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„Messing up your competitors A/B test“ is not unheard of as a tactic in highly competitive ecommerce settings.
by maltelandwehr 6y ago
„Messing up your competitors A/B test“ is not unheard of as a tactic in highly competitive ecommerce settings.
- withinboredom 6y agoDo software engineers actually implement that? That seems pretty immoral. I'd rather let them run the a/b test and steal whatever solution they end up with.
- cortesoft 6y agoEh, I am sure you could convince yourself it isn't immoral... everyone in HN seems to think things like google analytics are bad because of the privacy implications, and doesn't have a problem blocking them (which would also 'mess with a/b tests'). You could just argue that you are hindering their user spying. Not a great argument, but good enough to allow a developer to sleep at night.
- abiogenesis 6y agoTrue, but this is not "messing up your competitors A/B test".
- sudosysgen 6y agoIn some contexts you do that or you're fired. Some people can't afford to be fired, so they do it.
- dannyw 6y agoConsider companies like Uber....
- st1ck 6y agoI can't find reasons why would this be immoral. I'd say it's rather aggressive and won't earn you good reputation for sure. But it's sort of fair game. Compared to many business practices (lobbying, forced arbitration, patent trolling, DMCA, price dumping etc.) this is extremely mild one.
- habosa 6y agoGenerally active sabotage is frowned upon as opposed to winning in fair competition.