I don't see anything unethical about Superhuman using something that's part of the platform for literally every other business email application (as the author mentions: Salesforce, Mailchimp, etc). Sure it's a little creepy, but this is a silly hill to die on.
The author compares tracking email opens and locations with looking into your neighbor's window and seeing them naked. What's different about the latter is that it's actually illegal (look up "peeping tom laws"). Storing someone's public IP address and using it to guess their location is not illegal, and shouldn't be -- we have massively faster internet from things like DNS targeting that do exactly that.
If you're going to go after people for tracking user locations then there are much bigger fish in the sea than Superhuman.
Are other people doing it? -- So that is a reasonable test for ethical behavior? Wow. Other platforms similarly unethical behavior is NOT justification for lack of ethics. That might be a financial argument, but it is absolutely not a reasonable approach to ethics.
Legal vs. illegal is also not an appropriate basis for proper behavior. I think if we all used that standard for our personal interactions society would rapidly descend into chaos.
The behaviour of others is absolutely something that should be considered when deciding if something is acceptable behaviour.
Acceptable behaviour in a mosh pit is not acceptable behaviour in a grocery store check out line, because of how others are already acting and the pre established norms.
Ethics is not all that relative. Does SuperHuman allow tracking pixels for INCOMING emails from non-SH users by default? That would at least be non-hypocritical.
Wait...so "tracking email opens and locations" is different from "looking into your neighbor's window" because the former is legal, but then you mention that email tracking is illegal?
The author compares tracking email opens and locations with looking into your neighbor's window and seeing them naked. What's different about the latter is that it's actually illegal (look up "peeping tom laws"). Storing someone's public IP address and using it to guess their location is not illegal, and shouldn't be -- we have massively faster internet from things like DNS targeting that do exactly that.
If you're going to go after people for tracking user locations then there are much bigger fish in the sea than Superhuman.
EDIT: It looks like GDPR does go after the big fish here, which is email tracking in general: https://www.gdpreu.org/compliance/email-tracking/
> In its current prevailing form, we expect email tracking to be categorically prohibited under the GDPR without express user consent.