Update 15/1/2016: Stolen has been shut down.
The original article appears below.
Last night, IÂ was sent a screenshot out of the blue:
My response was less than eloquent: “WTF? WTF is that?!”
As it transpires, itâs from an app called Stolen. Iâd never seen it before, was entirely unaware of its existence, and certainly hadnât opted in. Stolen is a new iOS app that allows you to buy and sell real peopleâs Twitter accounts as if they were trading cards. Now, before anyone gets too panicky, this doesnât give you access to their account - itâs more of a bragging rights thing. “I now own @Jack! Yeahh!” - like being the Mayor of somewhere on Foursquare.
Still, itâs tremendously unnerving to have someone tell you out of nowhere that they “own” you now. That your name and likeness is being traded on an app you had no knowledge of and hadnât given permission to. The whole concept of people being able to own, buy and sell other people without their consent is absolutely abhorrent to us, and raises a slew of problems that itâs clear the team at Stolen havenât anticipated.
Shortly after the first message, I got another one from the person who ‘boughtâ me letting me know that Iâd now been sold to a stranger.
As someone whoâs received a fair amount of harassment and trolling over the last few months, I canât tell you how disquieting it was to see a total strangerâs name plastered across my Twitter account as my “owner.” And worse, once someone buys you, they can write whatever they like on your page, giving you a ‘nicknameâ, advertising their products, whatever they want. There doesnât even seem to be a swear filter in place - someone sent us this screenshot of what they were able to write on a companyâs account:
Anyone whoâs been on the internet for more than five minutes can immediately see the problems with this. Any platform - no matter how well-meaning - will be used to abuse and harass people, and Stolen seems an absolute gift for the trolls of the world. This app allows men to buy women, racists to buy minorities, Gamergate supporters to buy games journalists - and so on and so on.
At the time of writing, Stolen has 40,000 users. Rather than use an opt-in system whereby people can CHOOSE to be traded on the app if they so wish, anyone who signs up automatically adds all the people they follow to the service. So Iâd been added without my knowledge or consent, and at the time there was no way of opting out. Stolen has since added one - see our note at the end.
At the time of writing, you have to have a code to use Stolen - so most of the people whoâve downloaded the app canât get in. Verified accounts donât need a code, though, presumably to encourage celebrities.
I spoke to Siqi Chen, CEO of Hey Inc (the company behind Stolen) about the app and the inherent problems, and while it was clear a lot of the issues hadnât been thought through, he was keen to stress that “unlike Twitter we are not a neutral speech platform - we are firmly against the any kind of harassment, abuse, misogyny, or racism in our product and our policies and tooling will reflect that.”
Hereâs how our interview went.
Gadgette: Thank you for agreeing to speak to me.
Iâm so sorry. [Siqi had seen my tweets about someone having messaged me to say they own me now]
It was just a bit of a shock, really.
Thatâs just not okay. Like, I totally get it. I know the things that are happening to women on Twitter, and yeah, Iâm honestly appalled and horrified that thatâs how we made you feel. We didnât design this product to do that.
Is it something that youâre hearing a lot?
No, actually. People generally understand the game. The idea of the product is, youâre collecting and trading your favourite people. Like your Babe Ruth baseball cards. We thought, âWouldnât it be cool if you could just collect all your favourite people that you follow on Twitter,â and thatâs what we designed the app for.
I know whatâs happening, and honestly it is our fault, because we have this currency in the game, and in these two particular areas it says âbelongs toâ and it says âbuyâ, and thereâs a reason we call it âstolenâ because we didnât want for there to be any inkling of, âOh, this is about buying people and I own you.â Thatâs horrifying and disgusting and not what we want to be associated with.
And so, in our next update that we shipped last night, we found that Mike Shinoda is actually playing, and Jack Dorsey and Adam Bain [from Twitter]. We saw at least one person say to Mike Shinoda, âOh, youâre mine now,â and we were like, âWhy are they doing that?â and we looked through his Twitter like, âOh my God, we have this one thing where instead of âstealâ it says âbuyâ and it says âbelongs toâ. We need to fix that right now.â So we just pushed it out, and itâs approved by the App Store. Itâs going to say âstolen byâ because itâs not supposed to be about ownership.
But you canât steal something that isnât owned. You have to own something for it to be able to be stolen.
Yeah, thatâs a fair point. But I feel like the skinning of a game is really important. Brenda Romero designed a game that was about the Holocaust, right, and the same set of rules could just be Candyland, and thatâs the way we think about it too. Itâs not supposed to be about people, but about these representations of them as cards and youâre collecting them because you like them, not because you want to own this person.
But if youâre going to do it that way, doesnât it make more sense to let people opt in and say, âI would like to be traded. I would like to have a card on this site and for people to be able to steal meâ? Doesnât it make more sense to do that than to bring in people without their knowledge or permission and not even let them know?
The way we think about it is itâs a game on Twitter and so it doesnât really work if we canât show you the people that you actually follow and care about on Twitter.
But you donât own my image, you donât own my name, you donât own the copy thatâs on my Twitter page. Youâve essentially taken that without my knowledge or permission. I havenât agreed to be part of your app. Iâve only agreed to be part of Twitter, and youâre not part of Twitter.
We are on the Twitter platform, though, so weâre just using their API, and thatâs -Â all of these things are really valid questions, and the reason why we donât have them yet is because this app was really designed for 1,000 people. The most people who played this before we put this in the App Store was about 100. And so we are locking down to invite only, and it continues to be invite only. Weâre trying to make sure people donât download as much. We have hundreds of thousands of downloads, and 90% of them donât have keys and theyâre not finding the keys for this reason.
How many people do you have at the moment?
We have about 40,000 people playing.
Do you have every account on Twitter on the app?
No we donât, just the people that those people follow.
So essentially my friends have added me by joining the app?
Correct. Thereâs no way for you to appear in the app without someone who follows you going in and stealing you because they bought you and theyâd like you in a collection. Thatâs at least the designed intention and whatâs happened to you is not okay.
Iâll come back to my previous question. Wouldnât it be better to have people adding themselves? Isnât that fairer?
There are advantages to it, but the problem is when youâre just 1,000 people you come in and there isnât anyone interesting for you to steal so you have to bootstrap it some way, and the best way we could think of is the people that you already follow on Twitter. We were hoping, and so far this has been the case, most people are intrigued and find it to be a compliment, which is what the copy was designed to do. We donât say, âOh, I own you now,â like, thatâs not in the app. Thatâs not a thing that we want to do. Itâs gross.
Well, it is in the app at the moment, because obviously it says, âYou own this person now. This person belongs to you.â
We donât say that. Weâre just saying, like, âThis card belongs to you.â Thatâs the intention of it right now.
Iâm looking at the screen right now. It says, âBoom, Holly Brockwell belongs to you now.â Thatâs not a card, thatâs me as a person.
Yes. That- we need to fix that.
So what will it say?
â@Usernameâs Twitter card belongs to youâ, or âstolen card belongs to youâ. We want it to be a representation of who you are.
But youâre not planning to make it opt-in. Itâs always going to be that people can be added without their consent?
We want people to trade the people they follow on Twitter. Youâre not going to be able to play the game if you donât have the app. But yeah, the design intention is you should be able to collect and trade the people that you follow on Twitter.
You donât think itâs a bit weird doing that without those peopleâs permission?
So far we havenât heard much of that, no.
Even if you change the copy within the app so it says âyour card,â it still has a value on it. I seem to have a dollar value attached to my account. What is that based on?
Itâs based on how popular you are and how many people want you in their collection.
So somebody has to pay that amount to be able to steal me.
Correct.
So even if you change the copy then youâre still buying someone.
Uh⊠I donât see-, itâs not-, itâs our fake virtual currency. We donât see it as money at all.
But it has a dollar sign next to it. Of course itâs money.
Itâs actually not a dollar sign.
It looks like one.
It was very intentional to not actually be a dollar sign because itâs not real money. Itâs kind of a social currency that people can use and say, âOkay, I care about this person, and I want to be associated with this person.â
So itâs more like share prices?
Uh, no, we consider it more like your follower count. Like, if you have a lot of followers, and thatâs useful to you, thatâs kind of what weâre trying to do. Weâre trying to make that a fungible currency that you could use to get closer to the people that you care about.
Are Twitter involved? Are they playing the game?
They are playing the game, yeah.
So theyâre okay with it? Theyâre on board with it?
As far as I know, yes.
Thatâs interesting. Obviously youâre relying very heavily on their API, and sometimes when somebody uses their API to do something that theyâre not a fan of, like Meerkat for example, theyâll cut them off. Youâre not worried that thatâs going to happen to you?
So far that doesnât seem to be the case, but Twitter has done things to turn off other peopleâs clients. So that could very well happen to us. We havenât been in contact with anyone at Twitter as to whether they approve or disapprove.
So itâs in your interests to keep Twitter users happy, and part of that is to work really hard on getting the opt-out ready. When are you expecting to have that up?
Today. Weâve been working on it ever since we launched. That is our first priority. Itâs just actually a little bit complicated to do, because everything is tied to everything, so if we remove you we have to make sure youâre fully removed from the system, all your information is gone and you are untradeable, and we need to make sure the form is up.
So right now what Iâm doing is every ticket I see, every tweet I see, I am on it immediately saying, âWe are adding you to our opt-out list right now,â and today it will be done and you will be off and you will never see us again.
Update: The opt-out page is now up, but read our note at the end before using it.
And they get confirmation?
Yes. As you mentioned itâs our interest to keep Twitter users happy, and the truth is if you look through Twitter the masses already find it really interesting. You have Linkin Park playing, JĂ©rĂŽme Jarre, very well-known Twitter people, and they enjoy it because they understand that this is a compliment and itâs a way for fans to show appreciation by having them in their collection, and thatâs absolutely what we designed it for. So itâs up to Twitter users to come in, they come and they play it and they really enjoy it. So thatâs why we have an opt-out versus an opt-in system.
With a lot of products that are developed in Silicon Valley, because itâs a very male-dominated environment, people who develop things like this often donât know what itâs like as a woman or a minority on the internet where you are already targeted and attacked by people a lot, and any platform, no matter how good the intentions, is always open to being used for that kind of thing.
Your platform, it seems to me, is particularly useful for that. For example, when you âownâ somebody you can give them a nickname, and you can write things on their profile. There donât seem to be any swearing filters on there. Youâre able to put all sorts of quite abhorrent things on peopleâs profiles without any kind of filtering. Do you not see that being open to abuse?
I do see that being open to abuse, and that is yet another reason why we are not launching and we are beta invite only. But, I mean, the concept of this is this is a thing that was not designed for this level of traffic. It was not designed for this many people looking at it. It was designed for 1,000 people where we had relatively close ties with them and we could monitor it. So yeah, the nicknames thing is absolutely open to abuse right now, and what weâre working on right now is you should be able to clear your nickname.
If there is an offensive nickname, you should be able to report that, and unlike Twitter we will ban you. I know exactly what youâre talking about. I follow that very intimately, and I am absolutely sympathetic to all of that, and we are not going to be a platform where people like [famous troll]Â or whatever gets to just harass and put offensive names on women. The minute they do that, once we have the tooling in place, they are gone. That is not okay. Thatâs just not part of how we want people to use the product.
Thatâs good, because I think Gamergate and those kinds of people would just jump on it. If Zoe Quinn, for example, was being traded, the things that would be written on her account. I canât even imagine.
You know, I think youâre absolutely right. If we were public, that would happen. And thatâs why weâre not public. The minute that happens, heâs gone. Whoever did that is off the system, the economy is reset, all of their currency is taken away, and they canât do it again.
Is it going to be like Twitter, though, where you can just make another account?
So, thereâs an interesting thing about this -Â you accumulate social currency, right? We call it âsocial currencyâ, not money. So when we ban you, all of your accumulated social currency that made you even be able to collect someone like Zoe Quinn is gone. So itâs not just you could create a new account so you could do that again.
How do you get that currency?
By playing the game, grinding a lot, right, by being active. So itâs a much higher bar than, you know, opening up a new Gmail and signing up for Twitter. Itâs not like that at all.
So theyâd have to work quite hard to be able to buy someone again.
Yeah, and thatâs kind of why weâre excited about what weâre doing with the social currency system. We can do things like moderate and there are real consequences to you violating these rules. If youâve been playing the game for a little bit and you go harass someone, youâre gone, and to even get to that point where you can even have any kind of communication with someone like her itâs a month of work that youâve just thrown away.
And thatâs kind of why weâre excited about this as a new social platform, and why weâre working night and day to do it. Weâve been working as a startup for four years and we have one year runway left, and this is a last-shot experiment that has kind of taken off virally.
It sounds like itâs gone very big very quickly. How did that happen?
We put it out there New Yearâs Eve. We are less than two weeks old. And we started with 100 people. Weâre working day and night because whatâs happening is weâre growing 10x day on day, and we are locking down invites. 40,000 users is not a lot, and is it a lot, but, you know, a couple of hundred thousand downloads is a lot, and thereâs a reason why weâre not letting those people in. We could be making ten times more money today if we just opened it up, and for all the reasons that you listed and what you personally experienced thatâs why itâs not open.
How are you planning to monetise it?
We have in-app purchases that you can purchase more social currency with, so thatâs-
Hang on. You just said that somebody who wants to buy Zoe Quinn has to grind for a month. If they can just pay money to buy her, doesnât that destroy the whole thing?
Uh, well, I mean, you can consider this, though. On Twitter, someone signs up for Gmail, signs up for Twitter, and can harass them. On here, if you have to pay, like, 50 bucks every time, I mean, thatâs a huge-
Yeah, itâs gonna cost you, but itâs possible.
Um, that is true, but, you know, thatâs kind of true of any kind of, any communication platform in the world, and, you know, on Twitter, on Facebook, on anywhere, anyone can do that, like, signing up for a new account and thereâs no bar, and-
And itâs a huge problem.
Thereâs no way to prevent anyone from signing up for a different account at some point, right? Thatâs just, like, an impossible security problem. All anyone can do is make the bar very, very high, and ours is. I canât think of a service that actually has a higher bar than saying, âYou either need to spend a month or you can pull out your credit card and pay 50 bucks just to get your jollies off and harass somebody.â
So that means that youâre taking money from people to allow them to harass somebody, which doesnât put you in a very good position at all.
So if we ban people for harassment, we will not recognise that revenue. But honestly Iâm saying that just thinking about it. You raise a really good point, we should not be profiting out of it. So youâve made me consider something new, yeah.
It wouldnât look great if you were taking money for people to be able to harass others.
I mean, it would be wrong.
So thatâs something youâre going to look into?
We are, absolutely. I mean, it hasnât happened yet, though. Weâre trying to keep it small and build the right tools for it, and as much as I think thereâs a lot of harassment going on, even the threat of having this available to us has made the community relatively well behaved so far. But yeah, in that hypothetical scenario where someone pays 50 bucks just to harass Zoe Quinn, will we profit from that? Do we want to profit from that? No, thatâs not in our interests.
So what would you do in that situation?
We would keep the money and probably donate it, I think is probably the best thing. So donate it to some kind of women in technology organisation. I think thatâs the right thing to do.
Agreed. Can you ban people by IP address? Is there a phone number tied to it or their Apple account?
Yeah. Thereâs multiple gates here, and one of the things that weâre working on putting in place before we go public is, at least for new accounts created after our app is launched, there will be phone number verification before you can get any additional currency and before you can go on the app and harass people.
Weâre an entertainment product that helps people connect with the people that theyâre interested in. We are not a free speech type of platform like Twitter, and we are very comfortable banning any kind of misogynistic harassing, racists, or any problematic kind of speech. Thatâs just not what weâre a platform for. If you want that, use Twitter.
Thatâs good to hear.
Itâs not in our interests. I mean, in defence of Twitter, theyâre about free speech, theyâre a communication platform. I understand why they do it, and so I donât necessarily have an opinion on what they should do, but for us itâs really really clear.
When are you going mainstream?
When we get this huge problem solved. Itâs not just technology. We need to have people in place. We need to have an around-the-clock moderation team monitoring our chat, monitoring our nicknaming, monitoring our wall posts, because we donât want this stuff to happen.
And that takes time. So I canât give you a date, but I can tell you that if we wanted to be ten times, a hundred times our size right now, and making that much more money we could, and weâre choosing not to.
Thatâs a good decision.
And again, I just want to apologise profusely for what you experienced. I follow this stuff closely and I understand everything thatâs happening, and Iâm so sorry.
Thank you, I appreciate that. Thank you for speaking to us.
Opting out of Stolen [updated]
Since our interview, Hey Inc have added a page that allows you to opt out of Stolen.
Originally, this page gave you one option for opting out: authenticating your account through Twitter.
Authenticating originally gave Stolen the following permissions:
After publication of our article, stolen changed the permissions to these:
And after our protests that it is wildly unfair to opt people in without their consent and then demand Twitter authorisation to remove them, Stolen added a second option: you can now send them a DM (their DMs are open, they donât have to follow you) on Twitter to be removed. We would 110% recommend that everyone does this rather than the authentication method - why hand over the keys to your Twitter account if you donât need to?
Iâve already opted out. Iâm not remotely OK with being bought, sold, or stolen on this app. I donât want someone to be able to buy me and someone else to ‘stealâ me like itâs the 1950s and Iâm their property. Iâm a person, not a trading card.
Update:Â Edited to include details of the amended opt-out process and permissions.
Update 2: Stolen tell us theyâve wiped all ‘nicknamesâ from owned accounts on the app, and will not be allowing these in future for accounts that arenât actively playing the game.
Update 3: Stolen has shut down.
