Whereoscope (YC S10) Gives Parents An Easy Way To Track Where Their Kids Are
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Trust isn't about knowing where your kids are, it's about communication. Children have rights to privacy as well, and this includes from their parents: being able to be independent and reason things through yourself ("should I wag school?"), looking at the consequences of the actions fully on the basis of other issues than "mum & dad can see where I am" is an important part of growing up too.
This app seems to me to entirely catering to the overprotective, paranoid parents who cannot communicate with their children. It's not about whether the tech is right or effective, it's about whether we should, as a society, be encouraging this sort of tech and the behaviour that comes with it. And when it comes to encouraging independence, good communication, and healthy relationships, this sort of monitoring is not conducive to this.
Sorry guys, I love supporting you but some of your apps are pretty questionable, ethically speaking :(
This app just grows from his natural desire to keep track of his two or more lovely children, as he has written about so passionately in this review of his own app:
Well, we're definitely not professional ethicists. What we do do a lot of is talking to our customers, and the people we've spoken to, generally, haven't been the paranoid types that you describe. Generally they've been very level-headed people, and in speaking to them you can hear how much they care about their kids.
One person we spoke to recently, though very concerned for knowing his kids locations, I think has much better data on the actual dangers to his children than most (certainly more than me, and I'd posit more than you). He was a police detective and loved the application because of the piece of mind that it gave him. I think I'm a reasonable judge of character, and in my evaluation, this wasn't a trust issue, it was just an early warning system to know when his family might be in danger.
I don't know that we're encouraging paranoia. I think that paranoia will be there no matter what we do. I acknowledge that there's the potential for us to profit from it, but I guess I think you under-estimate parents, and I can see why: I did initially as well.
To me, it comes down to this: when we first came up with this idea, I had a lot of the same reservations you do. But, we did our homework. We speak to people all the time about this. And my honest opinion is that parents are not as bad as you think.
Maybe most parents will tell themselves it's just for their kids' safety, but what do you think will happen when Jane spends the evening at her boyfriend's house instead of going to her music lesson? Do you think most parents are going to pretend they don't know? Does it matter?
Jane is now living in a police state.
I think that's a legitimate use that would be agreeable to most kids. While abductions numbers are low, things do happen to kids; being able to get their location when something seems wrong is a legitimate use, IMO. Sure it can be abused, but those parents are already invading their privacy in other ways.
Throw the police and parents off the scent while little Jane gets hurt. Oh, she's still at school. Actually, she was abducted hours ago, and the trail is now complete cold.
The other problem is that social acceptance (i.e. your anecdotes about your clients) != social acceptability. Society can agree on some really terrible things to do to people, as history can attest.
Another problem is the fact that you're potentially dealing with minors here who are being coerced (through being given an iPhone) into using this system. Even if it's by their parents, this raises serious alarms, since it's a severe power imbalance against kids who can't necessarily think through the consequences of accepting it in a rational manner like adults can (or should be able to).
The other other problems are related to the information the app generates, the potential misuse of that information, and what other commenters before have said about phones being mislaid, hijacked, etc.
Did you actually talk to kids at all? Or just their parents? If not, why not? They're as big a stakeholder, if not bigger, than the parents involved!
I'm not trying to say you're not a great company or good people. I'm just trying to point out some of the serious ethical issues with the product you've put out.
I try to spend several hours a week on the phone doing exactly that - talking to all the users of the service.
We agree that they're just as big a stakeholder as the parents.
It's not my job to ask 12 year old kids, it's yours :) But I'm curious, what sorts of questions do you ask them? You say you are on the phone talking to them, do you actually show them how it works in practice? Have you used well-known HCI techniques and vulnerable persons focus groups, etc. (1)? Have you approached children's groups for advice on children's rights and parental responsibility?
These are just a few things off the top of my head, too, that a responsible company should go through before developing anything to do with children.
BTW if you've done all this, put it on your website! Reassure the people who might want to use (or critique) your application! :)
(1)http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=HCI+techniques+children&... is a great place to start if you're interested in doing this.
It's an emotional safety net, yes. But in certain tragic circonstances it could mean the difference between life and death.
How many parents do you think would accept a decision by their children not to use this? Your logic is the logic of police states: it's not to hurt you, it's for your own good, so why do you need privacy anyways?
Whatever the motivations of the authors, they are marketing their product to the unreasonable paranoia of parents (our society is actually really safe, people) and the effect of this software will be to make the lives of many children worse.
I'm not debating whether this product is good or bad. I'm simply arguing that its value proposition was misunderstood.
You have strong opinions about what parents should or should not do - fine. And strong opinions about the value of privacy - still fine. But you're picking the wrong person to disagree with.
You're just hoping that the battery of the device doesn't dry, or that the bad guys don't toss it away.
What I'd really worry about is what happens when some backdoor captures and sends your child most frequent location to someone else? (now imagine that someone else as a network of pedophiles or organ traders)
This is an iPhone app, I think it could be solved by using a specialized separate device (not connected to any other computer (including the Internet)).
Well I would think most people wouldn't be comfortable with any company having record of their kids locations all day, every day for years [1]. Why would any sane parent want to give away this data to a startup?
Parents who buy this app are crazy(imo).
[1]sure your cell phone service provide has this data but (a) that can't be helped (b) location tracking isn't their business and (c) they don't specifically target kids).
I mean from a marketing standpoint you can sell it, and sell lots of it, but if you educate your users by saying that "by installing this app you increase the risk that bad people locate your children more easily, and then possibly kidnap them", I would doubt they'll buy it.
IIRC you mention elsewhere on this thread that neither of your is a parent but on TC someone said this. I quote
"
I think these products are great.
For example, Mick Johnson, CEO of Wheroscope/Stalqer/Zotora/ChildPulse/BindTwo/Gasbag/Knetckr/… was a childless 30-something guy at the start of 2009.
But due to the power of location-based services, he has apparently discovered that he has not one, but multiple children, one of whom is apparently old enough to be taking soccer lessons.
From a ‘review’ that Mick posted to the App Store, of his own product:
“I think it’s great that I can give my child more freedom and at the same time get more peace of mind. I’m not worried about where he goes, but it actually makes his life easier if he doesn’t have to keep calling me to let me know he’s gotten home from school or is later to soccer practice. At the same time, it’s easier for him to know how long until I arrive when I’m driving over to pick him up.
I would love to be able see more than 1 of my kids on it though – looking forward to the update. “
Is this guy blowing smoke? Or did you guys fake a "review"?
http://appcomments.com/user/42248226?country=143441
Don't know if MickMountainView is the same person as Mick Johnson but he sure likes their apps.
That's the feedback we're getting from them so far!
What you think you're hearing: Kids don't mind being monitored.
What you're really hearing: Kids want an iPhone.
You're creating an illusion of personal choice that just doesn't exist.
1. Stupid way: lie and give your phone to a friend while you go to your boyfriend's house,
2. Social engineer: turn it off every other day, telling your parents 'my phone just keeps crashing since you installed this virus on it. And how do you know it's not sending my location to hackers?'
3. And some of them might even be inspired enough to learn some real hacking: this will encourage a generation of hackers into hackerdom.
Technology might advance quickly, but human relationships stay more or less the same.
I think there's probably always going to be ways that these sorts of systems will be evaded; it's just the nature of the beast with computer systems.
What we're hoping we'll be able to do though is to build this in such a way that there's value to the kids as well as the parents. If the choice is between getting an annoying phone-call everyday to ask where you are and having this app, I think for all the times when the kid isn't doing something malicious, they'll prefer to just have the app. Similarly the app lets kids locate their parents as well -- this can be handy if they're waiting for a lift for example.
The last line of defence is that we plan to build in features to tell parents when the app has been disabled by the kid. Saying that the app has crashed is one thing, but if that results in an angry phone call telling them to start it up again -- even if it has just crashed -- I think kids will be less inclined to keep playing that card.
Awesome feedback though. Keep it coming, dudes!
So in other words you do plan to (help parents) invade kids privacy even when the kids actively don't want their parents to know where they are. The word "defence" in that sentence is pretty revealing - your frame of perception seems to be that of a battle between kids trying to get away from your app and parents who don't want them to.
Your " kid who want to see how far away their mother is when she's coming to pick them up," scenario doesn't need this feature.
"We, like you, hate the idea of abusing trust and privacy.
However, children who want their parents to know when they're getting home from soccer practise, or see how far away their mother is when she's coming to pick them up, is quite a different scenario."
Yeah that's why kids can't turn the app off without letting their parents know ;-).
"We, like you, hate the idea of abusing trust and privacy."
is very believable, given that feature ;-)
I guess it is all right (must be a dumb kid who'd accept such a poison pill gift ) as long as there is no sugarcoating involved and everyone (including the kids) knows what they are getting into. The latter (kids knowing what they are getting into is somewhat dubious).
Somewhat slimy product in my personal opinion, but hey if it makes money I can't blame you for trying to get some.
Next step: Spouse tracking so you know they aren't having an affair on the side. ;-)
Next step: Employee tracking so you know how much time they are spending by the watercooler or the coffeeshop or whether they are really attending the tech conference your company sponsored , or even if any two employees are spending time in each other's bedrooms.
As I said it must be a dumb person who'd accept this kind of un-switch-offable- without-warning-Big-Brother app on his or her phone. No different from an electronic monitoring device (as mandated by law for people under house arrest say) as long as you want to use your phone. The only difference is that it isn't strapped to you.
If you could somehow add a breathalyzer to the IPhone you could broadcast the alcohol content in your blood to your parents. How about letting your parents know how long and when you spoke to whom? Maybe add some speech recognition to catch any "dirty language". All unswitch off able of course!
Surely there's an app for that!
We're the first to admit that it's going to take some time to get the balance right. Fundamentally though, we're pretty committed to the idea of making this useful for both parents and for children, and hoping that "last defenses" won't be needed.
As an example here, we built the system intentionally such that children would know their parents' location in addition to the parents knowing the child's. That's got a few implications that are pretty important, but for starters it means that parents aren't asking their children to do something that they're not willing to do themselves -- that actually raises the bar pretty significantly, and I think it does drive home to the parents exactly what it is that they're asking of their kids.
Do we think that parents should know when their kids have disabled the app? Right now: yes, we do. I'm open to the idea that we might be wrong on that, but to my mind it's just an extension of the negotiations about trust and so forth that parents and kids already need to engage in: if you want time when your parents won't be tracking you, you negotiate to get that time. It's like the negotiation that happens whenever a child wants to do anything without parental, or adult supervision. To my mind privacy invasion and responsible parenting are different things, and I think the straw-man arguments presented in that direction are a little unfair to parents, though I concede that there will always be exceptions.
We did actually look at doing this for spouses -- not to detect cheating (a cheating spouse will be even more motivated to subvert the system than a child), but to help out with stuff like "are you near the supermarket? Can you pick up some milk?", but fundamentally people don't seem all that interested in it. I think employees would be kinda similar: you get fired if you're not getting your work done, water cooler or no.
The above is valid only if kids without your product have to negotiate right now for every moment out of sight of an adult. I don't think that is true (in general) anywhere. That would be a terrible childhood (and adolescence). You are shrinking the time kids do have away from adult monitoring (at least as far as their location goes) to zero (with the unswitch-off-able version).
Just replace kids with employees. You can "negotiate" with your employer to not track you when you are off work, (he'll just get a message that you've switched off). So what's the problem? No adult will accept such a service (and there are good reasons for it). Why don't they apply to kids (including teenagers)?
But the problem isn't one of negotiation. The idea of subjecting anyone to potential 24 hour surveillance is terrible, especially when you dangle some bling in front of kids too young to realize what exactly they are opting into. Yes other people (including governments) are doing it but "he's doing it too" was never a valid defense.
(Imo) Kids shouldn't have to "negotiate" not being monitored every second of their lives. At least adults have the intellectual sophistication to think through the consequences of a leash like this and would flee from any such product like the spouses you interviewed, iow adults, are doing. Of course they aren't interested. Adults see the potential for misuse easily).
Kids are more likely to be too blinded by the thought of an IPhone to fully understand what they are giving up. And frankly I think only immature kids will ever consent to this kind for trackability.
I don't know you guys from Adam and I don't blame you for building this. You are trying to make money and not building anything illegal (I think). All I said is I think it is a slimy product (in other words ethically slimy not legally) and would never buy it for any kids I know.
This might make sense for very young kids or old people suffering from dementia or Alzheimers or something, but these don't need to be bribed to give away their privacy with an IPhone they couldn't otherwise afford.
All this needs is for one nasty incident for this to blow up in your faces. I am (slightly) surprised Apple allows this on their phones (and that YC is funding this. wtf?!!). As I said, not illegal, but (again imo, feel free to differ, ymmv etc) a somewhat unethical product.
To repeat, I am not condemning you as evil people. I do think you are being somewhat disingenuous with the "kids can opt in too" argument. Kids are not in a position of equal power with parents/other authorities for their "opt in" to have much value as a justification.
All that said this is your business. You (and your investors and customers) have to think this through. I am just a remote person expressing his opinion on the ethics of this thing.
I don't think you're condemning us or anything -- I appreciate the honest feedback. Founders love people who disagree with them (at least a little bit :)) -- we much prefer to hear what's wrong with our products that we can fix rather than hearing about what we've gotten right.
I think it's perhaps a little disingenuous to suggest that kids lack the intellectual sophistication to evaluate the consequences of using our app whilst simultaneously suggesting that they are fully capable of evaluating all the dangers in the world that they inhabit: if they don't need the supervision of parents, then surely they can figure out what deal they're taking? If they can't make that kind of decision, I'd argue that they probably do have some growing up to do before their parents could responsibly let them leave their supervision.
I say that not only as an interesting intellectual puzzle, but also because we've spoken to kids about this as well as parents. There's definitely an age where kids really, truly can't evaluate what's going on. I don't disagree. What we've found though is that mostly parents don't trust those kids with the kinds of phones they'd need to run this software (even if we did port to Android et al). Indeed, I don't think we've spoken to anyone giving their kids a phone of any kind at age, say, 7, and these kids are under basically constant adult supervision. At the other end of the spectrum, by 16, kids know exactly what's going on, and they're of an age where they could have the kinds of phones they'd need for this.
I should point out that these are not numbers I'm pulling out of the air, but summaries of actual conversations we've had with actual kids.
The question is really whether there's an age in between where there's a legitimate need for supervision, yet they're responsible enough to be trusted with a phone, and where the children are wanting to start exploring the world and gain some freedom -- it's typically going to be the kids pushing to get more freedom, rather than the parents willingly thrusting those freedoms onto the child.
Our position is that there is such a transitional period, when a child goes from basically constant supervision to basically none, and that parents have a legitimate need to know where their kids are. It will vary for different kids and different families, but I do think that easing both parents and kids through that stage with an app like this is a net win for all concerned: if having this app gives parents the confidence to let their kids go farther afield, then we're accelerating the development of the child, rather than stunting it.
As for why YC is funding us, we ask ourselves that every day! :)
Since I never made that suggestion, I don't have to defend it.
Your "kids live in a dangerous world they can be protected from my constant surveillance" is an argument/frame you added not something I said. You are taking one part of my argument, adding some bits you thought up and creating a false dichotomy.
What I said.
(1) Kids don't have as much intellectual sophistication as adults to see through the wiles of product marketing folks.
(2) Kids are not in a position of equality of power with parents. This is ok in general and is only an issue with folks like you use the "but kids opt in too" as an argument. "Consent" is dicey in a situation of unequal power. In other words I am thinking your "opt in" argument is weak.
Now that is what I said. Where is the disingenuousness again? The rest of it is your frame. The following is your opinion not mine - (1)Kids live in a very dangerous world and are at high risk of bad things happening to them unless they can be monitored constantly. (2) Parents can protect them by tracking them constantly (and letting some random company store and process this data)
What I think
(a) Most kids don't live in an an ultra dangerous world, Sure there are dangerous parts of the world. Most kids do just fine avoiding those.
(b) Parents who are constantly worried about their kids being abducted or killed or whatever and need to spy on them to reassure themselves and have to bribe them with phones to get their "consent" to be spied upon are probably paranoid.
(c) irrespective of the "danger level" of the world, constant surveillance by parents is not the solution.(This is the same argument governments make when they try to reduce privacy of their citizens _ "See there are all these terrorists out there and dangerous things may heppen to you when we are not looking so we have to snoop on you for your own good. If you aren't doing anything sinister what is your problem anyway?". Sure it is a good scare tactic, but hardly a sound argument.
(d) Whether constant surveillance by parents actually reduces any existing danger is yet to be shown. You are only addressing the paranoia not the danger.
(e) All of this this has nothing to do with your product reducing the kids privacy to essentially zero from some non zero value, (sure "just to protect them" ;-) ).
I am trying to give you feedback honestly (since this is HN. I wouldn't bother elsewhere) Please don't put words in my mouth.
That said, now I am getting dubious about you guys personally. You are meeting honest feedback with mis characterization. Not a good sign. I am done talking to you gentlemen.
Have a great day and Good Luck with your company.
They just call each other in this situation which means there's no need for some additional program on a special phone that they may not even own.
Setup call forwarding on the iPhone itself Google Voice Dual boot the OS on the iPhone. Pre-paid - either just a sim or even a 2nd phone 'Accidentally' leave the phone at school enough times that mom/dad stop bothering w/ the service.
Or rather, is that market big enough? Maybe eventually, but this seems almost premature.
If this does push parents across the line and they decide to get their kids an iPhone, we want to provide them with an awesome service that they'll see some value from too.
Which is also an eternity in startup time.
We're in Mountain View and Sunnyvale. In true startup spirit we're working out of our respective apartments :)
Whereoscope already has strong competition from the phone companies themselves, who realize this is a big deal. Verizon charges 9.99/month for, AT&T's is also 9.99/month, with the first month free. Sprint throws in 100 text messages with their 9.99/month charge. That said, there is room to be had, especially if they have patentable IP, similar to co-existence of Tivo and Comcast.
It's important to note that we have no intention of stopping with supporting just iPhone. Android, blackberry, etc are all on the way.
It was pretty interesting to check out an AT&T store recently: a lot of the lower-end phones that you'd buy kids if you were worried about them breaking it are running Android these days, and I think the leap from a feature phone to a low-end Android handset is much smaller than the leap from a feature phone to an iPhone.
But we've actually found quite a few families where parents have bought their kids an iPhone as a reward, etc. We find that if the kid has an iPhone, typically the parent does too.
Supporting Android does seem very significant.
I hate the idea. Absolutely hate it, and (No offense to those involved) hope and expect it to fail.
We, like you, hate the idea of abusing trust and privacy.
However, children who want their parents to know when they're getting home from soccer practise, or see how far away their mother is when she's coming to pick them up, is quite a different scenario.
There are services that are as one-sided as you imply - the child doesn't have to 'opt-in'. Whereoscope is built quite differently.
cheers Mick
Also: how long until these kids start hacking the system: pay off some other kid to carry the phone as an alibi? Even better: reverse engineer the protocol & write their own spoofing app. Now THAT would be a good education.
1. It doesn't clarify IF your kid requires a smartphone. Anyone not coming from the the article would wonder if there was 1 phone for the parent and a wrist-watch or something for the kid. It may seem obvious to many, but the average person hitting the site would probably not know, then try to use the feedback tool, which leads to #2.
2. The feedback tool makes you fill out the form first then after all that leads you to sign in or create an account -with no way out. What a shitty way to do it. It's not a social media site, it's a business.
Subtle things like this can make a company flop. If they can't get the basics down, why would I want to do business with them?
As for the product. I agree with the previous post, like as if my kids are going to have a smart phone.
Just my 2 cents.
We're following the advice we've been given which is that we should launch as soon as possible. To that end we've put a lot of work into the app, but the website largely remains a TODO.
PS. You're probably only thinking of the software aspect, but food for thought - If there was a smartphone-to-wristwatch version - I'd buy one right away, and I doubt I'd look at the price tag.
As long as they can get the wristwatch back before going home, there's no cost to leaving the wristwatch where they're supposed to be and then continuing with their regularly scheduled mischief. But kids hate to be separated from their phone.
Now, it's possible that it could have some combination of sensors that at least made pretty sure that some humanoid was wearing the thing. But that increases the cost and battery usage.
Another issue is that the kids could just "forget" to charge it a lot.
Integrating it with their phone means that most things that keep the tracking from working also keeps them from using their phone, which is pretty much a nightmare to most teens.
And then if they want to use a phone in their parents' presence, they need to be using the iPhone.
And the parents might wonder why the kids almost never answer their calls (to the iPhone).
I was thinking for kids in the non-rebellious stage. An eight year old probably does't even need to know. The parent can handle the charging every night, amongst the thousand other things parents do everyday to make sure their kids are safe.
As for battery life - I won't pretend to know anything, but apple keeps surprising me with battery advancements so maybe it's catching up? or maybe someday it will. :)
I mean knowing where they are doesn't tell you if they are doing something they should not be doing, which after watching the trouble these kids in this neighborhood get into between 3pm and 6pm before their parents get home - trust me you better find out what your kids are up to, not just where.
But our belief is that there's also plenty of times when you really do just want to know where they are. If you're a busy person (say you're a single parent who's at work when their kids arrive home), being able to quickly check that your kids got home ok is huge piece of mind, for a very small time investment. Also consider the equation when you've got a few kids running around -- being able to open our app and see where they all are in a second or two is going to be easier than calling them all up. There will also be times when you're in a meeting and discreetly checking this app is going to work much better than running outside to make a few calls and track down all your children.
I think they are going to learn to come home, leave their phone there (or at a friend's house) and then go do whatever they want, secure in knowing they are definitely fooling mom/dad.
So you are right back to where you were before they had a phone at all.
I wouldn't spy on my kids. Lack of trust becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
How about spying on your gf or bf or something?
To be clear - this is about building trust not a lack of it. The kids can see where the parents are, and the parents can see where the kid is.
We agree 100% that setting this up as a spying tool isn't useful for the parents, the child, or the family.
If the kids are over 18 and you were to track them without their knowledge, that might be illegal.
We're very serious about getting both right!
It's really up to the families - if they are ok with sharing location data then they can keep it running. It seems like this would be most useful when the kids are 12 to 14 years old.
We have very plans for products that extend up and down the age range, but this isn't it.
2) All parties on the system get the same visibility; you can see your own history and your parent's history in the same way that they can see yours.
We've really tried hard to make the app useful to both parents and kids.
Are you implying that kids need to consent to being tracked by their parents? That's.... interesting.
Not certain on any of that, though.
Additionally, on iPhone you can always tell when location services are running as there's an arrow that appears in the top bar. You can also see in Settings->General->Location Services which applications are using it.
"You don't want us to track your every move? Oh, then you can't have a cell phone like all your friends and classmates. Sorry."
Calling that consent is purely philosophical.
Whereoscope give parents a way to find their kids lost iPhones.Mick
"Sorry mom, my phone died" This will actually happen because obviously your child will play with it all day and we all know what an iphone battery is like
But if they wanted to hide something, do you really think they won't figure out how to turn this app off/spoof their location?
Whereoscope lets you setup 4 people at the moment (and we can always make it more or fewer at any time), so they don't need to be your kids.
We're really excited about seeing how people will take this thing and use it. It's awesome as a founder to see people making use of your product in ways you didn't expect. So you can be sure that if people want to do this, we'll evolve the product to make sure it's an awesome experience for them.
We picked families as a starting point because we got a lot of feedback that this is something people wanted, but we'll definitely be watching to see how people use it.
Of course, I have similar software monitoring my bike commute for my wife's edification. I'm the one who set it up; I don't feel particularly oppressed.
I would hope that my kids would view this as an easy way to keep the parents up to date without having to actually call/SMS.