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'My Heroic and Lazy Stand Against IFTTT' (pinboard.in)

Posted by msmash on from the 'sewer-pipe-suggests-diet' dept.

Like many of you, I use IFTTT. It's one of the handiest tools on the internet to get your work done. Want a text alert for weather? Want a notification on your Android smartphone whenever someone you follow publishes a blog post? IFTTT can do all sorts of such things. It is able to do so because it works with different companies and utilizes APIs of their services. Many of these companies are happy to have IFTTT trying to enhance the experience of their customers. Many don't necessarily want -- or can allow -- IFTTT to do that. Pinboard, a social bookmarking website, falls in the latter category. Maciej Ceglowski, CEO of Pinboard in a blog post explained why that is the case: Imagine if your sewer pipe started demanding that you make major changes in your diet. Now imagine that it got a lawyer and started asking you to sign things. You would feel surprised. This is the position I find myself in today with IFTTT, a form of Internet plumbing that has been connecting peaceably to my backend for the past five years, but which has recently started sending scary emails. [...] Because many of you rely on IFTTT, and because [their request] makes it sound like I'm the asshole, I feel I should explain myself. In a nutshell: 1. IFTTT wants me to do their job for them for free. 2. They have really squirrely terms of service. In the blog post, Ceglowski further explains his concerns with IFTTT. He says IFTTT wants ownership of all right, title, and interest. "Pinboard is in some ways already a direct competitor to IFTTT. The site offers built-in Twitter integration, analogous to IFTTT's twitter-Pinboard recipe. I don't know what rights I would be assigning here, but this is not the way I want to find out." You should read the blog post, it's very insightful and sheds light on things that many of us might not have considered otherwise. Jason Snell has offered his take on this as well, he writes: If IFTTT sticks with this philosophy, it will rapidly become a lot less useful and interesting as a service.

8 of 177 comments (clear)

  1. goodwill by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Goodwill can be hard to get back. Tread lightly IFTTT.

  2. IFTTT... IFTTT... IFTTT... IFTTT... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    This acronym is mentioned no less then 12 times in the summary. And yet I still have no fucking clue what it is or what it does.

    Perhaps someone here could enlighten me?

    1. Re:IFTTT... IFTTT... IFTTT... IFTTT... by jellomizer · · Score: 3, Insightful

      How else can the poster boast about his intelligence, unless you use an obscure Acronym, and just expect everyone else to know it.
      On Slashdot there is a wide variety of geeky interests, and we don't have the time to follow all of them.

      --
      If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
  3. Wow ... by gstoddart · · Score: 5, Insightful

    You know, reading that, it's hard not to think IFTTT (which I've never heard of) are being the dicks here ... YOU wrote a tool which scrapes content from other sites, and now YOU want THEM to conform to your API, as well as preventing 3rd parties from using your shit? And possibly give YOU rights to THEIR content and retain the right to change the license? Good luck with that.

    This sounds like an illegal squatter suing the property owner to upgrade the plumbing and fix the leaky roof.

    What, exactly, is IFTTT offering in return other than to say "in order to allow our users to access your site with our stuff, you have to agree to the following". Why would anybody accept random terms and conditions by a third party who merely redistributes your own stuff is a mystery to me.

    Sorry, this sounds like a bit of bullshit shakedown, and expecting someone to take steps to support your stuff ... my answer would be to ignore them as well.

    Everything about this sounds like childish, petulant and over-reaching behavior in which the 3rd party service is asserting some form of control over the original service so the 3rd party can retain their users. What makes you think the original service owes you a damned thing?

    Two words: Fuck that.

    --
    Lost at C:>. Found at C.
    1. Re:Wow ... by bluefoxlucid · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Notice the waaaa tag.

      What's happening is IFTTT says, "We made a site that lets users do things with other sites. You didn't rewrite shim code for us, and the module for our site is ONE OF THE MOST POPULAR AMONG OUR USERS; rewrite it for us or we remove you."

      Pinboard guy is saying, "... what? Really? You capitalize heavily off integration with my site, and you want me to maintain your service?"

      --
      Support my political activism on Patreon.
    2. Re:Wow ... by ooloorie · · Score: 3, Insightful

      The people from IFTTT who wrote that shit are utterly delusional, and have apparently lost sight of the fact that they're providing access to someone else's stuff, and that someone else doesn't owe them a damned thing.

      I don't see them being "delusional". They provide a free service both to users and to Pinboard. They simply are telling Pinboard that if they want continued service, then they need to contribute. I wouldn't be surprised if IFTTT at some point actually told sites they provide access to that they need to pay to be an IFTTT channel. That's not about "owing" anybody anything, it's a business proposition, and it's rooted in the fact that IFTTT provides a service that users like and that businesses may need to pay for if they want to receive it. You know, just like mail delivery, Internet service, and... sewer pipes.

    3. Re:Wow ... by gstoddart · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Think of it a bit like package delivery: would you rather live in a place where packages can be delivered or where package delivery operators refuse to go?

      That's a terrible analogy. This isn't a package delivery service, and the people most certainly could have gotten these "packages" where they already were -- the user can already reach that content. IFTTT isn't brokering access to something the user can't already access.

      This is a 3rd party who has injected themselves into the conversation, now claims that the value they provide is indispensable to you, and then demands you do some extra work for them and sign a license saying the extra work they've asked you to do for them is their property.

      IFTTT can provide all of the "service" they want. They provided that "service" without action or obligation on behalf of the sites whose content they "service". And now they're claiming that those sites need to take some action and sign a license. This is asking Pinboard to maintain shit IFTTT wrote, and sign a license agreement with IFTTT -- what moron would do that?

      This has nothing at all to do with package delivery; this is more like sending something to a general delivery address, some guy coming in and saying "oh, I can take it to him", slapping a sticker on your package and them claiming you owe him for his services. Sorry, but nobody invited you to the party, so you don't get to claim you're owed something.

      IFTTT wasn't engaged to provide a service on behalf of anybody but the users of IFTTT. Nobody owes IFTTT a fucking thing in this situation.

      If a user employs a 3rd party service to fetch and manipulate the content of a web site, the value of that service is between the user and that 3rd party. The 3rd party can fuck off when it comes to making demands on the web site whose content they wrote connector code to access in the first place.

      Package delivery service my ass. Making money off providing access to someone else's content and then expecting them to reward them for you it? As I said, complete and utter bullshit.

      If the people who use IFTTT find it useful, and IFTTT wrote that "service" themselves, WTF do they expect people to suddenly adhere to the random demands of IFTTT??? IFTTT is in no position to expect anybody to do a damned thing to keep their "service" working, and they're certainly in no position to also attach licensing terms to anybody.

      Who gives a shit what IFTTT want here? Randomly asserting someone owes you something because you wrote code to access their stuff is delusional and idiotic.

      IFTTT wrote code to access the content on someone else's site. Telling that site they must now use a new API and sign terms of service with you? Oh hell no. You want your shit to keep working, you fucking write it.

      --
      Lost at C:>. Found at C.
  4. Cool story. One question... by wonkey_monkey · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Just one question...

    What the bloody hell is IFTTT?

    Like many of you, I use IFTTT.

    I think you've overestimated.

    --
    systemd is Roko's Basilisk.