The fact that this is now just getting attention kind of makes me want to hit my head on my desk. I'm glad it is though; this site is very well done and I hope Venmo and its users take note.
Man, what a brilliant feature though, for Venmo. Provide users with Emoji autocomplete, get perfectly labeled transactions. If I try to pay my roommate for electricity, it asks me to use a series of emojis that represent "electricity bill." In this way, Venmo is getting users to remove the ambiguity in describing their transactions. Something like "electricity" could refer to say, a night club, but Venmo got me to accurately label it as a power bill.
really? i'm pretty sure there are a predefined set of phrases that map directly to emojis. when they already recognize these phrases, replacing them with an emoji removes no ambiguity for venmo.
Venmo just makes me paranoid about transactions. I want to make sure I am paying the right person (hard to tell sometimes when searching for a friend). I also don't want other people to see my transaction AMOUNT most importantly (seems like an easy way for a criminal/fraudster to target people with lots of money). Further, once you hit send, there is basically no recourse in stopping the transaction (which is why scammers use Venmo, since Venmo support basically says "your problem, not mine").
Other people may have different experiences and perfectly enjoy the app, but this steered me clear of it.
But it would be a more ethical world if every site with public-facing social features had to create something like the presentation that publicbydefault.fyi has put together here. Something that graphically exposes the exact privacy implications of the data people are leaking. Privacy is at this point an educational problem as much as a technical problem, and it's on us to figure out the best practices for how to teach it.
Transactions are still public by default and you can browse strangers and see what they are paying for.
Crazy!
They forced all of their users to perform all transactions via their cell-phone. When I signed up, that was not the deal.
I am reasonably responsible online and I never in my wild dreams expected that the default behavior was my purchases would be public knowledge. It was not really a big deal since they weren't embarrassing - but imagine the outrage if VISA had a similar policy.
I do not trust Venmo and I hope they go out of business.
“Soooorry, this content is not intended to be viewed in this resolution - you wouldn't enjoy it! Either change to the portrait orientation or a bigger screen.
Thanks for understanding!”
And in portrait it’s text is so small to be nearly unreadable.
I understand GDPR only applies to EU citizens but I'd imagine theres a lot of EU citizens using this US only product in the US.
Transparency and privacy are orthogonal concepts. "Radical Transparency" is a management philosophy whereby everyone has access to the same information for the benefit of organizational performance[1]. Posting salary ranges or even employees salaries might be considered part of radical transparency policy. How they spend that salary in their free time is not. The latter provides zero contribution to workplace culture.
I couldn't help but notice your profile doesn't contain your real name or email address or anything about you. That seems at odds with someone who claims to welcome the "Public by default" pattern no?
[1] https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/your-brain-work/2012...
You want “radical transparency?” Lead the way.
Human societies don't work like this, and never had. People aren't meant to live in a world where everything is public. You are advocating for a very dangerous and unhealthy transformation.
You're saying this like it's a well-known fact. Is there any research or just your opinion?
