Posted by1 year ago
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Back in 2014 I was using brainscape as my primary way of creating and learning flashcards. I made hundreds of cards on the site and used it until I found Anki. Not only was Anki open source, It had a way better interface and the android app was amazing. So, I switched pretty much as soon as I found it.
But, when I wanted to export my cards, I noticed they were locked behind a paywall of pro features. After a short email exchange brainscape agreed to give me the pro features so I could download my old decks and that was the last I'd heard of braiinscape until last week.
I got and email in my inbox saying that someone was enjoying one of my decks on brainscape. I thought this was odd because I had never made any of my decks public and wouldn't have made them in the first place if I knew other people could see them. Sure enough, when I logged on to the site all of my cards were public each with dozens of people using them. I had never ever explicitly set the cards to public so I immediately asked brainscape what had happened.
This was their response:
The content has always been publicly available via URL, although not searchable within Brainscape itself. With the release of PRO, users have the option to completely set their contents completely private. Contents will still be searchable within Brainscape but other learners have to 'request' for access from the admin or owner of the class.
Just a quick note - not all classes from all users are searchable. Only the very best stuff gets shown in search so most user content is private. For example, there may be 20,000 anatomy classes in Brainscape. But you can only see the top 50 through the search tool in Brainscape. The other 19,950 cannot be accessed through search. You can also change your class name to something less 'searchable.' And change your name to a nick name for more privacy.
In non-bs speak: When my cards were created they were unlisted, now they are public.
What makes it worse is that when I logged on, my cards were being used to make more people sign up for the site. They have something similar to pinterest where they block part of the deck before you sign up/login.
The way brainscape has acted here seems so crazy it's hard to believe. It would be like google suddenly making all your Gdocs searchable from the web, without asking/telling you. There is no reason to still be using brainscape, your content is, maybe without your consent, driving sales to their platform. Anki is 100% free and open source and has the exact same features.
TL;DR: Brainscape is a decptive company that has recently turned your cards public without your consent and is now making money off them. Use Anki!
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