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If it werent for Signal, Venmo might be the most infamous app of the Trump administrationand maybe the most beloved among journalists covering this White House. Thats not because of any Trump staffers clumsiness, like the one that led national security advisor Mike Waltz to accidentally add Atlantic editor Jeffrey Goldberg to a Signal chat group set up to discuss military strikes against Houthi terrorists. With the PayPal-owned payments app, the blame (or credit) goes to its default setting of making users friends lists public. Vice President JD Vance ran afoul of that in July, when Wired identified the Venmo account of then-Sen. Vance (R-Ohio) and found 211 names on his friends list: a mix of tech executives, politicians, and journalists. Wired repeated the exercise in March for Waltz and found 328 Venmo friends covering a similar range of Washington society. And on Tuesday, NOTUS reported that among more than 50 current lawmakers, more than 20 former members of Congress, and more than three dozen current Trump administration officials and nominees whose Venmo accounts the site identified over a week of research, almost everyone had their friends lists open to the public. It just keeps happening, says Sara Collins, director of government affairs at the Washington-based digital-rights group Public Knowledge. Who does this serve? Venmo has historically defended this default as part of its social nature, much like it once made transactions public by default, despite vocal criticism. That payment publicity persisted even after Venmo settled a Federal Trade Commission investigation into that and other alleged deceptive conduct. Venmo didnt remove the public transactions feed until 2021. PayPal spokesperson Erin Mackey responded to Fast Company with a statement similar to what the company has offered in previous stories about Venmo privacy. The privacy and safety of Venmo users are top priorities, she wrote. Venmo provides in-app education and easy-to-use privacy settings to put users in control of who their friends lists are shared with or whether they appear in other users lists at all. Her statement ended with a line that departs slightly from prior responses: Were always listening to our customers to strengthen and evolve the Venmo platform while staying true to the social aspects theyve come to know and love. Privacy advocates find Venmos public friends-list default nearly as troubling as the old public transactions feed. Its not a good practice, says Collins. I have no idea whose interest it serves to be publicexcept, she adds, for law enforcement and national-security investigators, who could find it hugely useful. The Trump administrations immigration crackdownone that has targeted politically active students here on visasmay give government investigators even more reasons to inspect public Venmo data. I can think of a million ways, but I also don’t want to give them a million ideas about how to use this data, says Reem Suleiman, U.S. advocacy lead with the Mozilla Foundation, the nonprofit behind the Firefox browser that has published multiple critiques of Venmos privacy settings. Venmos overall utility to government investigations remains unclear because PayPal has yet to follow the practice of other tech firmseven X, after a lapse following Elon Musks purchase of what was then Twitterby publishing a transparency report documenting its responses to government queries. Any company that holds sensitive user data should publish a thorough transparency report, says Gennie Gebhart, managing director of technology at the San Francisco-based digital-liberties nonprofit Electronic Frontier Foundation. Users deserve a basic level of insight into how the company handles government requests for that kind of information. A setting thats not obvious to surface The setting can be easy to overlook because other payment apps dont make your social graph public. Collins calls Venmo a kind of strange outlier in that respect. To check this in your own account: Open Venmos mobile app (the web interface doesnt present this setting), tap the Me button at bottom right, tap the gear icon at top right, tap Privacy, tap Friends List, and select Private. Venmo didnt even offer that privacy option for years; EFF called out the company for its absence in 2019, and only added it in 2021 after BuzzFeed News identified former president Joe Bidens account. You can also choose not to appear in the friends lists of people who havent changed this default (and who may have only added you because they accepted Venmos invitation to import their entire contacts list). To do that, deselect Appear in other users friends lists beneath the friends-list publicity setting. This last privacy option is also less than self-evident, Suleiman admits: I didn’t know that until I saw your questions. Venmo did not answer a question about how many of its users have changed their friends-list defaults. If public figures and elected officials with security teams can’t figure out Venmo’s settings, then we know that regular people just trying to pay for everything from rent to medical treatments are vulnerable, too, says Gebhart. Icky but not illegal But while all of these experts judged Venmos conduct distasteful and unhelpful, they also suggested it wasnt the makings of a legal case. Is it bad in the legal sense? No, says Collins. You put it in the terms of service, technically theyre notified. In late November, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau finalized a rule that would empower the agency to supervise digital-payment appsincluding how they protect the privacy of thei customers data. But Republicans in Congress are moving quickly to quash that rule under the Congressional Review Act. The Senate has already voted to scrap it, with the House set to do so soon. Outside Washington, the California Consumer Privacy Act provides much stronger privacy protections. But Collins says its provisions mainly focus on companies sending your data elsewhere. The California law is very concerned about selling data without your consent, or transferring data without your consent, she explains. There is no transfer here. The California Privacy Protection Agency, tasked with enforcing the CCPA, says it cant comment on potential or ongoing investigations. But in any case, state-level privacy laws offer no help to people living in other states. Which means Venmos lax defaults also expose a larger defect in the U.S.the continued inability of Congress to pass a comprehensive federal privacy law, no matter how many examples surface to show one might help. To say that Venmo isn’t breaking the law here isn’t saying much, generally speaking, in the U.S., says Suleiman.
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E-Commerce
Branded is a weekly column devoted to the intersection of marketing, business, design, and culture. For years, Target wore the halo among big-box retail brands: It may not have been the cheapest, but Tar-zhay offered solid value, often through collaborations with top designers, while enjoying a forward-looking and enlightened reputation. But its become increasingly clear that for many shoppers, the halo has been passedto Costco. And its paying off for the big-box club chain. The proximate cause of this divergence seems clear enough. Decisions made by Target to pull back on diversity, equity, and inclusion practices, which included efforts to explicitly support Black-owned brands and welcome LGBTQ+ consumers, alienated some of its regulars. Meanwhile, Costco reaffirmed its own DEI commitments as simply good for business and while that sparked some boycott chatter in the anti-woke mob, it didnt amount to much. Simultaneously, the big-box club chain has put a fresh emphasis on putting higher-end in its bargain mix, including literal gold bars. Targets initial announcement that it was paring back DEI initiatives sparked immediate complaints and boycott vowsand a notable chunk of those disaffected consumers seem to be sticking to their guns. In a recent report on DEI cuts impact on retail, analytics firm Numerator estimated that Target drew almost 5 million fewer store visits in a four-week stretch ending in February compared to the year before. Costco, in contrast, enjoyed 7.7 million more visits in the same stretch. The report pointed out that DEI-sensitive groups were a notable contributor to the trend. Latino shoppers, for example, made up about a third of Costcos gains. Placer.ai data found that Target overall foot traffic dropped 9% in February and 6.5% in March; and it appears to be continuing to fall. A Forbes report citing data from analytics firm Similarweb found that a February 28 economic blackout aimed at boycotting major retailers and consumer companies that have signaled less commitment to DEI caused Targets web traffic to drop a reported 9%with Costcos rising 22%. A group of Black faith leaders even called for a Target shopping fast for the entirety of Lent. (Target, which did not respond to an inquiry from Fast Company, has been muted in its response; it has pointed to fourth quarter 2024 results claiming a slight uptick in online and foot traffic, and has emphasized ongoing efforts to foster inclusive work and guest environments that welcome all.) While Walmart has also been a boycott target, these reports have so far found that there’s been less impact on Walmart from its own plans to scale back DEI efforts, and that may be because it never experienced a social-values halo. Walmart, instead, has always aligned its brand strictly with low prices. Similarly, Amazons price-and-convenience identity doesnt seem to have suffered from its own DEI pullback. So perhaps it’s not that Target is less progressive than those rivals, but that it was perceived, by design, as having promised to do more. Its also now been hit from both sides: first, criticized by the anti-diversity crowd for its Pride-friendly merch and now, by shoppers who perceive it as having backed down. Theres certainly anecdotal evidence to back the idea that Costco has benefitted from embracing DEI while others have backed off. In one Reddit thread on the subject, a veteran Costco shopper reports the lines for new member sign-up were 10-15 people deep. I’ve never seen more than 2 or 3 people signing up at a time. Another agreesand proceeds to complain about the resulting paucity of parking spaces, and to suggest that Costco up its membership fee. As for Target, while it might be seen as backtracking on diversity, its sticking with other elements of its established brand, like those designer team-ups. A line of Kate Spade clothing, bags, and accessories for Target drops this weekend, aiming squarely at the chains stylish bargain sweet spot. It could prove a test of some shoppers boycott commitment. Costco hasnt hinted at any plans to match that strategy, but it has cultivated its reputation for offering comparative bargains on luxe goods including Rolex watches, Dom Pérignon, 10-carat diamonds, as the companys board chair recently said. But even this is positioned as an extension of Costcos longstanding find-a-deal treasure hunt image, with discount prices at its core. With tariffmageddon looming over the American shopping sceneand causing Walmart and other retailers to gird themselves for uncertaintythats the brand attribute thats likely to mean the most to Costco and its shoppers. And if a reputation for sticking to its principles gets thrown in too, well, thats an even better bargain.
Category:
E-Commerce
Last month I posted a job description on our blog for a chief of staff role at my venture capital firm, Graham & Walker. Turns out, that job description really hit a nerve. Within an hour, more than a hundred candidates had put their hat in the ring and filled out the long Google form that served as our only form of application. Quickly overwhelmed by the interest, I asked everyone I knew for tips on how to review all those applications most efficiently. They recommended several tools, from LLMs to custom built. I was deep in research when something happened that made me change my mind. Our Google form included an optional field for anything else youd like to share. And thats where I saw what one applicant wrote: Applying for jobs is so dehumanizing. In that moment, I decided that if someone was going to take the time to thoughtfully fill out my Google form, I was going to do my best to read it. I dont hire often. I decided that this time, I would take no shortcuts. And that is how I ended up spending an entire week reading 597 job applications for one open role at Graham & Walker. Not scrolling. Not AI-prompting. Not keyword searching. Actual reading. I do realize this is not normal. Most peoplemost general partners, most hiring managersdo not do this. They cant, and they probably shouldnt. To be honest, I dont think I will be able to do anything like this ever again. But for me, and for this moment in time, it felt like time well spent. It was an experience I will never forget. A very manual hiring process To be clear, I didnt review 597 resumés. I reviewed 597 candidates answers to four open-ended questions: 1. Why do you want to work in venture capital? 2. Why do you want to work at Graham & Walker? 3. Why are you the best person for this role? 4. Anything else you want us to know? I read as fast as I could, slowing down whenever something really grabbed my attention. And based on those, I decided whether to look at the resumé. Out of 597 applicants, I clicked on 174 resumes. Two of my colleagues also reviewed around 200 applicants each. We gave a score to each one, selected the top scorers, and narrowed the field down to 15 finalists. Those candidates did a first interview. Seven moved on to a second interview. Three moved on to a third, and final, round. By which point, I could see us working with any of them. They were truly that amazingso much so that I was sad I couldnt hire all three. In the end, we made an offer to a stellar candidate and she accepted. What job seekers should know Lets be realthis process isnt sustainable, let alone scalable. Most hiring managers wont do what I did, especially in the age of AI. Job seekers should be aware of that. That being said, one crucial tip I would share is to know your audience. Just like we tell founders to research investors before they pitch, job seekers should research companies before they apply. If youre applying to high headcount organizations, your resumé needs the right keywords. But for smaller organizations, you cant rely on that same resumé to tell your story. Some of the best answers came from people with the least polished or traditional resumés. And others packed both resumé power and answers that jumped off the page. Theres a big difference between someone who wants a job and someone who wants this job. That may not matter as much to employers hiring hundreds or thousands of people every year. But for a high-impact, high-trust role at a pre-seed VC fund like mine, it makes a world of difference. Another lesson? Hundreds of you bring to the table a unique combination of strategy and execution. I lost count of how many times I read that. Perhaps not quite so unique after all? What hiring managers should know AI is changing how we work, fund, and build. But some decisions still require a human touchand hiring is one of them. Behind every application is a real person, with a real story. And if we want to build real companies, we cant afford to lose sight of that. I could only hire one person this time. But reading 597 applications reminded me that talent is everywhere. It forced me to slow down and pay attention. To read between the lines. To notice the difference between qualified on paper and eager to contribute. To consider the people who have the right attitude, not just the right experience. And to remember that raw talent, enthusiasm, grit, effort, and authenticity are just as valuable as credentialssometimes more. In venture, we talk about backing people, not companies. This was the hiring version of that. It wasnt the most efficient process. But its one Ill never forget. This story originally appeared on Leslie Feinzaigs Blind Spots Substack. Subscribe to it here.
Category:
E-Commerce
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