Kagi’s VisualHub Update
Their mistake, to my eyes, is betraying the trust of the developers who use their payment services. Tyler Loch is the developer of VisualHub, and he chose to use Kagi as his payment processor. He was Kagi’s client. Now, Kagi is selling something based on Loch’s work against Loch’s wishes.
It’s creepy. I received Kagi’s promotional e-mail at an address that I had only given to Techspansion, when I purchased VisualHub years ago. Before I saw the fine print that it was from Kagi, I assumed that Techspansion had been hacked or sold their customer list.
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@Chucky “Stupid and misguided instead of being evil” could be right. But it sounds fishy that Nethery is telling people Loch was unreachable, when he claims that he did answer his e-mail and spoke to a Kagi VP less than a month ago. At minimum, I’d like to see a statement from Kagi about what they think they’re allowed to do with developers’ customer lists (a soon to be antiquated concept?).
"It’s creepy."
Yup.
But I do actually see the other side. They obviously should have reached out to Loch and found a common ground to give him a cut. In a worst case scenario, they obviously should have chosen to have a highly visible link to Loch's DIY page, and they should have explained to customers the situation, though even that would have been somewhat creepy if they didn't have Loch's permission.
Yet while they did so in an obviously creepy manner, they still are performing a genuine customer service. Their behavior is out of bounds without question, but I'd like to think they are just being really stupid and misguided instead of being evil.
I'd like to keep liking Kagi. They really ought to recognize that they are being creepy and adjust accordingly.