"It's obviously not in the spirit of the experiment," Stark tells Mashable of Odio's card exploit. "It's not what the money was put there for. The point of this is to be wide open and trusting, and to expect the best of people. If [Odio] thinks this is good, and that people will see it that way, it's up to him to decide."
Stark launched Jonathan's Card on July 14 as a social adaptation of the "take a penny, leave a penny" concept. More than 500 people had donated a total of $8,700 as of Wednesday.
Odio, who describes Stark's social media experiment as "yuppies buying yuppies coffee," created a script -- which he's also made publicly available via Github -- that alerts him whenever the card balance reaches a certain level.
"For the last week I (and others) have been using this script to transfer donated money off Jonathan's card and onto our own Starbucks gift cards. It's easy: just head to your local Starbucks, pop open your computer, run this script, and when the music plays, cash in," Odio writes. Now, Odio is selling the $625 Starbucks Card on eBay with the reported intention of donating the proceeds to Save The Children.
Stark says that he's aware of the script and has been alerted that others are taking similar actions. But, he doesn't believe it's his place to shut down the experiment or stop publicizing the card's balance. "There's nothing I can do," he says. "I believe that people get what they deserve, good or bad," Stark concludes.
With the script readily available to all, the feel-good experiment, which Stark had hoped would bring out the best in people, may start to bring out the worst in some.
Odio's site has been up and down following an influx of traffic after he shared the blog post on Hacker News. The full text of his post is included below.
