

Has web 2.0 made lying to users acceptable? - amichail

An example of a common lie would be to give the user the impression that some of their data is visible to others while this is not actually the case.<p>Another example is to give the user the impression that the site is busier than it is really is via fake profiles/data.<p>What other sorts of lies do web 2.0 services use?<p>Taking this further: suppose you don't feel bad at all about lying to your users.  What sorts of lies would you use?
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pie
I often see "social media" sites hiring users (via Craigslist's writing
section or Mechanical Turk) to create accounts and engage in some baseline
level of participation. I know there's the old chicken-and-egg issue when
working toward critical mass on a community site, but something about hiring
scads of primarily-disinterested users seems a little dirty and dishonest to
me.

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gommm
It depends on your intent if it's only hiring those users to get some first
users or if you hire them to have a baseline level of participation so as to
get feedback and find bugs you wouldn't find otherwise....

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madair
I think some citations would be in order.

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xiaoma
_"An example of a common lie would be to give the user the impression that
some of their data is visible to others while this is not actually the case."_

Reddit really, really angered me this way. I continued writing comments for
about a month before realizing they were invisible to everyone else. While I
was logged in, though, the site displayed them. I was absolutely shocked at
the level of deception and dishonesty.

How many others were similarly tricked into thinking they were actually
communicating with the online community?

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gommm
I didn't know any website doing that... Is it because something triggered
their spam detection? (I mean I don't see the point otherwise of doing that to
a user)

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sachmanb
hate to break it to you but politics=coercion and capitalism=exploitation

it is our wisdom, good will and such that pushes politics to be less coercive
and capitalism to be less exploitative while getting by but to be very
successful at either requires the opposite.

which is all to say, the fundamental architectures of our societies are
designed against us.

let me know if you find a solution :)

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eru
Could you help me find the connection to the original submission?

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sachmanb
sure, the poster seems to be under the impression that lying to get business
is something new in web 2.0, and these black hat SEO strategies, teasing
consumers, puffing up businesses to look bigger than they are etc are
something unique to web 2.0. i posted to share that this is not a web 2.0
phenomena, and once again it's just the net reflecting existing things.

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morpheism
I don't think lying to users is ever acceptable. Perhaps "web 2.0" just makes
a common phenomenon more transparent and easily recognizable.

