Keep your #hatespeech off my Gadget

A couple of years ago, somebody had a great idea. He poured his heart and soul into it, nursed it through from design to prototype to crowdfunding. This was his baby and he was proud of it.

But, as is always the way with stories, this hero came across a villain, and unfortunately, that's where his problems started.

Because the villain was a customer. A rather irate customer who, having spent $99 on an IoT promise of an easier life, actually expected the darn thing to work. And who was, not unsurprisingly, hacked off when it didn't. 

Now, the Amazon one-star review was bad enough. The verified customer's one line comment sums up his frustration as well as his  expectations. The fact that over 1000 people found the review helpful can't have made our hero happy either.

But the villain went further. Not satisfied with a rapidly viral review on Amazon, he posted in the startup's community forum as well.

Our hero drew out his trusty sword of customer support....

...and bricked the customer's device. Shut it down. Denied access to the corporate servers.

It was an ex-gadget. It had ceased to be.

The customer went from not being able to register his garage door via the IoT app on his smartphone, to potentially not being able to access his garage, depending on whether the door was locked or unlocked at the time that connectivity got disconnected.

Ouch.

So what have we learnt from this? Other than having a bright idea does not make you a suitable candidate to run your own customer service department?

Well, for starters, safe spaces now seem to include the community fora of millennial startups. Which means, apart from any concerns raised by the EFF, we consumers need to do our due diligence on the likelihood of the suppliers of IoT devices shutting them down if we're not their idea of good people. 

We're already seeing a seismic shift in society, with very vocal minority groups attempting to enforce a form of mob intimidation through social media. We're seeing advertisers, companies and government departments rolling over and clamping down on free speech, We need to stand firm for diversity of opinion and diversity of thought now, before a true underclass is created.

Because we all know who'll be in that underclass. And we know what happens to the underclass when thought policing takes over.

Welcome to a journey into some very interesting times.