Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

What you are doing is basically deriving monetary benefit from the considered act of deliberately manipulating people's views on behalf of corporate interests.

That is not only morally wrong, but it is disgusting that you attempt to justify it as completely normal and right through allusion to 'monetization'.

(Telling example - monetization of hatred: http://www.jrbooksonline.com/PDF_Books/AP.pdf)



> What you are doing is basically deriving monetary benefit from the considered act of deliberately manipulating people's views on behalf of corporate interests.

No way. Even we are users too. We have family members who are not as tech savvy as us. We are not doing anything deliberately. In fact, if we are deceiving users then it won't be advertising. We are equally concerned of maintaining sanctity of advertising. We (as a startup) don't work with news websites. But we strongly believe ads should be clearly marked as "advertising". Even people were concerned about Google's sponsored results (adwords). But it worked fine. Mark Suster wrote excellent blogpost on this topic - http://www.bothsidesofthetable.com/2009/11/22/the-case-for-i...


> (whole lot of tangents with no actual response)

Pragmatically, you do seem to be in the right industry.




Consider applying for YC's Winter 2026 batch! Applications are open till Nov 10

Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: