Me.dium and TRUSTe have a falling out...
The falling out between TRUSTe and Me.dium was brought to my attention by an associate because I have a Me.dium widget on my blog.
My immediate reaction was "Oh no, surely Me.dium has not turned bad - if they have I'll have to remove their widget from my blog and IE-VISTA, and I'll have to make some sort of statement about what has happened because many people have installed Me.dium via my blog, and I'll have to alert Microsoft because I have recommended Me.dium in one of my articles".
The fact that my associate felt it necessary to write to me brings me to the conclusion that I should acknowledge the incident and write about my thoughts on the matter, especially when there's a good chance that some will say "Sandi recommended badware... look what TRUSTe says a program that Sandi recommends and likes".
My associate referred me to TRUSTe's blog, and sure enough, TRUSTe reported on 2 April via a blog post titled "Me.Dium First Participant to be Terminated from TDP" that:
"Me.Dium decided, without notifying TRUSTe, to remove the screen that served as the Primary Notice for their browser add-on. TRUSTe’s ongoing monitoring discovered the omission. After many attempts [to] contact the company, including placing the software on Suspension and removing it from the whitelist, TRUSTe had no choice but to terminate."
The above statement is strongly worded and in combination with the article title makes Me.dium look very bad. I immediately started writing a "what the hell is going on" email to my contacts at Me.dium, but then decided that it might be a good idea to check out the Me.dium blog before I sent the email.
I found this entry at the Me.dium blog entitled "Just the facts ma'am" dated 3 April 2008 and penned by David, one of the founders of Me.dium in which David says, amongst many other things, that:
"On November 29th of 2007, we officially informed TRUSTe that we were withdrawing from their program. We truly tried, but it just wasn’t going to work for us."
and, importantly:
"We removed ourselves from the program in November of 07 via email notice that was acknowledged by TRUSTe."
I have no reason to disbelieve Me.dium's statement that they withdrew from the TRUSTe program in November 2007 **and that their withdrawal was acknowledged by TRUSTe**. Me.dium's interactions with me have always been transparent, and above board, and they have always been frank and open in their dealings with me. In short, I trust that they are telling the truth.
I also have to believe that the author of the TRUSTe article believed that he/she was telling the truth. Therefore, I can only assume that there has been a basic breakdown in communication and/or procedure within the confines of TRUSTe itself.
I can only assume that whoever it was at TRUSTe that "acknowledged" the email from Me.dium whereby Me.dium withdrew from the program did not bother to pass the information on, or if it was passed on, it wasn't passed on to the right people, or enough people, or the correspondence fell into a bit bucket somewhere.
That being said, TRUSTe are not 100% at fault. Me.dium should have responded to TRUSTe's later attempts to contact them, even if only to say "go away, we left the program back in November".
Several days have passed since TRUSTe's 2 April entry and Me.dium's indignant response on 3 April. I do not know if TRUSTe and Me.dium have corresponded since the articles went live or if they have sorted out the misunderstandings. If they have, nobody is talking in public as far as I can see.
Sorry guys but Me.dium and TRUSTe (especially TRUSTe) need to bring this sorry tale to a public conclusion. Me.dium's reputation has taken a negative hit because of the TRUSTe blog announcement. TRUSTe's reputation has taken a negative hit because of Me.dium's indignant response. As it stands, we have conflicting public statements by two different companies and we, the reader, are left having to decide who we are going to believe. As for me, I'm going to keep the Me.dium widget on my blog and on IE-VISTA, and trust that my faith is not misplaced and that Me.dium are telling the truth when they say that they withdrew from TRUSTe's program in November and that, most importantly, TRUSTe acknowledged that withdrawal.
If what Me.dium says is the truth, then Me.dium were not obliged to inform TRUSTe of any changes to the Me.dium product, and TRUSTe were wrong to publicly state that Me.dium had been terminated from a program that Me.dium had withdrawn from 4 months earlier.
As for TRUSTe's criticism that "There is no notice that tells consumers that the browser add-on actually monitors their browsing in order provide recommendations of other sites they might find interesting", I have to ask, do we need to give notice about a functionality that is the primary purpose of the software being downloaded? Me.dium users download the product *because* it monitors their Web browsing and shares it with other Me.dium users. That is how the Me.dium map is generated in the first place. And the Friends tab that shows you which web page your friend is visiting and gives you the ability to jump to it with just a mouse click. And the Most Popular and Top 10 site lists. Such information, information that is displayed to each and every user of Me.dium, is not something that Me.dium picks up via some sort of mysterious osmosis.
In short, there is an important difference between, in the first instance, monitoring that is in-your-face and interactive, and the primary purpose of the software being downloaded, and, in the second instance, monitoring that is behind the scenes, is *not* the basis of the primary functionality of the software, and which the end user can not see. The second instance must be disclosed. The first instance is "stating the obvious".