How is what ADP doing (blocking access to their service from Zenefits so they can sell Opum), any different from what twitter does when it blocks services like meerkat from accessing their service when they want to build a business around periscope? I'm not saying that either organization (ADP or Twitter) is acting benevolently (obviously, they are both acting in a competitive manner) - I'm just trying to see if the two are acting in a similar manner.
As far as I understand Zenefits is doing both screen scraping and manual entry into the ADP systems and they may have never even talked to ADP. So instead of hitting an API directly where ADP may expect a large amount of requests Zenefits is hitting their normal website requesting hundreds or thousands of users every hour.
I would have blocked them too. It looks far too much like malice from the ADP side of things where it could be bot nets or something else versus a legit company.
In terms of Twitter blocking Meerkat - it's the same exact situation. What is different, though, is that Twitter didn't then sue Meerkat for defamation, when Meerkat complained after getting blocked.
Comments
How is what ADP doing (blocking access to their service from Zenefits so they can sell Opum), any different from what twitter does when it blocks services like meerkat from accessing their service when they want to build a business around periscope? I'm not saying that either organization (ADP or Twitter) is acting benevolently (obviously, they are both acting in a competitive manner) - I'm just trying to see if the two are acting in a similar manner.
As far as I understand Zenefits is doing both screen scraping and manual entry into the ADP systems and they may have never even talked to ADP. So instead of hitting an API directly where ADP may expect a large amount of requests Zenefits is hitting their normal website requesting hundreds or thousands of users every hour.
I would have blocked them too. It looks far too much like malice from the ADP side of things where it could be bot nets or something else versus a legit company.
In terms of Twitter blocking Meerkat - it's the same exact situation. What is different, though, is that Twitter didn't then sue Meerkat for defamation, when Meerkat complained after getting blocked.