| It is entirely possible for one group (or incentive) within Comcast's organization to work towards that goal, and another group or incentive within Comcast to work against it. Some things that make me trust this claim: - That privacy policy - That contract - Association with trustworthy brands like Mozilla - Work on encrypted DNS - Consumer trust could theoretically be financially valuable to them - Basic morals of Comcast employees Some things that make me distrust it: - Cultivated an infamous litany of consumer abuses - Lobbied for regulations to harm consumers - Engaged in regulatory capture with the FTC/FCC - Have continually profited from their abusive business practices, and continue to profit in spite of atrocious levels of consumer trust I believe that Comcast only wants to respect user privacy insofar as it helps them maintain a facade of trustworthiness and retain customers. If they ever get the opportunity to back out of that privacy-conscious posturing and turn it into money, I think history has proven that the winner of those two internal groups is clearly going to be the money side not the moral side. |
I appreciate your comment as you clearly and accurately frame that good people work there, Comcast earned its reputation with its actions, and that there may be competing interests / morals at play.
I can’t predict the future to say what wins out, but I feel like there are competing interests at play internal to the org. There are the business/markets, and then there is technology, products and experience pieces too.
an aside: I am somewhat disappointed to see a HN thread so populated with groupthink “Comcast is bad!” I’d expect that on theVerge comment board or YouTube comments. sigh
Anyways, I hear that the wake up call was probably about the time that the time warner merger fell through. I haven’t worked for them that long. It takes time to shift an org as large as Comcast to come to terms with the public’s resentment. I can say that, in my experience on the inside, the fundamental attitudes are very consumer friendly. I’m on the tech/product side of the house and we just want to make great stuff. Reliable, scalable entertainment and home automation kind of things, ya know? Comcast strives to be an admired company. So yeah, guess its work is cut out for it! Everything is designed today with accessibility and privacy at the outset. There’s a massive amount of truly brilliant engineers, developers, QA folks etc. working there. Not saying your distrust in Comcast wasn’t earned, however I believe conditions are not what they once were, thus some negative sentiments may be outdated today.