Hi everyone and thank you for your patience.
First, I want to apologize for the delay. This wasn’t an attempt to let the issue fade away, quite the opposite. Almost all my time has gone towards transitioning Techlore after our recent team changes, and it’s just been an insanely long queue to work through, where I even called off our stream last week. So I hope you all can understand this is one of many things I’ve fallen behind on.
Additionally, I’ve been in ongoing communication with Redact trying to thoroughly understand what happened, rather than rushing to a judgment. These aren’t excuses, but I want to be transparent about why my response took longer than it should have.
As for the situation, I reached out directly to Redact, and here is their full response:
We’re sorry people were upset by the Tweet. To be super clear, that was 100% satirical. It was phrased poorly, which led people to interpret it as genuine - we take responsibility for this, and have learned from it.
We have no idea if the creator mentioned is or isn’t a customer - the data doesn’t exist. We also have no idea if that tweet was deleted manually or with Redact - again, the data just doesn’t exist.
Redact can’t (and doesn’t want to) see anything our users delete, the accounts they connect to with Redact or delete from. Our user’s privacy has always been, and will always be, at the forefront of what we do.
After reviewing this situation, my thoughts:
- There wasn’t an actual privacy violation in terms of accessing deleted data (which would be a dealbreaker), but I 100% recognize that this marketing approach was not the greatest for a privacy service and is alarming.
- I’ve communicated this concern to them clearly and will reconsider our partnership if similar incidents occur in the future. This is my assessment, and as I’ve said, I do have the right to cancel any contracts if needed. As some of you rightfully pointed to earlier!
- Technically speaking, Redact runs locally on each user’s machine, collects minimal data, and is very sound from a privacy perspective. It’s hard to find this elsewhere right now when it comes to managing your online footprint, letting you delete digital presence without giving a third party access to accounts or data. And this situation doesn’t take away from the fact I wholeheartedly believe many in the community can benefit from the service.
I understand some community members may still choose to be cautious about the service based on this incident, which is completely reasonable. You should always make privacy decisions that you’re personally comfortable with. Though I will continue using them myself, and wholeheartedly recommend them as a service even in a non-sponsorship context. (friends & family).
Note: I only just noticed a staff notice was previously posted. This was not authorized by me and has been removed, as it didn’t represent any official position at any point in time.