I don't think I was attacking people, but will defer. In less inflammatory prose, let me say:
There is a problem on the net that is exacerbated by funding models which seek to use free services to do "bad" things. The Ad-Driven model has problems that the needs of the end user are often not considered paramount, but instead the needs of the advertiser are. After all, they're the ones paying the bills. Print newspapers famously had this problem, balancing the interests of editorial and advertisement.
Furthermore, there are people on HN whose enterprises are funded by ad revenue. I worry they (and their investors) err on the side of the advertisers rather than on the side of the users when there is a conflict. I doubt there are many here who would go to extremes such as enrolling customers iPhones into botnets, but there is always that temptation. What if you were a couple weeks away from laying everyone off and a shady partner sidled up to you and suggested such a move. I believe it would be a moral crisis for any entrepreneur: shaft your customers or shaft your business, its investors and its employees.
I am lucky to operate from retained earnings and (at least for the time being) could firmly reject such an offer. I appreciate that I am probably in the minority in this respect.
I bemoan the current state of affairs where so many entrepreneurs could even conceivably be tempted by such a Faustian bargain (without asserting the majority are.)
I am ensaddened that experiments like Bitcoin seem to have devolved into ponzi schemes rather than effective micropayment vehicles. Such a platform could conceivably open up new business models which would allow entrepreneurs to ignore this particular devil.
> What if you were a couple weeks away from laying everyone off and a shady partner sidled up to you and suggested such a move. I believe it would be a moral crisis for any entrepreneur: shaft your customers or shaft your business, its investors and its employees.
That is the difference between ethical and unethical operators
