4 ms·

If you were to be very lenient with them, it's all fine up to the LinkedIn connection. But then to ask for a facebook like?! That's how College kids play pranks

by amirhhz 15y ago

If you were to be very lenient with them, it's all fine up to the LinkedIn connection. But then to ask for a facebook like?! That's how College kids play pranks on their mates, not how a community called "honestly" grows. Having said that, hopefully the team who created this reads HN and will respond to this and save some face.

OstiaAntica 15y ago
That use of Like has to be against Facebook ToS. Would be awesome if FB shut them down!
- MichaelGG 15y ago
  You are correct: http://developers.facebook.com/policy/#policies http://developers.facebook.com/policy/#policies "You must not incentivize users to use (or gate content behind the use of) Facebook social channels, or imply that an incentive is directly tied to the use of our channels." It would be nice if FB took action.
  - rhizome 15y ago
    There is actually a porn spam exploit going around Facebook right now based upon this.
  - gergles 15y ago
    They don't care about this. I have reported probably 20 pages that won't show you content unless you "like" them, and they are still up and I have never heard anything in response to my reports.
smokinn 15y ago
Having said that, hopefully the team who created this reads HN and will respond to this and save some face. I've worked at this company. Not honestly.com but I've worked at the type. The people at the company who read news.yc have no product decision power. The company is quite obviously run by the marketing division. Also, while this practice is indeed deceptive it's also fairly benign and common. It is however just the gateway. When a company starts doing this they're just going to slide further and further downhill. First comes the backlash like this blog post and then the effectiveness of the spam starts dropping because you've hit a good % of the population you'll be able to dupe. The rest will start reporting you as spam and your email delivery rate is going to plummet. Next comes the desperation to keep up the growth numbers. Things are going to get much spammier and much more "marketing black hat" soon for honestly.com if their CEO doesn't have strong opinions against it and reigns in marketing. They'll likely end up like classmates.com and any other number of spammy social sites that didn't and won't ever go anywhere.
cppsnob 15y ago
> But then to ask for a facebook like?! The entire world of Facebook/iPhone apps is basically this these days. Be sure to rate this app with 5 stars/Like/etc. for your freeeeee in-game coinage!
- jrmg 15y ago
  It's technically impossible to know if a user has left a review on the App Store. Can you name an iPhone app that asks the user to rate it for a reward like this?
  - cppsnob 15y ago
    > It's technically impossible to know if a user has left a review on the App Store. You know they've clicked through to your entry in the store. Users don't know they'll still get their coinage if they then don't rate the thing after clicking.

by amirhhz 15y ago

OstiaAntica 15y ago

That use of Like has to be against Facebook ToS. Would be awesome if FB shut them down!

MichaelGG 15y ago
You are correct: http://developers.facebook.com/policy/#policies http://developers.facebook.com/policy/#policies "You must not incentivize users to use (or gate content behind the use of) Facebook social channels, or imply that an incentive is directly tied to the use of our channels." It would be nice if FB took action.
- rhizome 15y ago
  There is actually a porn spam exploit going around Facebook right now based upon this.
- gergles 15y ago
  They don't care about this. I have reported probably 20 pages that won't show you content unless you "like" them, and they are still up and I have never heard anything in response to my reports.

smokinn 15y ago

Having said that, hopefully the team who created this reads HN and will respond to this and save some face. I've worked at this company. Not honestly.com but I've worked at the type. The people at the company who read news.yc have no product decision power. The company is quite obviously run by the marketing division. Also, while this practice is indeed deceptive it's also fairly benign and common. It is however just the gateway. When a company starts doing this they're just going to slide further and further downhill. First comes the backlash like this blog post and then the effectiveness of the spam starts dropping because you've hit a good % of the population you'll be able to dupe. The rest will start reporting you as spam and your email delivery rate is going to plummet. Next comes the desperation to keep up the growth numbers. Things are going to get much spammier and much more "marketing black hat" soon for honestly.com if their CEO doesn't have strong opinions against it and reigns in marketing. They'll likely end up like classmates.com and any other number of spammy social sites that didn't and won't ever go anywhere.

cppsnob 15y ago

> But then to ask for a facebook like?! The entire world of Facebook/iPhone apps is basically this these days. Be sure to rate this app with 5 stars/Like/etc. for your freeeeee in-game coinage!

jrmg 15y ago
It's technically impossible to know if a user has left a review on the App Store. Can you name an iPhone app that asks the user to rate it for a reward like this?
- cppsnob 15y ago
  > It's technically impossible to know if a user has left a review on the App Store. You know they've clicked through to your entry in the store. Users don't know they'll still get their coinage if they then don't rate the thing after clicking.