[kbos87]

What isn’t clear to me is whether Peloton intends for this to be a permanent end state - that you need to buy a subscription to use “Just Run” - or if it’s a temporary state (we introduced the locking feature, made a dumb decision to require an account, and accounts are tied to paid subscriptions, and thus until we unwind that, here’s a few free months.)

The former would be absolutely reprehensible. It’s ransomware, in the name of a death caused by your product.

If it’s the latter, they absolutely blew it while communicating this.

The likely scenario to me is somewhere inbetween. They are seeing how people react to this and were intentionally ambiguous to give themselves an escape hatch if there’s backlash.

[mleonhard]

Peloton probably also wants to collect the valuable behavior data of users that are not currently signing in.