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I am now, officially, opted-out of Readlists ((You should do the same by emailing them.)) and after rejoicing on Twitter, Arc90 employee and Readability lead developer, Philip Forget, responded with a series of tweets. Since so many tweets were wrapped up in the conversation let me show you the series between just me and Forget:

Here’s my [first tweet](https://twitter.com/benjaminbrooks/status/206051792935600128):

>*Finally* Opted-out.

[To which my pal Jonathan Christopher responded](https://twitter.com/benjaminbrooks/status/206052315558453248):

>@BenjaminBrooks have you paved the highway to getting that done? I’d like to follow suit.

[I then quipped](https://twitter.com/philipforget/status/206052683906424832):

>@jchristopher just email them at their feedback link. If you aren’t me it should only take minutes. If you are me, expect a week.

Now that was not nice of me, but it *is* kinda funny if you ask me — and if you follow me on Twitter I am a pretty sarcastic guy. [But here’s where Philip Forget chimed in](https://twitter.com/benjaminbrooks/status/206053225034551296):

>@BenjaminBrooks @jchristopher We have only been out 2 days

Good way to defuse me by clearly showing I was wrong. That was a great response, and [then I responded (again by being a dick)](https://twitter.com/philipforget/status/206053550210560003):

>@philipforget @jchristopher I stand corrected. Me: 48 hours. Rest of the world: 5 minutes.

Ok I was a bit mean with that one, but hey I feel burned by these guys. [Forget then responds](https://twitter.com/benjaminbrooks/status/206053959201333249):

>@BenjaminBrooks @jchristopher You as well as the “Rest of the world”: 1 minute after asking once the functionality was added by me

Now this is the meat on the bone. Forget seems to be admitting that Readlists did not account for the fact that people would not want to be included in this service. Fine, but then why not just tell an annoying ass, like me, that you are working on implementing it and to sit tight. Believe it or not that would have shut me up while I waited for them to add it, [so I asked this question](https://twitter.com/philipforget/status/206054437364572161):

>@philipforget @jchristopher so why not respond to my earlier emails with “we are working on it” instead of silence. Honestly…

I added the “honestly” to try and show that it was a sincere ask and not me being a dick (that doesn’t always work, but I try). That’s pretty reasonable of me to ask, [but here is Forget’s response](https://twitter.com/benjaminbrooks/status/206054675680735233):

>@BenjaminBrooks We tried talking you on _your_ radio show. Are you really this dumb or are you trying to be a human fox news?

Now *that* is a dickheaded response. The “radio show” he is talking about is the live broadcast of the B&B Podcast that Shawn and I do. He tweeted to me offering to have Rich Ziade call in when we were already 55+ minutes into the show. Now, most of you know podcasts don’t go much longer than that — especially not ours. We said on the air that we would love to do that, but that we wanted to talk offline and prepare to have that done on another show — not the one we were just wrapping up.

Anyways, without further comment here is the rest of the Twitter conversation after an Arc90 employee called me “dumb”:

[Me](https://twitter.com/philipforget/status/206054936604184576):

>@philipforget and I told you we would be happy, but aren’t interrupting an in progress show. Still why not answer my earlier emails?

[Forget](https://twitter.com/benjaminbrooks/status/206055259569786880):

>@BenjaminBrooks Your show was talking _about_ realists and you gave a copout excuse about not knowing how to add us in

[Me](https://twitter.com/benjaminbrooks/status/206056060614750209):

>@philipforget Either way we run a professional show that we wanted to wait until we could have a a discussion that we both knew boundaries.

One last thing: my question was never answered.

[Jonathan Poritsky got a small interview with Richard Ziade](http://www.candlerblog.com/2012/05/25/richard-ziade-on-readlists/) (the CEO of Readability/Arc90/Readlists) and asked about whether the service crosses a line. Ziade didn’t answer, so Poritsky (and this made me happy) pressed the question again and this time Ziade tried to frame it against the web in general — which has been the response I get (if I get one). That’s a bullshit answer, the question was directly asked about your service, not the web and as a CEO you need to answer that clearly for your service. Here’s what Ziade told Poritsky as part of the interview:
>Now, we’re not sure how this plays out. Keep in mind, Readlists is an experiment. It’s free. We’d love to talk to publishers and writers about how we can tweak it so they can derive value from it. That’s ultimately what we want to do because the tools we build come out of a love for writing.

He’d love to talk to publishers? I’ve emailed them three times now asking my site be “opted-out” as they call it. I have emailed Ziade several times before. I pinged Ziade, Chris Dary, and Arc90 COO, Bobby Ziade on this matter.

No response.

Bobby Ziade even followed me Wednesday and I DM’d him asking to be opted-out.

Again, no response.

This isn’t a matter of me being impatient because I have copies of emails they have sent to other writers that have asked to be opted-out — at this point it is them actively ignoring my takedown requests.

So it sounds like Ziade is either lying to Poritsky when he said “We’d love to talk to publishers and writers”, or he really means any writer and/or publisher that doesn’t publicly call foul — which is exactly the people they *should* be talking to.

**Update:** I now have confirmation that I have been “opted-out” of Readlists. You should ask for the same (using the feedback link at the bottom of their site, just say “please opt-out [domain name]”).