This archive report was first published on 10 July 2019.
On June 24, 2019, Mike Davidson wrote a blog post criticizing Superhuman, a popular email client, for its invasive email tracking feature. The company's response, published on July 1, 2019, was met with skepticism by Davidson, who argued that the fix was superficial.
Davidson's posts highlight a core issue in the privacy debate: the crisis of design. Superhuman's CEO, Rahul Vohra, claimed that the company did not consider potential bad actors. However, Davidson points out that Superhuman received negative feedback about email tracking, which it chose to ignore.
According to Vohra, the company's innovation was driven by market dynamics, which pulled them towards using email tracking. However, as Davidson notes, this is not an excuse for using invasive technology. 'Just because technology is being used unethically by others does not mean you should use it unethically yourself.'
Protecting privacy often requires adding friction to mechanisms that threaten it. However, this approach is antithetical to the ethos of Silicon Valley, where innovation is about simplifying. As a result, privacy is frequently overlooked during the initial design of products.
