third parties. The original owners re-orgniazed and re-incoroporated the business as a new entity and brought in a few new stakeholders...routine corporate maintenance and debt management stuff. Mind you, the company was essentially the same after this, but a member brought suit claiming the new entity was a third party who's access to his membership records was a violation of the site's lawful Privacy Policy terms. The 9th said: well, you promised and he relied upon it so...the suit should go forward.
So there is, perhaps, a way Ello's members could bring suit to enjoin any change on those grounds...at least in the 9th.
So don't release under GPL V3, and continue with V2. No one's forcing you to upgrade your license, so what imposition are you talking about?
First they ignore you. Then they laugh at you. Then they fight you. Then you win. -Gandhi
The default is "or any later version". Quoting myself:
> I allowed for "any later version" to allow for _revisions_, adjustments, to the wording. I didn't do that to allow Stallman and friends. ..
I can't unrelease 15 years of work - that was all released under the GPL license, including provisions in case the wording of rhe license needed to be clarified to account for different legal terms in different jurisdictions or something. That actually happened- some of the legal terminology doesn't mean the same thing in the UK as it does in the US, so it was good that the wording could be clarified. That's why I didn't strike the "or any later version" clause. That meant trusting the FSF to make those clarifications without significantly changing the meaning and purpose of the license. They violated that trust.
I wouldn't have been bothered if they'd introduced the PBL, Patent Bomb License, and I might have used it for some work. For them to convert the GPL into such a thing was underhanded and dishonorable. I now prefer to avoid the FSF because I can't trust them.
Yeah, I'd like my personal blog on /., too. Brevity is for the plebes.
Also, can we just make Bennet an author so we can block him?
[FUCK BETA]
This exists.
Thanks for writing this script.
Funny, Insightful, Interesting and Informative all at once. Since you've already received at least one funny mod, I went with informative.
On another note, the Firehose has a binspam option, and despite regular trips through it I haven't seen any of Haselton's works appear there before being pushed to the front page, else I'd be hitting the fucker with binspam all damn day. That said I've tried tagging his spew with bennetspam or haselspam as providing some measure of distaste. Tags that have apparently been subsequently removed.
I'm getting tired of seeing his shit on here. Most of the time I just ignore his crap, but once in a while he catches me in moments of weakness where I forget to look at the submitter's name. This one I clicked only because it's yet more spew about a subject he already spewed about in length last week and I hoped to find a complaint thread to troll him with, because this time it's gone too damned far; and the comments of Slashdot didn't disappoint.
The purpose of slashdot has been to provide a location where tech articles can be placed and the community can provide their opinions and insights on each one. What the fuck makes this asshole so fucking important that Slashdot thinks he can use their front page as his personal fucking blog while others here can't do the same fucking thing? It's been said thousands of times: Opinions are like assholes, everyone has them. Well, this particular asshole is really stinking up the damned place.
-RvnLrd20k
Ello could just charge people. I don't mind paying for an ad free experience. Slashdot used to have that option but no longer.
I do pay for LinkedIn, but they are serving up ads today in spite of the $20/month.
End MGM. Get prospective parents of boys to Google: Men do complain
The firehose is a relic of when Slashdot was Slashot. I am convinced that up/down voting articles on the firehose does nothing and that the only things that make it to the front page are things the "editors" manually push out. I don't even see the tags on stories anymore. I can click the + or - to reveal a set of tags and then click to set them, but I never see the tags other users set and I don't have the ability to create my own tags any longer.
Slashdot has been thoroughly gutted by Dice.