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

I appreciate that you're trying what you're trying, but I wanted to address this:

> All businesses forgo additional revenue based on ethics and regulation, and I don't understand why that's such a odd thing to do with advertising.

The great bulk of advertising is built upon a conflict of interest and is essentially manipulative. Consider, for example, an article. Both the writer and the reader want the reader's maximum attention on the article for as long as the reader cares to give it. The goal of advertising is to distract from that in hopes of extracting money from the reader. Generally, ads are constructed without much regard to whether the reader was intending to buy or would really benefit from the product. The goal is to make a sale. (If you doubt me, look at how many people who create or show ads, say, test a product before putting the ad in front of people. Or just look at tobacco advertising, a product that has killed hundreds of millions.)

So I think there's an inherent lack of ethics to ads as an industry. It could be that you'll find enough people who are worried about privacy but not about the other stuff to build a business. But I wouldn't bet on it. It's no accident that this security hole is being closed not because of random miscreants but because of industrial-scale exploitation.



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

Search: