[ceejayoz]

That's a silly framing.

The developer is purchasing the technological infrastructure to deliver the data a single specific user has opted to provide to them.

Claiming the developer is a third party is like claiming I'm a third party when I order off Amazon, and that the USPS is the actual customer.

[SquishyPanda23]

When you enter into a transaction using your bank, someone who is not a party to that transaction can see it, and they pay for that access.

Under any framing, that's a third party paying for access to your transaction data.

The user hasn't opted-in if the co-founder of the company is telling people it doesn't happen. It's only opt-in if the user knows it's happening and agrees to it.

[ceejayoz]

If I'm using a financial app, and it pops up with a "App Foo wants to use Plaid to link to your bank", and I go in and enter my banking credentials into that dialog... you're arguing that I have no idea what I'm doing and aren't consenting to anything? Huh?

[SquishyPanda23]

If you're so confident, go survey Plaid users and find what percentage are aware that Plaid makes money selling their financial transaction history to developers.

Then ask yourself why the founding team goes around and tells people they don't do that.

[ceejayoz]

That'd be a very misleading survey question, as it heavily implies they're selling it to other developers the user didn't engage with at all.

"Are you aware that connecting app Foo to your bank account gives app Foo access to your transactions?" is likely to be met with a resounding "no shit, that's the point..."

[SquishyPanda23]

So your claim is that the average person on the street understands that if they send someone money on Venmo once, then Venmo gets 24 months of their bank account history?

And your claim is that the point of the user signing up to Robinhood or Venmo is to give Robinhood or Venmo their entire bank account history for the last two years?

I find this implausible. You have an empirical claim. You're welcome to test it.