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by sa46 1870 days ago
Seems a bit counter-intuitive to brand Plaid's behavior as unethical and then argue that users should have agency to share their own passwords.

At a meta-level, using unethical as a qualifier seems like an attempt to bolster an argument without having to provide a logical argument. I think most discussions are cleaner without broaching the thorny topic of ethics. Such discussions usually devolve into ideological battles, which by HN guidelines, "trample curiosity".
3 comments
sagarm 1870 days ago
The difference IMO is that Plaid is often used for e.g. tenant applications, where the person requiring the use of Plaid and the person forced to disclose credentials are not the same. That's bad.

If I choose to give my credentials to e.g. Mint to aggregate information for my own benefit, that's good because it was entirely my choice.

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KingMachiavelli 1869 days ago
As I used the wrote the word 'unethical' I knew it was sort of the wrong choice. At best it is unclear and lacks substance. The logical argument explicitly phrased would have been:

> Plaid's behavior works against the social norms that the majority of the tech community supports; in this case it deviates from the norm of keeping login information private.

But actually after re-reading the article, everything seems perfectly fine. The number of participants was only 12 who were all related in some fashion to Plaid employees & everything was pretty well disclosed. So the updated logical argument would be:

> Plaid's actions were limited in scope such that it had little chance of undermining norms regarding account login security. The purpose behind their actions was to increase the interoperability of their software and other software which is seen as a legitimate and net-positive goal in the software community.

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unishark 1870 days ago
> At a meta-level, using unethical as a qualifier seems like an attempt to bolster an argument without having to provide a logical argument.

I seemed like more of a disclaimer to avoid such ideological battles and deliver a nuanced view. "I agree the practice is shady, but..."

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