Superhuman says it is removing location tracking, deleting location data, turning read statuses off by default, and building an option to disable remote images
or even an easy opt-out. Anil Dash / @anildash : Notably, this response is far more measured and reasonable than many responses from investors — including investors who have not (apparently) invested in the company? Good advice is helping you solve a problem, not denying something is a problem. @mikeindustries deserves thanks. Anil Dash / @anildash : This is a pretty good response. Kudos for taking the time to get it right & mention specific, concrete fixes. Minor points off for apologizing for how people “feel”, vs introducing a risk. https://twitter.com/... Gina Trapani / @ginatrapani : No I am not an investor in Superhuman though I had a friendly onboarding with @rahulvohra I've been a happy user - with the exception of being creeped by location-tracking in read receipts - and I'm glad for this response Gina Trapani / @ginatrapani : Judge software not by whether it has bugs, but how quickly and effectively its makers respond to them https://blog.superhuman.com/ ... Ben Adida / @benadida : This is a very good response, both in actions taken, and in ownership of the response. I hope other privacy advocates take note and reward this kind of response. Now we need to debate whether this pixel tracking stuff is ok more broadly, even when senders opt in. https://twitter.com/... Todd Goldberg / @toddg777 : The Superhuman team is already making changes to address the recent privacy concerns that emerged in the last few days around read statuses. That was fast. https://twitter.com/... Robert Stephens / @rstephens : For those who thought this a “nontroversy”... https://twitter.com/... Nilay Patel / @reckless : A good privacy law would be a boon to a startup like Superhuman:- They wouldn't have wandered into this mess, since the rules would just be written down- They wouldn't have to worry about a shadier competitor just doing the bad thing anyway- Limits breed creativity Majd Taby / @jtaby : At first I was like “Read receipts are omnipresent and every marketing email has tracking pixels”, then @mikeindustries's post was so well thought out and articulate it made me reconsider, and this is a good response. All of it was pretty reasonable. https://twitter.com/... Josh Constine / @joshconstine : I appreciate Superhuman's changes, but the problem is recipients don't know they're tracked, and it's still not going to warn them https://twitter.com/... Nilay Patel / @reckless : It's a good walkback by Superhuman, but the call for the industry to come together on privacy rules cracks me up, because we've gotten to the point where there are now startups effectively calling for increased privacy regulation https://www.theverge.com/... Dan Nguyen / @dancow : Yes this comes after a scathing critique by @mikeindustries, but it's still nice to see a company listen and change course if necessary https://twitter.com/... Dieter Bohn / @backlon : Superhuman is super sorry https://www.theverge.com/... Dan Seifert / @dcseifert : as for why read receipts exist at all, the company's blog explains that customers that pay this much for an email client demand it, which is what I said yesterday https://twitter.com/... pic.twitter.com/cVyBmBwatl Martin Sfp Bryant / @martinsfp : Bravo, @rahulvohra - the right choice (and really, the only choice) https://twitter.com/... Dan Seifert / @dcseifert : Superhuman will disable read receipts by default and more importantly, remove the location tracking entirely, the latter of which never made any sense. https://www.theverge.com/... John S. Wilson / @johnwilson : Hard to believe they launched this product in the current environment without considering the consequences of this kind of tracking, invasiveness and lack of transparency. https://twitter.com/... John Lilly / @johnolilly : very good response from @rahulvohra and @superhuman https://twitter.com/... Alex Konrad / @alexrkonrad : Bravo on listening and taking decisive action 👏👏👏 @hunterwalk : 4⃣ Because I trust @rahulvohra to continue designing a product that takes all sorts of feedback into accounthttps://t.co/NH7aWCdPi9 https://twitter.com/... Greg Isenberg / @gregisenberg : Rahul being a superhuman 🙏 https://twitter.com/... Rat King / @mikeisaac : this is a very thoughtful and measured response Mike Monteiro / @monteiro : Beware of companies who only do the right thing when they've been caught. https://twitter.com/... Jesse von Doom / @jessevondoom : ...or maybe they turn on startups when they first see ethical issues they don't want to propagate? This feels like progress towards a world where people actually care about the impact of tech and are starting to understand the Facebook style grift that broadly erodes culture? https://twitter.com/... Antonio García Martínez / @antoniogm : The @Superhuman tempest-in-a-teapot is the entire ‘privacy’ debate in microcosm: comically ferocious, mysteriously capricious (why now? why them?), and largely futile (HTML in email isn't going away, neither are geo IP lookups). Susan Fowler / @susanthesquark : Yes, email marketing products allow companies to do this, but that's for companies, not individuals. I expect emails from PR people to have tracking, so I leave them unopened. I don't expect that the email I get from a VC or a writer or a friend will be tracking my location. John Lilly / @johnolilly : I personally find tracking pixels pretty obnoxious (and asked Rahul to make it optional awhile back, which he did). I changed one of my accounts on SH, and forgot to do the other one. I do think that the point about white males caring less about this is a good one. Walt Mossberg / @waltmossberg : This is a well written, important post about how companies can bake in unethical behavior from the start. It also criticizes the @nytimes, where I first read about @Superhuman, but saw nothing this good about its privacy theft policy. https://mikeindustries.com/... @kottke : Great post by @mikeindustries about the ethics of Superhuman, an email service that compiles “a running log of every single time you have opened my email, including your location when you opened it” w/o opt-in by the recipient. https://mikeindustries.com/... Caroline Criado Perez / @ccriadoperez : Just taking a wild stab in the dark here that this email start up that reveals your location every time you open an email has close to zero women in their design team.... https://twitter.com/... https://twitter.com/... @dhh : This is how it's supposed to work! When your influence and impact grows, your obligations and responsibilities do too. An Uber running a 5-car MVP does not get or deserve the scrutiny of a $50-billon Uber. But SV has a tendency to go tribal and just think “they're out to get us!” https://twitter.com/... Tara Vancil / @taravancil : My analysis of @Superhuman is that if you use it or other email pixel-tracking (especially for personal use) you're probably not the kind of person I'd invite over for dinner https://twitter.com/... @kamilah : it's just so obvious that all the folks saying y'all are making a big deal out of nothing new have never had a stalker before https://twitter.com/... Sara Mauskopf / @sm : Oh damn just read this post and it is 🔥. I am adding this to my must-read list for folks who want to get into product management. https://twitter.com/...
Context & Ripple Effects
Superhuman's retreat comes four days after Mike Industries documented how the $30/month app embedded read receipt tracking pixels in outgoing mail and blocked users from disabling image loading — scrutiny that landed just a week after its $33M Series B led by Andreessen Horowitz at a $260M valuation. The timing matters: a company selling exclusivity to fewer than 15,000 users was caught surveilling the people its customers email.
The response — deleting location data, killing location tracking, defaulting read statuses off, and building a remote-image disable option — is an attempt to contain the story before it threatens the growth narrative behind that fresh funding.
First-order effects
- Recipients of Superhuman-sent email immediately lose the invisible location and read-status reporting that previously flowed back to senders without their knowledge or consent.
- Superhuman's own paying users gain control they never had: read receipts off by default and, once shipped, the ability to block remote images from loading in incoming mail.
Second-order effects
- Mike Industries' follow-up five days later showed the fixes were partial — recipients still had no way to know their actions were tracked, keeping pressure on Superhuman to make the image-blocking option real rather than promised.
- Other premium email clients now face the same test: if a flagship subscription product can be shamed into defaulting tracking off, silent read-receipt features across the category become a liability rather than a differentiator.
Third-order effects
- For subscription-first products, the episode sketches a structural rule: charging users does not exempt you from recipient consent, and trust becomes part of the product surface itself — a company valued on growth can be forced to ship privacy defaults by public critique alone.
- If the pattern holds, email tracking shifts from an always-on sender feature to an explicit, disclosed choice — moving the industry toward recipient-side visibility over sender-side surveillance.
The trend: Premium consumer software is being pushed from surveillance-by-default toward privacy-by-default, with public accountability — not regulation — setting the pace.