INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Twitter today announced it was acquiring the &trust and safety as a service& startupSmyteto help it better address issues related to online
abuse, harassment, spam, and security on its platform
But it also decided to immediately shut down access to Smyte API without warning, leaving Smyte existing customers no time to transition to
a new service provider.
The change left Smyte current customer base stranded, with production issues related to the safety of their own
platforms.
Needless to say, many were not happy about this situation and took to Twitter to register their complaints.
According to Smyte
website, its clients includedIndiegogo, GoFundMe, npm, Musical.ly, TaskRabbit, Meetup, OLX, ThredUp, YouNow, 99 Designs, Carousell, and
Zendesk & big name brands that used Smyte feature set in a variety of ways to combat fraud, abuse, harassment, scams, spam, and other
security issues.
While Twitter had earlier told TechCrunch that it would be &winding down& Smyte business with existing clients, what that
apparently meant was that it was going to announce the acquisition, then effectively shut off the lights over at Smyte and leave everyone in
the lurch.
According to reports from those affected, Smyte disabled access to its API with very little warning to clients, and without
giving them time to prepare
Customers got a phone call, and then & boom & the service was gone
Clients had multi-year contracts in some cases.
And again, to reiterate, Smyte is a provider of anti-abuse and anti-fraud protections & not
something any business would shut off overnight.
In npm case, it even led to a production outage.
Twitter declined to comment, but we
understand it was making phone calls to affected Smyte customers today to match them with new service providers.
The decision to smite smyte
an existing customer base the minute the startup joined Twitter isn&t a good look for either company, and is especially ironic in light of
Twitter promises of &trust and safety& improvements in the months to come.
Trust, huh
That how it works
Holy shit Twitter bought Smyte and
We had a 3 years contract with them and they just disappeared overnight
No communication at all, they just turned their servers off, closed our shared support channel and walked away
What the actual fuck
— Giacomo Gatelli (@arthens) June 21, 2018
»Trust and safety as a service«, they said
Now @Twitter owns @HelloSmyte, and trust is down the drain
Shutting down their services immediately, not giving their customers any grace period to adjust
Thought #Smyte was better than that #massivedisgrace
https://t.co/ttXmLNg3qb
— Ekaterina Damer (@ekadamer) June 21, 2018
Wait…so did
@HelloSmyte just shut down it's service entirely today with no warning after @Twitter bought them What about their customers that rely on
them for advanced moderation and the safety of their platforms #smyte
— Michael Ehinger (@MichaelEhinger) June 21, 2018
A vendor
notified us of their acquisition at 6am this morning and shut down their APIs 30 minutes later, creating a production outage for npm
(package publishes and user registrations)
The sheer unprofessionalism of this is blowing my mind.
— Laurie Voss (@seldo) June 21, 2018
It takes weeks to negotiate and sign an
You didn't find out at 6am
You couldn't give us a week Even a couple of hours to take your service out of our critical path and avoid an outage Fucking shocking
behavior.
— Laurie Voss (@seldo) June 21, 2018
Damage is done already anyway
We had the same experience; luckily we were only using them in an async capacity so it didn't take us offline.
— Jeff Goldschrafe
(@jgoldschrafe) June 21, 2018
#smyte pic.twitter.com/SAPnHxdyMU
— theredwarrior (@theredwarrior) June 21, 2018
from
https://t.co/oarjqaRFlr:
"Twitter tells us that Smyte will wind down its operations with those customers including Indiegogo, GoFundMe,
npm"
https://t.co/5iCSzLP5D1
— Adam Perry (@dika10sune) June 21, 2018
Hey @HelloSmyte , it's a massive bummer that you couldn't give
your customers any notice before turning everything off
Is there anything you can do to help us out
— Dennis Hotson (@dennishotson) June 21, 2018
Thanks for just shutting off service at 615am
this morning with 7 minutes notice.
— Curtis Schofield (@curtisjennings) June 21, 2018
