‘Jonathan’s Card’ project hacked — for good?
Will all the crowd sourced free help donate for x spare change feel good buddy campaigns eventually make us so cynical that we put our good Samaritan selves into straight jackets while on the internet?
Sam Odio, a serial entrepreneur who previously sold his photo startup Divvyshot to Facebook, has manipulated Jonathan Stark’s now-famous communal Starbucks Card to transfer $625 of the balance to his own Starbucks Card.
In a blog post entitled, “How to use Jonathan’s card to buy yourself an iPad,” Odio describes the exploit and makes a case for himself as a modern day Robin Hood ? taking the money donated by others for coffee purchases and donating it to charity instead. Stark, however, isn’t buying it.
“It’s obviously not in the spirit of the experiment,” Stark tells Mashable of Odio’s card exploit. “It’s not what the money was put there for. The point of this is to be wide open and trusting, and to expect the best of people. If [Odio] thinks this is good, and that people will see it that way, it’s up to him to decide.”
For more on how there’s a light side and dark side to the internet I’ll refer you to Jonathan Zittrain’s book.