He thought he was getting DDOS'd at first, and his attackers were using one useragent. In which case, they would have been fools.
"Then he realize "This is the biggest opportunity ever!"."
It __is__ a great opportunity! For the HN audience, a large influx of users is considered a great opportunity.
"They are just numbers for him, a viral mob that will do whatever their god tell them to do."
There seems to be a lot of negativity around this. I thought it was hilarious. Would there still be outrage if the users were American instead of Indian?
"His final solution - more lies and unethical behaviors"
I would hardly call it lies or unethical. 1. he isn't obligated to do anything 2. he ultimately delivered a usable product with a paid option to the service. Sounds like any other freemium app or in-app-purchase
There would definitely be outrage.
As other people have said, he comes across as lacking humanity. Especially as the people using Jio phones would be the kind of people who are not rich or well off.
In fairness to the person, he could just be clueless and doesn’t really think of the people trying to use his service as people.
Hmm. That makes him sound worse.
I know a friend who thinks like that, And Is not a bad person....
I don’t know - this guy comes across as if he doesn’t realize that he is manipulating people less informed and weaker than him like someone orchestrating ants into following sugar.
But that doesn't make his server costs go away. And they must own at least another phone otherwise they wouldn't be able to use WhatsApp Web. So they are probably not as poor as you think.
If it were just the opening part of the article which gave me pause, I would agree with you.
But the other parts?
Its very hard, even when I am trying to give him the benefit of doubt, to devise a sufficient and forgiving explanation for his behavior. Unless you just ignore entire chunks of what transpired.
He used those people to troll his competitors. It sounds like someone realized that he could flash a laser, and make a group of camps walk over someone else's flower bed.
Its hard to defend that, and the implication that has for his view on the people he aimed like water from a hose.
For the record, I've put some time into knowing what I know about India, the Indian telecom industry, Jio and Jio pricing. I'll say that my educated guess should be pretty close to the mark, but I will change my position if a contradicting piece of information is shown.
"he comes across as lacking humanity. Especially as the people using Jio phones would be the kind of people who are not rich or well off."
Would you say the same about apps that serve video ads in order to unlock something in app? Or contests that requests tweets for entry? Or bootstrapped companies with "buy now" websites that only lead to an email signup?
"he doesn’t realize that he is manipulating people less informed and weaker than him"
Manipulating seems like a strong word. No one was forced to tweet, this isn't a matter of life or death. (It's for getting on WhatsApp after all). More importantly, I don't think anyone that tweeted really cared about the contents of the tweet.
Challenges or re-tweet requests are assumed in good faith or in the context of a (relatively) symmetrical/fair market system.
I’m trying to give him good faith and it’s coming up short.
I don’t think he is malicious, just not used to thinking at the scale of humanity he was dealing with.
By the way - this is also an excellent example of how good net neutrality laws help customers.
I am sure JIO would love to block whatsapp.
Actually - how is Jio blocking Whatsapp?
That’s a more important question.
Jio launches a pretty ambitious phone network and decimated the competition.
Do note thought that they are considered to be really bad competitors to go up against. They almost always have a focus on good ultra competitive pricing and ways to extract extra money from the consumer.
But they are very actively investing in broadband content to drive use of their network.
Probably just a lot of people shrugging and saying "I guess this guy doesn't want us abusing his free service for our own gain" and "it was fun while it lasted".
All indications pointed towards all these people using his service in bad faith. I went to his website and it's obviously meant for cross-browser testing, not spoofing your user agent, circumventing regional restrictions or whatever it was preventing them from accessing Whatsapp directly.
So I'm pretty sure what they want is to access the Whatsapp web interface and use Browserly for user agent spoofing, circumventing geographic blocking or some kind of blocking on their phones like a 0.0.0.0 entry for whatsapp.com in the hosts file. Either way it's a major dick move if you ask me, especially when there is no shortage of services built for this exact purpose.
This is exactly the point. There would only be outrage if the users were American. There would not be a positive response here.
Imagine French facebook users waking up one day to see "If you want to log in, tweet 'I love facebook`". Would there be an outrage? What if tweet would say "Macron is not my president #downwithmacron"?
So I think
> It starts with author calling his users "fools" for not randomizing useragent
Was not very true, given the author previously said:
> I thought it was a DDOS attack. I noticed everyone had this weird user agent that said it was a JIO phone. _I throught these attackers were fools_.
He’s spent years on this business and finally had a break. Its unfortunate he chose to phrase things the way he did but this is a one man band with a hacker as CEO who does PR about as well as an average PR person does full stack development.
Probably not to his friends. But rofling at masses of indians tweeting on command (fooled into thinking tweeting will unlock a service) is a "dick move".
Saying "please tweet to use the service" and then blocking people anyway is lying. Making fun of people for doing what you asked so they can fulfill one of their needs is scummy. Telling people to Tweet to increase their chances in a lottery and then not actually doing it is also scummy.
This post left me with nothing but bad impressions for the author and for Browserling. At some point I wonder whether a middle school bully was writing the post.
The vast majority of these users were looking for a shady freebie at his expense, gleefully ripping him off and doing so en masse in a way that would destroy his livelihood. They were being more than cheeky and he has a right to treat them the same way. If it were me I'd have had my fun too.
No, if you lie to people and tell them you'll give them service in exchange for something, they do the something and then you don't give them service, you are definitely an asshole.
I'm not a fan of the false dichotomy of "you're either a doormat or you go full-blast lying and making fun of your users". He could just have said "If you want to use the service, please pay for it per day" and that would have been that.
> The vast majority of these users were looking for a shady freebie at his expense, gleefully ripping him off
Wanting to access WhatsApp is shady? Then I'm shady all the damn day. Also, how were they ripping him off? They were using the service he provided on the terms he provided it, even jumping through pointless hoops of "Tweet/Follow/spam competitors".
We decry all those shitty "tweet to jump the queue" tactics, but this guy doing it and laughing at his users makes it okay?
> And they did! All these users started following Browserling and tweeting about it. But they still couldn't use Browserling or Whatsapp, it was just a new message in place of "fatal error".
If you don't think this is asshole behaviour, we're never going to agree.
If that was "okay, there is a demand, I can't monetize it but can still convert it into something useful while I think how this can be a successful business" is one thing. Telling users to fund/tweet/support/whatever while the problem is being tackled feels perfectly fair to me.
If that was "muahaha see my army of puppets tweeting" it's another thing, of course.
Have you told that to your CEO?
Unfortunately I haven't had that chance, as the people I work with already know to not be assholes.
If you still think that's okay, there's a fundamental disagreement here we'll never reconcile.
When people spend a lot of time looking at stats, sometimes they become disconnected from the reality behind them.
And it will probably give ideas to people on HN to build services for this new market, and get Silicon Valley hipsters interested in cheap phone market. I'm not in SV, but at least that's the effect it had on me.
I'm getting more and more allergic to moral hypersensitivity everywhere. The air is becoming unbreathable.
In the end, though, I think he's done something decent-- providing a way for poor people in India to access a service that they are normally unable to afford. That's a good thing.
https://twitter.com/vivaldibrowser/status/644173304404836352...
I discovered Browserling just yesterday looking for a replacement for BrowserStack. I planned to hand over my credit card today but saw this blog post on the commute to the office. Thanks, but no. I'll continue looking and make sure to not make business with this guy.
It could also be argued that their net utility to humanity is negative: see the issues with social media and echo chambers.
He did a silly test to have some fun that didn't force the users.
I'm happy for once to read an article that is not heavily edited by marketing to please the sensitive readers but instead gives us the raw reactions of the guy.
Not sure if intentional, but funny either way :)
His initial reaction when he thought he was under attack was fine and the second reaction was immature and lacked empathy but he was likely facing an unexpected problem that he couldn't figure out how to handle but very soon got on the right track.
Those servers and bandwidth aren't free. Bandwidth to tier three countries is actually more expensive.
Advertising revenue is basically non-existent for tier three countries, conversion rates and LTV is super low, ltv for the group of user that are using his service for whatsapp will be in the range of 1-5 Rs, ~(1-8 cents).
He will eventually have to block these countries again if he can't figure out a way to indirectly monetize these users. Or he will run out of money and the servers go down.
The best thing for these users would be if he can figure out a way to make it sustainable, and that means to monetize these users.
It starts with author calling his users "fools" for not randomizing useragent (while he himself is a fool for not using useragent correct way - to know what hardware/software accesses his service). Then he goes super happy "hah, great, let them crash competitor websites". Then he realize "This is the biggest opportunity ever!". He tries to sell his service for small amount of $1 per day for using free WhatsApp. "I had no idea how much money Indian users spent on online services." Quick google search reveals that daily wage labour gets 2-3 $/day.
What he does next? He sends his users to promote his website at social media. Follow and tweet about my service and I will allow you to use my service - he promises, except it is not a payment method - it's a lie. But free advertisment is not enough for this guy. It's "his biggest opportunity ever"! He sends his army to "troll my competitors". "That was super hilarious. I was literally rolling on the floor laughing."
"users would tweet, follow, like, and do anything I tell them to get access to Browserling" except he didn't let them access Browserling. They are just numbers for him, a viral mob that will do whatever their god tell them to do. And as a god, he doesn't care about his promises. Well, he could, but it's too much work and there are more interesting things to do for him.
His final solution - more lies and unethical behaviors. "Increase your chances in lottery by promoting my service" - chance does not change Depending on your luck, the same amount of money will give you day, week or month of a service.
This guy is an asshole, his behaviour is unethical and wrong. I can't believe it gets positive feedback here.