[apawloski]

locationgate is actually what gave me the impression that this would be relevant to them. You make persuasive points though.

Incidentally, I'm not so convinced that collecting user information leads to as big of a PR fallout as HN often suggests. I think it's more likely that the level to which our community -- which is small compared to the general UB -- gets upset makes it easy for us to overestimate public reaction. See: facebook and gmail. I'm not very familiar with Path though. Has there been much of an impact since the phonebook incident?

[ugh]

I'm not sure about that. I saw articles about that on the front page of big news websites. Apple is a big deal, the press will report on them. Even worse: They will report about the scandal but likely not about steps someone takes to mitigate the problem or things that explain the problem. That way we here on HN might know very well every little detail about a scandal (including things that make the scandal less of a big deal) but the general public might not.