<story><title>Stop The JerkTech</title><url>http://techcrunch.com/2014/07/03/go-disrupt-yourself/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>eevilspock</author><text>&lt;i&gt;&amp;quot;It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.&amp;quot;&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;Because nearly every internet business gets it&amp;#x27;s revenue from advertising, a lot of good people jump through hoops to convince themselves that they have not made a deal with the devil. The downvotes[1] come fast when I point out this moral and cognitive dissonance, usually without any counter argument since they just want me to go away.&lt;p&gt;When I talk to anyone who&amp;#x27;s livelihood doesn&amp;#x27;t rely on advertising or marketing, there is near unanimous agreement that advertising is fundamentally manipulative and dishonest.&lt;p&gt;Besides the social cost of Advertising, there many other costs[2]. The idea that advertising gives us free web content and services is utter bullshit.&lt;p&gt;-&lt;p&gt;[1] The cowardly downvotes with no counter argument have already started.  Upton Sinclair is the actual source of the quote at the top. A wise man who got a bunch of downvotes in his time.&lt;p&gt;[2] &lt;a href=&quot;https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7767811&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&amp;#x2F;item?id=7767811&lt;/a&gt;</text></item><item><author>wpietri</author><text>I mentor at startup events, so I know exactly what kind of people they are.&lt;p&gt;The good ones are people who just haven&amp;#x27;t thought it through. They&amp;#x27;ve found some sort of demand, and they&amp;#x27;re doing the standard hack-the-system thing that the startup culture trains them to do. Once it&amp;#x27;s rolling, it&amp;#x27;s like Mencken said: &amp;quot;It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;The bad ones are the sort of entitled douchebags that would have previously gone into investment banking or some other industry where the money&amp;#x27;s great and ethics aren&amp;#x27;t emphasized. But now startups are the high-status, high-money thing, so that&amp;#x27;s what they&amp;#x27;re after.</text></item><item><author>bunkat</author><text>Whenever I hear about these I always wonder what the people that found them are thinking. I mean, what type of person would you have to be to decide to try and screw over the restaurant industry (which already has historically low margins) just to make a buck? I can&amp;#x27;t even imagine how many fake reservations they would need to create to make that idea worthwhile for them. And what investors would give them money to do so?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>jamesisaac</author><text>As someone who worked in an advertising-industry startup for 2 years before questioning what I was doing, I agree with everything you&amp;#x27;ve said (in your linked post too), and sorry to see you&amp;#x27;re getting downvoted.&lt;p&gt;The project I subsequently started operates on a very simple $5&amp;#x2F;mo pausable subscription with a 30-day free trial.  I&amp;#x27;m _much_ happier with this model than anything I&amp;#x27;ve ever worked on which is ad-based - it feels like a completely fair and fulfilling exchange of value.&lt;p&gt;I, too, feel like if the web was free from advertising, and instead was home to services supported by paying customers and&amp;#x2F;or donations, it would be a much better place and have far-reaching benefits.  This is something I genuinely want to make a difference on, so feel free to get in touch if you want to see if we can combine our efforts in some way (contact details in profile).</text></comment>
<story><title>Stop The JerkTech</title><url>http://techcrunch.com/2014/07/03/go-disrupt-yourself/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>eevilspock</author><text>&lt;i&gt;&amp;quot;It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.&amp;quot;&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;Because nearly every internet business gets it&amp;#x27;s revenue from advertising, a lot of good people jump through hoops to convince themselves that they have not made a deal with the devil. The downvotes[1] come fast when I point out this moral and cognitive dissonance, usually without any counter argument since they just want me to go away.&lt;p&gt;When I talk to anyone who&amp;#x27;s livelihood doesn&amp;#x27;t rely on advertising or marketing, there is near unanimous agreement that advertising is fundamentally manipulative and dishonest.&lt;p&gt;Besides the social cost of Advertising, there many other costs[2]. The idea that advertising gives us free web content and services is utter bullshit.&lt;p&gt;-&lt;p&gt;[1] The cowardly downvotes with no counter argument have already started.  Upton Sinclair is the actual source of the quote at the top. A wise man who got a bunch of downvotes in his time.&lt;p&gt;[2] &lt;a href=&quot;https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7767811&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&amp;#x2F;item?id=7767811&lt;/a&gt;</text></item><item><author>wpietri</author><text>I mentor at startup events, so I know exactly what kind of people they are.&lt;p&gt;The good ones are people who just haven&amp;#x27;t thought it through. They&amp;#x27;ve found some sort of demand, and they&amp;#x27;re doing the standard hack-the-system thing that the startup culture trains them to do. Once it&amp;#x27;s rolling, it&amp;#x27;s like Mencken said: &amp;quot;It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;The bad ones are the sort of entitled douchebags that would have previously gone into investment banking or some other industry where the money&amp;#x27;s great and ethics aren&amp;#x27;t emphasized. But now startups are the high-status, high-money thing, so that&amp;#x27;s what they&amp;#x27;re after.</text></item><item><author>bunkat</author><text>Whenever I hear about these I always wonder what the people that found them are thinking. I mean, what type of person would you have to be to decide to try and screw over the restaurant industry (which already has historically low margins) just to make a buck? I can&amp;#x27;t even imagine how many fake reservations they would need to create to make that idea worthwhile for them. And what investors would give them money to do so?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>profquail</author><text>&amp;gt; &amp;quot;Because nearly every internet business gets it&amp;#x27;s revenue from advertising&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;Citation please? There are many &amp;quot;internet businesses&amp;quot; that don&amp;#x27;t derive their revenue from advertising, e.g., AWS, Dropbox, Netflix. Spotify derives some revenue from advertising, but their core business is subscriptions. &lt;i&gt;ad nauseum&lt;/i&gt;</text></comment>