Superhuman bills itself as the world\u2019s greatest email client. It should, given how much it costs; users of the app pay $30 a month for a subscription. It justifies that cost by being as feature complete as possible. It includes an array of keyboard shortcuts that expedite the most tedious parts of managing correspondence.<\/p>\n
And controversially, by default, it sends emails with an included tracking pixel. This allows the sender to see whether the recipient has opened an email. It also shows the time the email was opened, the recipient\u2019s physical location, as well as the quantity of times an email was opened.<\/p>\n
This feature is proving extremely controversial. One part of the problem is that the feature is turned on by default, and Superhuman doesn\u2019t make an effort to obtain the informed consent of email recipients.<\/p>\n
Indeed, even many users of the app were unaware of its existence. \u201cI use the app and didn\u2019t even know about the tracking part<\/a>,\u201d wrote Owen Williams<\/a>, journalist and software developer, on his popular Charged blog.<\/p>\n I wrote about the outrage against email apps tracking you secretly\u2014and have some advice for ways to block trackers *without* disabling images https:\/\/t.co\/2fgHzsyL7f<\/a><\/p>\n \u2014 Owen Williams \u26a1 (@ow) July 3, 2019<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n This is probably a controversial opinion, but I don\u2019t believe that read receipt tools are inherently problematic. My take is a bit more nuanced.<\/p>\n I think that in some industries, the practice of monitoring email open rates is so commonplace, you essentially work under the assumption that every bit of correspondence you receive will include a tracking pixel. Just like by taking a flight, you consent to being frisked, by working in sales or technology journalism, you consent to this type of surveillance.<\/p>\n The problem here with Superhuman is threefold: firstly, many tracking tools inform the recipient as a matter of routine. As we\u2019ve mentioned, Superhuman doesn\u2019t.<\/p>\n Secondly, not everyone operates under the assumption their email activity is being tracked. If you received an email from your grandmother that included a pixel tracker, you\u2019d probably feel a little bit perturbed \u2013 and rightfully so. By design, Superhuman further erodes the expectation of privacy, which in 2019, is looking more and more like an endangered species.<\/p>\n Finally, there\u2019s an overall uneasiness about putting such sophisticated surveillance tools \u2013 for that\u2019s what they are \u2013 into the hands of ordinary consumers, and what that means for how people interact with their network of friends and colleagues. As Mike Davidson<\/a>, former VP of Design at Twitter, put bluntly: \u201cSuperhuman teaches its user to surveil by default<\/a><\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n Superhuman is an email surveillance app that encourages its users to spy on friends and co-workers without their consent. Why the ethics of this matter and what it says about Superhuman as a company. New post on Mike Industries: https:\/\/t.co\/97LPwhWI7Z<\/a><\/p>\n\n
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