6 ms·

Thoroughly disappointed to see VC money going towards this way of fleecing people out of their money recently

by dbish 5y ago

rapnie 5y ago
VC --> [fleecing, ethics, ..] --> money My impression is that most VC doesn't really care all that much what's in the middle, but I may be wholly misinformed.
- tomc1985 5y ago
  Kind of like South Park's underpants gnomes, and the thing that stands between them and profit ("?????")
- bostonsre 5y ago
  e.g. addictive games with microtransactions and other apps that use dark patterns to capitalize on addiction There are definitely a lot of good vc backed companies but there is also a lot of brain power being put towards less altruistic pursuits.
sneak 5y ago
It's a consensual transaction; people only pay for it because they want it. Ultimately it's no different than people spending money at the craps table or on a chiropractor. Let people have their fun wasting their money, as no harm is done to them that they didn't choose for themselves.
- dbish 5y ago
  In some ways I don’t care what people do as long as it doesn’t hurt others. I’m just sad to see money that can be used to push tech forward and given to a real project, being given to something so fake. As an aside, since you mentioned it, I would also be sad to see VC money going towards a company that worked to expand the impact of chiropractors for the same reason, but as you say, there’s nothing to be done if it is a consensual transaction.
- TeMPOraL 5y ago
  Can we call it free choice if it's based on a lie? Whether meatspace or in-app, the astrologists aren't saying, "come here to receive generic life advice based on (at best) educated guesses about you or (at worst) output of a random number generator". No, they're promising reliable advice, and back it with absurd "explanations". It's not much different than any other kind of fraud - it only survives because it's been an established practice since way before science allowed us to call bullshit on it. (I don't buy the usual argument to grant it plausible deniability: that their customers know they're being lied to, and consider this entertainment. I've not heard of an astrologist checking that their customers realize they're participating in a LARP.) And since you mentioned gambling: it's not all free choice either. There's a spectrum there. Some people can handle it responsibly as a form of entertainment. Other people, arguably most people, are at risk of getting hooked and losing their ability to freely choose whether to play or not. Putting the general question of free will aside, it's inaccurate to consider people as agents who mostly make informed choices and occasionally let their emotions get the best of them. On the contrary, humans mostly do things on autopilot, and occasionally find enough power of will to make a choice and override their default behavior.
  - sneak 5y ago
    > Can we call it free choice if it's based on a lie? Yes, as humans have to determine the truth in all things they engage with themselves. Religion, association, food, work, investment... we leave the risk assessment to the person whose money is on the line. > And since you mentioned gambling: it's not all free choice either. There's a spectrum there. Some people can handle it responsibly as a form of entertainment. Other people, arguably most people, are at risk of getting hooked and losing their ability to freely choose whether to play or not. And yet we allow it, because they risk no one but themselves. Some of those people who get "hooked" also, by their own free will, later stop gambling, so I am skeptical of your "some people aren't exercising a choice" dichotomy.
    - TeMPOraL 5y ago
      > Yes, as humans have to determine the truth in all things they engage with themselves. Religion, association, food, work, investment... we leave the risk assessment to the person whose money is on the line. Except when we don't, because it doesn't scale. Attacker vs. Defender problem. A big chunk of regulation - like the parts that define what is fraud, or ones concerned with product safety - are a recognition of the fact that people cannot, in practice, assess trustworthiness of things they engage themselves in. They'd spend all their time doing only that, and never achieving anything. Society needs high level of baseline trust to be maintained just to function. > And yet we allow it, because they risk no one but themselves. We actually limit it strongly, precisely because it hurts a lot of people other than the players. Gambling addiction is a problem whose main victims are the families of the addicted. It's a type of problem similar to alcoholism - its spread destroys communities and increases poverty. And so games of chance are a highly regulated space.
- cortesoft 5y ago
  If a seller lies about their product and the buyer agrees to buy it based on that lie, that is fraud, not a consensual transaction. If you say your app is using mystical powers to make predictions, how is that not fraud? Maybe some of the buyers know they are just for entertainment, but many of them will be true believers. Those people are being defrauded. I do think some of the moral issues (and likely all of the legal issues) go away when the app clearly states "for entertainment purposes only", but it is still a bit problematic.
- cratermoon 5y ago
  Look up "free market information asymmetry"

Thoroughly disappointed to see VC money going towards this way of fleecing people out of their money recently

by dbish 5y ago

Thoroughly disappointed to see VC money going towards this way of fleecing people out of their money recently

VC --> [fleecing, ethics, ..] --> money My impression is that most VC doesn't really care all that much what's in the middle, but I may be wholly misinformed.

tomc1985 5y ago
Kind of like South Park's underpants gnomes, and the thing that stands between them and profit ("?????")
bostonsre 5y ago
e.g. addictive games with microtransactions and other apps that use dark patterns to capitalize on addiction There are definitely a lot of good vc backed companies but there is also a lot of brain power being put towards less altruistic pursuits.

sneak 5y ago

It's a consensual transaction; people only pay for it because they want it. Ultimately it's no different than people spending money at the craps table or on a chiropractor. Let people have their fun wasting their money, as no harm is done to them that they didn't choose for themselves.

dbish 5y ago
In some ways I don’t care what people do as long as it doesn’t hurt others. I’m just sad to see money that can be used to push tech forward and given to a real project, being given to something so fake. As an aside, since you mentioned it, I would also be sad to see VC money going towards a company that worked to expand the impact of chiropractors for the same reason, but as you say, there’s nothing to be done if it is a consensual transaction.
TeMPOraL 5y ago
Can we call it free choice if it's based on a lie? Whether meatspace or in-app, the astrologists aren't saying, "come here to receive generic life advice based on (at best) educated guesses about you or (at worst) output of a random number generator". No, they're promising reliable advice, and back it with absurd "explanations". It's not much different than any other kind of fraud - it only survives because it's been an established practice since way before science allowed us to call bullshit on it. (I don't buy the usual argument to grant it plausible deniability: that their customers know they're being lied to, and consider this entertainment. I've not heard of an astrologist checking that their customers realize they're participating in a LARP.) And since you mentioned gambling: it's not all free choice either. There's a spectrum there. Some people can handle it responsibly as a form of entertainment. Other people, arguably most people, are at risk of getting hooked and losing their ability to freely choose whether to play or not. Putting the general question of free will aside, it's inaccurate to consider people as agents who mostly make informed choices and occasionally let their emotions get the best of them. On the contrary, humans mostly do things on autopilot, and occasionally find enough power of will to make a choice and override their default behavior.
- sneak 5y ago
  > Can we call it free choice if it's based on a lie? Yes, as humans have to determine the truth in all things they engage with themselves. Religion, association, food, work, investment... we leave the risk assessment to the person whose money is on the line. > And since you mentioned gambling: it's not all free choice either. There's a spectrum there. Some people can handle it responsibly as a form of entertainment. Other people, arguably most people, are at risk of getting hooked and losing their ability to freely choose whether to play or not. And yet we allow it, because they risk no one but themselves. Some of those people who get "hooked" also, by their own free will, later stop gambling, so I am skeptical of your "some people aren't exercising a choice" dichotomy.
  - TeMPOraL 5y ago
    > Yes, as humans have to determine the truth in all things they engage with themselves. Religion, association, food, work, investment... we leave the risk assessment to the person whose money is on the line. Except when we don't, because it doesn't scale. Attacker vs. Defender problem. A big chunk of regulation - like the parts that define what is fraud, or ones concerned with product safety - are a recognition of the fact that people cannot, in practice, assess trustworthiness of things they engage themselves in. They'd spend all their time doing only that, and never achieving anything. Society needs high level of baseline trust to be maintained just to function. > And yet we allow it, because they risk no one but themselves. We actually limit it strongly, precisely because it hurts a lot of people other than the players. Gambling addiction is a problem whose main victims are the families of the addicted. It's a type of problem similar to alcoholism - its spread destroys communities and increases poverty. And so games of chance are a highly regulated space.
cortesoft 5y ago
If a seller lies about their product and the buyer agrees to buy it based on that lie, that is fraud, not a consensual transaction. If you say your app is using mystical powers to make predictions, how is that not fraud? Maybe some of the buyers know they are just for entertainment, but many of them will be true believers. Those people are being defrauded. I do think some of the moral issues (and likely all of the legal issues) go away when the app clearly states "for entertainment purposes only", but it is still a bit problematic.
cratermoon 5y ago
Look up "free market information asymmetry"