This is absolutely hilarious. This dude owns company that builds an array of products around identifying your users, storing as much information about them as possible, and then making that information as actionable as it can.
>A national privacy law would require that companies disclose how they collect your information, use your information, and offer a right-to-be-forgotten, Benioff explained. “If you want to delete your information, you could hit that button and be sure your data is gone forever.”
Okay, want to start by adding that button the Salesforce DMP Page? Right now, it looks like the best I can do is get an opt-out cookie that expires in 6 months [0]. I'll wait.
Edit: I was being facetious. I know exactly why he said this and I don't expect Salesforce to do this until they legally have to. I just hope the irony wasn't lost on anyone.
It's plenty reasonable to be skeptical of the public utterances of CEOs, but it's not necessarily true that his words are hollow because his company is not currently compliant with the law he's proposing. As long as competitors are free to ignore this proposed privacy requirement it probably makes no competitive sense for his company to comply with it. In that case, it's perfectly logical to agitate for a law, which would let you adhere to stricter privacy requirements confident that your competition has to do so as well.
This is Benioff shutting the door behind him. It lets him seize the moral high ground, while making it more expensive for startups to try to imitate them. A few million bucks on navigating complex multi-jurisdictional compliance issues is nothing for them. It's a non-starter for a small team of innovators.
Few things terrify incumbents more than a fast moving nimble and smart team of innovators. e.g. FB paying $19bn for WhatsApp.
Have you ever met Marc Benioff or anyone whose ever worked closely with him? It's pretty commonly believed among those who have that he wants to take some sort of political office at some point in the near future, and that's more important to him that continuing to expand Salesforce.
If you're engaging in unethical behavior that has a market, and you want to stop the behavior, withdrawing from the market definitely doesn't stop it. It encourages a new player to step up and have an advantage over you, and worse, repeat that unethical behavior.
"You know ... I make a lot of money from grazing my sheep on the commons[1], but it's really not sustainable to have this free-for-all. If everyone can just graze the grass with no restriction, the roots will get eaten up and there won't be a future stock to use. I propose that we segment it out so all the plots have an owner, who will have an incentive to limit grazing, and then compensate the people who lose their right to graze..."
'This is absolutely hilarious. This dude has a huge herd and makes a fortune selling sheep that were fattened from grazing the commons.'
[1] Yes, I know that the story that the "tragedy of the commons" parable is based on is fake, and they actually had sensible customs to prevent the free-for-all; this is just for illustrative purposes.
>>> This dude owns company that builds an array of products around identifying your users, storing as much information about them as possible
I get where youre coming from and Salesforce does it's share of this, but they aren't Google or Facebook deriving most of their profit from user data.
Their app is used mainly to drive and automate business process in a system that can serve the entire organization. A lot of business (the run the business part) run a very high percentage of their business on Salesforce - including some of the biggest companies in the world.
They make their money from subscriptions, the appExchange, and services.
I'm sure they collect data (and some of their marketing/lead generation software I'm sure collects data), but it might be a little much to say that the entire product is built around collecting user data.
On top of that, Salesforce does a TON to portray themselves as an extremely liberal company - from diversity initiatives and minority outreach to widely marketing their charitable contributions. So at least on the surface they are consistent with their messaging.
Not a shill - just sharing what I know from companies where I've worked that used salesforce in one way or another.
Advertisement and info gathering beyond a certain point (which we probably passed long ago) is simply an arms race/prisoners dilemma. All the companies would be better off or at least no worse off if they all mutually scaled down their efforts, but it's to no one's advantage to scale down their own efforts. Why ridicule the players in a prisoners dilemma for trying to jointly move to a superior outcome?
This only applies, if you treat privacy as limiting information collected. If you take the view that privacy is a peocess integrity issue instead (all data is effectively personal, the goal is to make sure access to it is transparent and restricted) him asking for such law makes much more sense
He's not saying companies can't keep a CRM system to keep track of leads and customers. What he means is the sneaky and hidden ways in which FB, Google and other advertising based tech companies track your every action on the web, create a profile for you without your explicit permission and selling that information or access to it to advertisers, etc.
Salesforce is a public company, which means the CEO has a legal duty to optimize for maximum benefit for the shareholders of said company under the law.
"Change the law so I don't have to do scummy things," is actually fairly rational.
I disagree with the people here who call out Benioff's hypocrisy in making this statement.
It's not uncommon or hypocritical for companies to be in favour of regulation that would prohibit things that they currently do. The whole point is that if Salesforce would currently start respecting privacy more than they'd be legally required to, for plain ethical reasons, but other companies don't do the same, then they have a competitive disadvantage. If the law requires them to do so, they can be more ethical while the playing field is level.
Of course there's still a strong and fair open discussion on how far a company should go in the "totally unethical but technically legal" arena of evil shit. But I don't see much of that discussion in this thread.
Companies often welcome regulation. I once read somewhere that when cigarette companies were forbidden to advertise in the EU, their profits went up. All of them were only advertising to compete with the others, it was an arms race without end. When the entire arms race got outlawed, cost shrunk but income did not change. Smokers didn't suddenly switch brand because they didn't see bad jokes about camels every commercial block.
I also disagree with the argument that this is a call for regulation to keep newcomers out. It's true that bigco's rooting for regulation often do this for anticompetitive reasons and it's abysmal, but I really don't see how increased privacy controls such as the GDPR (but in more places) prevents incumbents from outperforming and outmarketing the big shots. You need to come with a stronger argument about how such regulation affects Salesforce less than a tiny startup. Assuming it's decent regulation, of course - I fully agree if this ends up being a legal minefield.
But eg the GDPR is decent regulation that is really not that hard to abide to unless you're genuinely evil (I say this as the owner of a small EU-based startup). The world could use more of that stuff.
You always start ahead in a contract negotiation when you're the one writing the first draft. It's no different here having an adtech/martech company kick off a privacy discussion; Salesforce wants the upper hand because it's easier to know the ways around the legalese when you're the one writing it.
The key is to say "you're right" to Benioff and then draft the law entirely without his influence.
"You always start ahead in a contract negotiation when you're the one writing the first draft." Never heard that but I like it. I am aware of it, just never heard it put into words like that. Thanks!
Both the UN and the EU consider privacy a fundamental human right. We shouldn't be looking for a law, we should be looking for a Constitutional Amendment.
> Both the UN and the EU consider privacy a fundamental human right
Privacy and free speech exist in natural conflict. Between the two, I prefer our society which enshrines the latter over the former to the European model which does the reverse.
It would be improper to limit individuals in their interactions with other individuals or corporations via an amendment. A law is the proper place for that type of restriction.
I get these cynical responses, but ultimately don't many HN readers - me included - want this kind of law too? Why are people so hung up about the guy's motivations?
seems like a case of letting perfect be the enemy of good
The CEO of a massive public company that lives on data is calling for new regulations that his company will be better equipped to deal with than competitors will? Color me shocked.
Just to clarify, Salesforce doesn't live on data. Salesforce primary business is CRM tools, where the data belongs to Salesforce customers. Salesforce is not tricking its customers' customers in giving them data for one purpose and then using it for another purpose and selling it to advertisers. Salesforce simply makes money from the CRM license. Not through data trading.
Facebook is definitely not a threat to Salesforce small business. Hubspot, Insightly, and other small focused offerings plus Pad of Paper and Excel are the real competition for small CRM / Marketing buyers.
Can we have opt out for government agencies as well? I posted the other day that many county and state governments let you search their data bases for a wealth of information and you can damn well bet they sell or provide bulk access.
While I know it cannot be reasonably expected that "government" forget us in this manner it certainly could be forced to limit access to data that is identifiable back to an individual without their permission
Many governments are providing access to the sort of data you link out of a desire / mandate for transparency. As an undergrad journalism major, one of our assignments was to dig up as much information as we could from public records about the school’s dean (he was a willing participant). The purpose of the exercise was to impress upon us how much information was available through public records.
The difference now is that those records are digital and don’t require (in most cases) flipping through actual paper documents.
The question of privacy vs. transparency is an active area of conversation now, particularly because people like yourself are discovering that you never had privacy around some transactions in the first place. Also, machine readability has changed the threat model somewhat.
In general, however, I’d guess that transparency and open access to many kinds of data will continue to be the way the law leans.
> In some ways, you could say that Facebook has become the new cigarettes in our industry. That is, it's a technology that is addictive, it may not be that great for you and it might be something you don't want to go back to.
I watched Bernioff repeat, over and over, about how much he loved Facebook, for about 30 minutes. This was in 2010 at the Moscone center in San Francisco, right before he introduced Chatter.
This seems slightly ironic from Salesforce. I am pretty sure companies that use Salesforce will also be doing as much tracking of their users as they know how to and feeding that data into Salesforce.
I think the big problem is not privacy violations, per se, but that, with computers and the internet, one never knows what information about you is being stored and sold to others. The majority of states make it illegal to tape a conversation without consent of the other person. I support those laws. Also ones where businesses have to post they are using video surveillance. It would be great if the government or some other group would develop well defined levels of privacy with good names and icons so companies can easily describe their policies to the public. Like movie ratings. Not the best. Wish we did not need them. But works OK. I'll avoid companies that sell my location information to anyone who will pay.
Passing laws where people somehow own what other people and companies know about you is not a good idea. I saw your dog poop on my lawn and you did not pick it up. Can I tell my neighbors about that? What about posting on Nextdoor? Local newspaper? A tweet? If I libel or slander someone, we have laws against that. It seems to me that telling a truth you know about someone should not be at the discretion of the someone. People just need to know when they are being observed, what is being observed, and by who (or what), so they can act accordingly. Not sure how to get to that space in this smartphone world.
Although, it might a wildly unpopular opinion here, if US does not innovate in AI, someone else (and you know who) will and US will have to follow the suit. Regulations are healthy as long as they are well understood and not over-reaching.
Sounds like he wants to have regulation for all the aspects where their company innovate
[+] [-] slap_shot|7 years ago|reply
>A national privacy law would require that companies disclose how they collect your information, use your information, and offer a right-to-be-forgotten, Benioff explained. “If you want to delete your information, you could hit that button and be sure your data is gone forever.”
Okay, want to start by adding that button the Salesforce DMP Page? Right now, it looks like the best I can do is get an opt-out cookie that expires in 6 months [0]. I'll wait.
[0] https://www.salesforce.com/products/marketing-cloud/sfmc/sal...
Edit: I was being facetious. I know exactly why he said this and I don't expect Salesforce to do this until they legally have to. I just hope the irony wasn't lost on anyone.
[+] [-] papeda|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mmaunder|7 years ago|reply
Few things terrify incumbents more than a fast moving nimble and smart team of innovators. e.g. FB paying $19bn for WhatsApp.
[+] [-] zjaffee|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] master-litty|7 years ago|reply
If you're engaging in unethical behavior that has a market, and you want to stop the behavior, withdrawing from the market definitely doesn't stop it. It encourages a new player to step up and have an advantage over you, and worse, repeat that unethical behavior.
[+] [-] SilasX|7 years ago|reply
'This is absolutely hilarious. This dude has a huge herd and makes a fortune selling sheep that were fattened from grazing the commons.'
[1] Yes, I know that the story that the "tragedy of the commons" parable is based on is fake, and they actually had sensible customs to prevent the free-for-all; this is just for illustrative purposes.
[+] [-] staplers|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gxs|7 years ago|reply
I get where youre coming from and Salesforce does it's share of this, but they aren't Google or Facebook deriving most of their profit from user data.
Their app is used mainly to drive and automate business process in a system that can serve the entire organization. A lot of business (the run the business part) run a very high percentage of their business on Salesforce - including some of the biggest companies in the world.
They make their money from subscriptions, the appExchange, and services.
I'm sure they collect data (and some of their marketing/lead generation software I'm sure collects data), but it might be a little much to say that the entire product is built around collecting user data.
On top of that, Salesforce does a TON to portray themselves as an extremely liberal company - from diversity initiatives and minority outreach to widely marketing their charitable contributions. So at least on the surface they are consistent with their messaging.
Not a shill - just sharing what I know from companies where I've worked that used salesforce in one way or another.
[+] [-] tome|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] savanaly|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] realandreskytt|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Operyl|7 years ago|reply
Sounds like you have a fairly easy way to remain opted out. Either that or using the never ending amount of adblockers to block trackers specifically?
[+] [-] ma2rten|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vadym909|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|7 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] throwaway48582|7 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] Mononokay|7 years ago|reply
"Change the law so I don't have to do scummy things," is actually fairly rational.
[+] [-] skrebbel|7 years ago|reply
It's not uncommon or hypocritical for companies to be in favour of regulation that would prohibit things that they currently do. The whole point is that if Salesforce would currently start respecting privacy more than they'd be legally required to, for plain ethical reasons, but other companies don't do the same, then they have a competitive disadvantage. If the law requires them to do so, they can be more ethical while the playing field is level.
Of course there's still a strong and fair open discussion on how far a company should go in the "totally unethical but technically legal" arena of evil shit. But I don't see much of that discussion in this thread.
Companies often welcome regulation. I once read somewhere that when cigarette companies were forbidden to advertise in the EU, their profits went up. All of them were only advertising to compete with the others, it was an arms race without end. When the entire arms race got outlawed, cost shrunk but income did not change. Smokers didn't suddenly switch brand because they didn't see bad jokes about camels every commercial block.
I also disagree with the argument that this is a call for regulation to keep newcomers out. It's true that bigco's rooting for regulation often do this for anticompetitive reasons and it's abysmal, but I really don't see how increased privacy controls such as the GDPR (but in more places) prevents incumbents from outperforming and outmarketing the big shots. You need to come with a stronger argument about how such regulation affects Salesforce less than a tiny startup. Assuming it's decent regulation, of course - I fully agree if this ends up being a legal minefield.
But eg the GDPR is decent regulation that is really not that hard to abide to unless you're genuinely evil (I say this as the owner of a small EU-based startup). The world could use more of that stuff.
[+] [-] eganist|7 years ago|reply
You always start ahead in a contract negotiation when you're the one writing the first draft. It's no different here having an adtech/martech company kick off a privacy discussion; Salesforce wants the upper hand because it's easier to know the ways around the legalese when you're the one writing it.
The key is to say "you're right" to Benioff and then draft the law entirely without his influence.
[+] [-] cityzen|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ocdtrekkie|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] JumpCrisscross|7 years ago|reply
Privacy and free speech exist in natural conflict. Between the two, I prefer our society which enshrines the latter over the former to the European model which does the reverse.
[+] [-] strictnein|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mychael|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bllguo|7 years ago|reply
seems like a case of letting perfect be the enemy of good
[+] [-] baxtr|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jaredhansen|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dmode|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] throwaway48582|7 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] matchagaucho|7 years ago|reply
I'm not convinced that Benioff is devious enough to have this ulterior motive.
But clearly, social networks have become the new CRM for many small-mid size businesses... and on that front FB represents a threat.
[+] [-] thrav|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Shivetya|7 years ago|reply
While I know it cannot be reasonably expected that "government" forget us in this manner it certainly could be forced to limit access to data that is identifiable back to an individual without their permission
Example of the details offered, by address or name of owner http://www.cobbassessor.org/cobbga/search/commonsearch.aspx?...
[+] [-] peatmoss|7 years ago|reply
The difference now is that those records are digital and don’t require (in most cases) flipping through actual paper documents.
The question of privacy vs. transparency is an active area of conversation now, particularly because people like yourself are discovering that you never had privacy around some transactions in the first place. Also, machine readability has changed the threat model somewhat.
In general, however, I’d guess that transparency and open access to many kinds of data will continue to be the way the law leans.
[+] [-] gwbas1c|7 years ago|reply
I watched Bernioff repeat, over and over, about how much he loved Facebook, for about 30 minutes. This was in 2010 at the Moscone center in San Francisco, right before he introduced Chatter.
[+] [-] inscionent|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] collyw|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] njarboe|7 years ago|reply
Passing laws where people somehow own what other people and companies know about you is not a good idea. I saw your dog poop on my lawn and you did not pick it up. Can I tell my neighbors about that? What about posting on Nextdoor? Local newspaper? A tweet? If I libel or slander someone, we have laws against that. It seems to me that telling a truth you know about someone should not be at the discretion of the someone. People just need to know when they are being observed, what is being observed, and by who (or what), so they can act accordingly. Not sure how to get to that space in this smartphone world.
[+] [-] hadrien01|7 years ago|reply
[1] https://www.salesforce.com/company/news-press/stories/2018/5...
[+] [-] sctb|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ProAm|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gowld|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lixtra|7 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] bedhead|7 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] rosser|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] organicmultiloc|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] throwaway_2277|7 years ago|reply
Sounds like he wants to have regulation for all the aspects where their company innovate