Hey zulrah, we are working on GDPR and plan to have the service available in the EU as soon as possible. Hope to have you back on Instapaper when we become available in the EU again. Really sorry for the inconvenience.
And for no good reason.
Just assume the improbable cost of some litigation as a company, like tens of thousands of others (including much bigger and much smaller than yours) did, put up a message to European customers and have them click and proceed as usual to the service.
Or, you know, use the headstart of more than a year before the law was put into practice to get the service in order...
Genuine question: as an EU citizen, without the use of a VPN or proxy is it still possible to at least log on to the service to cancel your account?
Instapaper is not a subscription-based service. The product is completely free on all platforms today.
I think the app was a one-time purchase at launch but it has been free for many years. All of the Premium features were also made free when Premium was discontinued in 2016 shortly after the Pinterest acquisition.
But this is a Free service being provided to you. Why do you believe you have the right to dictate how someone else uses their time when you're not paying for it?
(And yes, I realize the houses in this metaphor rarely have doors in their doorways, much less locks, so it's techinally not burglary, but frankly I don't care.)
The proper analogy would be: You invite a volunteer carpenter in to fix your cabinets. He asks if he can write down what cereal your family eats instead of taking payment. You say sure! (ie agree to the terms of service).
New law passes. He refuses to come back and fix your cabinets for free next time because he doesn’t want to get sued for writing down the cereal names improperly.
You then scream at him and call him names, and try to ruin his reputation on the internet and accuse him of being a thief.
Maybe if the sanctity of what cereal your family eats is so important to you, you should just directly pay money to a normal carpenter next time?
First, Instapaper is a continuous service. If you store something, you want access to it again. It's not a series of one-off, independent services.
So, no, they didn't just "refused to come back and fix your cabinets for free next time". They gave you a space to write your notes and store your links, and then they denied access to that for 2 months (and counting).
Second, you forgot the part where Instapaper had paid services for years, and that many people who are denied service today, had paid good money and stick with it. They weren't asked if they wanted it to br made free and unreliable either.
So, if Gmail was closed to the free tier European users for 2 months+, they should be OK, because "they didn't pay for it"?
>But this is a Free service being provided to you. Why do you believe you have the right to dictate how someone else uses their time when you're not paying for it?
That's an argument for the 1950s economy, this is 2018. We have other models, such as ads, user profiling, even pure eyeballs as a M&A/IPO monetisation strategies. Just because the user doesn't paid doesn't mean money aren't made from the user using the service. Except if one believe they run it from the goodness of their hearts at a loss, but then they probably also believe in the Tooth Fairy.
Not to mention that Instapaper used to actually charge too. If someone paid for the app or premium later for years, is it ok if they "make it free" and then deny access to their account for 2 months?
I thought Instapaper was a free service that Pinterest bought mainly for it's article parsing technology? As an analogy FB's customers are advertisers and media agencies who pay to keep the lights on as is Pinterest's, users are not the customers.
At this point it's pretty concerning that you still have nothing to say publicly except "we're working on it", no detail, no schedule, no nothing.
Also, giving a bit of detail or a minimal schedule is easier than a PR campaign. It’s called transparency, and it works even if you’re alone on a project.
https://www.theverge.com/2018/5/25/17393766/facebook-google-...
Funny thing how DailyMotion isn't getting sued, but YouTube's parent company is.
That’s the point. When there’s no risk, nobody cares about their users’ privacy. That’s not an excuse for shutting down now that it’s legally risky to disrespect your users.
Also, nobody got sued, ignorant reporters notwithstanding. Schrems only filed complaints with the regulators.
Edit: To clarify I'm not saying they do that, I just can't see what part of GDPR they're having trouble with
From my point of view they store a list of URLs and provide a way to nicely view the content of those URLs. What in that could be causing 2 months of downtime to fix?