Startup says it wants to fight poverty, but a food stamp giant is blocking it
The government gives food stamps to poor people (good). The stamps are replaced by an electronic debit card system (good). The government outsources the food stamp/debit card management to a private contractor, Conduent (not inherently bad in a capitalist society). Conduent make an app (good).The startup, Propel, makes their own app, and uses the Conduent database through an API (good). Many users like Propel's app (good), and it becomes more popular than Conduent's app.Conduent controls the database, and tries to block Propel from database access (rude, possibly anti-competitive). Their reasoning is that Propel are making too many API requests ("a capacity ambush"). Propel turns to mass media to defend themselves (rude, possibly libellous).If I trusted the government, I'd recommend that they take back control of their database, and offer it as Open Data. In the meantime, I think Propel should scrape the data from Conduent and run their own servers so they're not vulnerable to API blocks. The Internet is great, but we can't always expect servers to keep working (for political reasons like this, or technical ones), and that's one reason I dislike the shift from the Digital Hub to Cloud Subscription business models.