By Tim Harford
Fat cat bankers swimming in taxpayer subsidies. Oil barons battening on indigenous peoples. Corrupt media moguls poisoning politics. To the familiar gallery of corporate monsters, a new horror has been added: tech jerks making money through parasitic smartphone apps.
The term #JerkTech was minted recently, complete with hashtag, by Josh Constine, a San Francisco-based writer for the technology website TechCrunch. Constine pointed at ReservationHop, which aimed to make reservations at popular restaurants, then sell the reservations on to eager diners; and at MonkeyParking, which allowed people parked in a public parking space to auction it off when they left. (San Francisco’s city attorney had already sent MonkeyParking a cease-and-desist letter threatening substantial fines to users.)
There are several other examples, and it seems that the world was waiting for the word JerkTech, which spread as fast as the latest internet meme – and nothing spreads faster. Before long, both MonkeyParking and ReservationHop announced a pause for reflection.
The outrage was as much a reflection of Silicon Valley’s tarnished image as about these particular business models. Stories have circulated about a misogynistic “brogrammer” culture in some tech firms, while protesters in San Francisco have objected to Google sending free buses to the city to pick up employees, thus driving up rents. Constine himself made the link between JerkTech apps and contemptible behaviour elsewhere. As with bankers, oilmen and newspaper proprietors, the debate is emotionally charged by the broader sense that technology companies may not have our best interests at heart.
At the risk of injecting a dose of logic into the debate, it seems worth asking what exactly is objectionable about JerkTech apps themselves.
What are the common features?
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