@thecriticgeek @laurenbalik I am not planning litigation against AppLovin at this time. They did make changes immediately after my article. The changes don't extinguish liability for prior wrongdoing.
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Ben Edelman
471 posts
Ben Edelman
@bgedelman
Economist, attorney, software developer. Research focus: Fixing the Internet.
Bellevue, WA Katılım Nisan 2009
208 Takip Edilen3.7K Takipçiler
@bgedelman @laurenbalik Are you bringing a class action lawsuit or have they made changes to their UX?
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@thecriticgeek @laurenbalik Disagree. My report amply shows AppLovin installing without consent. That is, yes, nonconsensual. Worse than, say, "dark patterns" which is, to be sure, also bad.
I have no current position in AppLovin stock.
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@bgedelman @laurenbalik Bud! This report seems to conflates bad UX with “nonconsensual installs.” Dont you think that is kind of a stretch?
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@thecriticgeek @laurenbalik How about for putting software on users' devices without users' permission? benedelman.org/applovin-nonco…
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@_ZachGriff Meanwhile united.com/en/us/fly/trav… says every Polaris ticket includes "Two free checked bags" and equally says every Polaris ticket includes access to Polaris lounges.
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I made a mistake. A big one.
I forgot to turn on the "basic economy & restrictive fare" toggle. And guess what?
United has indeed started selling *basic* domestic Polaris fares.
❌ No seat assignment
❌ No changes
❌ No Polaris Lounge access (just United Club)
💰 Upgrading from basic to standard Polaris costs $150 each way
💰 Polaris seat assignments are going for $64 to $99, depending on the seat type and route.
When United talks about offsetting higher costs with higher fares, this is (partially) how they're going to do it.
How much longer under Delta (and American) match?
Not excited for this one.
Zach Griff@_ZachGriff
United just quietly rebranded its premium transcon and Hawaii business-class cabins as Polaris. The big win: Polaris Lounge access is now included on these domestic routes. - EWR-LAX - EWR-SFO - EWR-HNL - ORD-HNL - ORD-OGG
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@_ZachGriff Amazing that a $1549 one-way fare earns no miles and allows no changes. I am glad to have a choice in airlines, and I choose, uh, anyone else.
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@RakeshSFNYC @pitdesi How do you know that a different issuer's Visa card would not have worked? I would be convinced of network problem if 5 Visa cards from 5 different issuers all didn't work, and one MC did. Otherwise my hypothesis is the problem is at issuer level rather than card network level.
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@bgedelman @pitdesi I had that happen once. Same ATM, within a few seconds.
I’ve found differences occasionally internationally. This was in Guatemala. The bank that issued the MC no longer offers that product.
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Any Mastercard debit cards out there that do international atm reimbursement? Most things I see are visa.
Also, don’t trust Gemini on this. It’s suggestions are really on visa
@pitdesi
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@RakeshSFNYC @pitdesi If your Fidelity Visa didn't work, do you perceive that a MC would have better odds than *a different Visa*? Think the problem is at the card network level, not the card issuer?
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@pitdesi Backup in case visa doesn’t work. I’ve had cases where visa didn’t work but mc did.
I have fidelity visa, which solves this issue.
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@megangrA Wonder who they'll pick! I have some ideas about who would be well-suited to this role... @lutherlowe
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@Vedthalegend @DouglasLFarrar If customers don't like Spirit at current prices, I can't imagine customers like Spirit more with a 40% price increase.
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@DouglasLFarrar What's wrong with raising Spirit's fares by 40% when their model was not profitable?
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The 'let the market work' crowd is real quiet about $500M in taxpayer money propping up an airline.
JetBlue's own merger docs showed they planned to raise fares up to 40%. Thankfully, a Reagan-appointed judge saw through it.
Taxpayers shouldn't have to clean up the mess.
Brian Schwartz@schwartzbWSJ
SCOOP: The Trump administration and Spirit Airlines are nearing a deal where the U.S. government would put up to $500 million into Spirit Airlines stock warrants to try to save the company, leading to a potential significant stake in the company. Team effort w/ @alyrose and @AndrewScurria wsj.com/business/airli…
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@glove @scottmelker Lawyer, fraud investigator, and multi-decade G. Love fan. I want to help you. Can you DM me?
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Read the full @scottmelker story about how I was scammed here. Don't fall for scams!!!
The Wolf Of All Streets@scottmelker
To read the full story, subscribe to my free daily newsletter, which I publish 5x a week. thewolfden.substack.com
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@joshgans @skominers I don't see a need for NFT or all the overhead of decentralization. How about a digital signature? Just get @RefineDotInk to receive the paper, and do a salted-hash with its secret (private key).
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That said, it just occurred to me that people might say they used it but haven't. This seems like a role for NFTs @skominers
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When I receive a paper to review that acknowledges that it has already used @RefineDotInk that encourages me to read more intensely.
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@JTGenter Change in aircraft is in a lot of carriers' COC/tariff as grounds for refund. Now, getting carriers to honor that... that can be quite a different matter.
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Jonathan Kanter's Twitter handle, JKBusterTruster, rings especially true today. A victory for consumers, fans of live music, and musicians alike.
Jonathan Kanter@JKBustertruster
It’s official: a jury found that Live Nation/Ticketmaster is a monopoly. I am so proud to have filed this case on 2024. This may be the most popular antitrust case ever. Kudos to the State AGs for finishing the job. The rule of law is alive and well.
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@RakeshSFNYC @Ticketmaster When I recently used Ticketmaster tickets, I saved into my phone's Google Wallet at the time of purchase. With that, I don't think I was vulnerable to bad connection. It is annoying with multiple tickets, though -- many taps per ticket.
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More @Ticketmaster shittiness. Unlike my other complaints, these aren’t a fundamental business model issue.
- they don’t cache tickets locally, so you can’t pull it up if you have a bad connection.
- they assume phone numbers are immutable.
Both are app / software issues.
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@RakeshSFNYC The Amazon people I talk to -- all say they got signing bonuses to increase year 1 and year 2 comp. I gather they wouldn't have taken the jobs otherwise.
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It’s amazing that Amazon has been able to keep their schedule in such a competitive market. 5% vest in year one vs 25% after year one.
Also gives Amazon the benefit of “try before you (really) buy.” Would be interesting to see if they more aggressively fire after year 1 than the others. Better for Amazon, worse for employee.
Especially when (until recently), max salary has been $160k. Somewhat made up for with signing bonuses.
It’s not like they’ve been a tremendously better employer than google, Apple, etc. By all accounts, worse internal culture than competitive set.
Would be an interesting b-school case.
Gokul Rajaram@gokulr
EQUITY VESTING I’m starting to see more founders put into place 6 year vests for founding / early employees, and I think it really aligns incentives around thinking long term and sticking around to build an enduring company. Founders: don’t take 4 year vests as written in stone. Rethink it from first principles, considering what you’re trying to build. 4 years made sense in an era when the average time to IPO was 4-5 years. That era is gone. The best companies today take 10-15 years to reach their full potential. If your vest schedule is shorter than your ambition, you’ve created a misalignment. A few things worth rethinking: •Cliff length (discussed above) •Back-weighted schedules (more equity in years 4-6, not front-loaded; Amazon has done this for many years? •Refresh cadence (how do you keep people incentivized post-vest without diluting everyone?) The vest schedule is a cultural document. It signals how long you think this will take, and how serious you are about people staying for the whole ride.
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Proposed revised/rewritten code of conduct for client-side software in affiliate marketing programs benedelman.org/affiliate-coc/
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@RakeshSFNYC What trans-pacific options are you finding in oneworld with decent award availability?
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BA surcharges make Oneworld useless for TATL travelers.
At least * has options other than LH with decent coverage.
Skyteam isn't terrible.
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@RakeshSFNYC @Avis I'm looking at my most recent Avis rental. The reservation email says "Automatic Transmission." An EV obviously has no transmission, automatic or otherwise. If Avis tried to substitute an EV, and I wanted ICE, that would be breach of contract. No?
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@bgedelman It only went up to L2, which wasn’t enough for a road trip.
@Avis has swapped me to EVs a lot lately - at least 3x. Always saying that the EV was only thing they had left. Though that’s better than the 2x where they said they didn’t have any cars, despite my reservation.
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Downside of EV price crash: rental car companies are buying lots of them.
(Different from the hertz fiasco where they bought a lot of them to position as upsells.)
I’ve gotten three lately and they’re stressful.
One only supported L2 charging, which clearly wasn’t good enough for a SF-LA trip.
With ICE, I know how Avis will charge me for fuel. With EVs I have no clue.
With Tesla in particular, the driving experience is highly dependent on who drove it last. Even things like adjusting mirrors are buried in settings.
This is coming from someone who actually has a Tesla and know roughly where things are. A random driver would have no clue.
For me, I should be able to tap in my app and have it download my preferences as if I were using my car.
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@aripap @HatesAdtech Believe WashingtonPost et al v. Gator settled in 2002. But, yeah, the subsequent caselaw was a mess. Courts didn't want to engage with nonconsensual and deceptive installs, so they imagined the hypothetical of users who genuinely agreed to popup ads.
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AFAIK there’s no case la since NYT v Gator was settled in the 90s. The rule of thumb is that blocking is kosher, but replacing ads is not. Inserting ads depends on whether they appear as part of another media (like toolbars putting ads on facebook.com) vs new unambiguous ad slots.
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Brave doing ad injection brings up one of my favorite points once again — to what extent are content delivery chain intermediaries allowed to alter the content they’re delivering? This conceptually applies to bandwidth, software, and hardware providers.
Is there a coherent legal precedent at all for this? It seems kind of fucking important for people to give so little of a shit about it.
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