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Why do people have to be such grumps about this kind of thing? No laws were broken, nobody got hurt, it continued only for a few weeks whilst the site got up an

Why do people have to be such grumps about this kind of thing? No laws were broken, nobody got hurt, it continued only for a few weeks whilst the site got up and running, and we only hear about it because the site became successful. Yes you're correct that it was not 100% authentic and honest. So what? White lies are a thing that everyone can accept. Zero harm was done. We can afford to see the fun in something like this! (And for the record, I don't really use or like Reddit.)

peterashford 3y ago
"it was not 100% authentic and honest. So what?" i.e.: it was a lie. Which some people think isn't great behaviour. Clearly, you disagree but I think it's reasonably normal for people to have issues with lying
- tomhoward 3y ago
  > I think it's reasonably normal for people to have issues with lying My point is that it's needlessly grumpy. It's fine if you want to be grumpy! But it's worth examining why this is a particular thing that triggers you. Far worse lies are told by politicians of all stripes every day, and we accept it as part of the system (particularly if it's a politician we voted for, not so much if it's one we voted against.) We should have a think about why we're getting tied up in knots over some shenanigans played by a couple of early 20-somethings almost two decades ago.
  - ekianjo 3y ago
    > ar worse lies are told by politicians of all stripes every day, and we accept it as part of the system Who pretended that we were OK with politicians lying through every breath? Don't put words in people's mouths.
    - tomhoward 3y ago
      Sure but the point is we all have our own standard for what kinds of subterfuge can be acceptable in certain circumstances. As I said in the first comment, we all accept the concept of white lies. We also accept jokes, pranks, stunts and hacks of various kinds. We can choose to be grumpy, moralistic and finger-waggy about Reddit’s method of breaking out of their chicken-and-egg trap, or we can see it as a harmless, funny prank. It all comes down the the question of who was harmed, and in this debate, nobody has even tried to point to any case of a real person who was in any way harmed by this act. Any claims of harm are imagined hypotheticals to justify the finger-wagging, which is what this is really all about.
narag 3y ago
Why do people have to be such grumps about this kind of thing? Years ago, I was trying to rent an apartment. After the visit, the owner, an old lady, invited me to some tea in her own home nearby. Not sure how the conversation came to that, I think it started with me asking about a parking spot, but she told me that washing the car is for poor people. "For someone that drives a nice new car like yours it doesn't matter too much if it's clean. It's the guy with an ugly old car that spends a lot of time cleaning it, hoping that it will look better". I didn't rent the apartment, but I learned a valuable lesson: don't worry about a little dust here and there.
- autoexec 3y ago
  The weird old lady clearly didn't live anywhere it snowed very often.
hardware2win 3y ago
Huh, HN and as usual giving benefit of doubt to startups Is upvoting your own submissions on HN ok too?
- tomhoward 3y ago
  The site is literally called Hacker News and it was built from the start to be a community of current/potential startup founders. (And no, self upvoting/ringvoting isn’t ok on HN and probably hasn’t been on Reddit for 17.5 of the past 18 years either. We’re talking about bootstrapping a totally new site in 2005, nothing more.)
  - hardware2win 3y ago
    Both self upvote and creating X accounts are form of manipulation. If vote manipulation is bad, then why r u ok with artifical increase of users? Artifical users on dating apps are OK? >The site is literally called Hacker News and it was built from the start to be a community of current/potential startup founders. Im aware, so thats why probably ppl here are ok with those manipulative practices used to bootstrap.
    - tomhoward 3y ago
      I've addressed these questions in several other comments in the thread. To repeat: no laws/rules of any kind were broken. Nobody was harmed. Nobody who was a user of the site in those days has complained of feeling deceived. It's a funny, playful thing to do with zero harm done. I like funny, playful things. The only people who care about this are people who like to finger-wag. Knock yourself out if that's what you like to do.
      - hardware2win 3y ago
        This is similar to buying fake traffic or reviews, it is just manipulation.
        3y ago
ekianjo 3y ago
> No laws were broken, Who cares about laws? It's just bad karma. You are deceiving people for your own profit. Whether it's legal or not does not matter at all. it's just what douchebags do.
- tomhoward 3y ago
  I can think of several things the Reddit founders have done to summon bad karma, but a bit of sockpuppeting in the first few weeks to prevent the site from being empty is not one of them. How many people who visited Reddit in those days and enjoyed the content would have ever complained about being “deceived”. Absolutely zero. Nobody cared then and people only care now so as to fingerwag.
  - Arkhaine_kupo 3y ago
    His ethic treaties are the most boring of his work, but Kant the german philosopher had an opinion on ethics around your actions becoming universal. So in this case, would you want most internet traffick to be sock puppets that increase visibility for companies? I think the obvious answer is no. So if we do not want to have the entire internet be fake content pretending to be organic users, we should not want it for Reddit either
    - autoexec 3y ago
      > So in this case, would you want most internet traffick to be sock puppets that increase visibility for companies? I might if it were only for the first few weeks/months of a totally new internet almost nobody except sock puppets was logging into. If there's nothing on the new internet, anyone who does log in will log out once they see they can't find anything. > So if we do not want to have the entire internet be fake content pretending to be organic users, we should not want it for Reddit either No one wants the entirety of reddit to be fake content, and thankfully it isn't because the founders could back off once they got momentum. Of course there are still sockpuppets on reddit, and the internet as a whole, but that doesn't mean there's never a time, a place, duration, or proportion at which they're acceptable. It's kind of like saying: "You should never ever eat ice cream because of how terrible it would be if everyone on the entire planet ate nothing at all but ice cream for every single meal. We'd all get sick so clearly eating ice cream at any point for any length of time must be inherently wrong!"

peterashford 3y ago

"it was not 100% authentic and honest. So what?" i.e.: it was a lie. Which some people think isn't great behaviour. Clearly, you disagree but I think it's reasonably normal for people to have issues with lying

tomhoward 3y ago
> I think it's reasonably normal for people to have issues with lying My point is that it's needlessly grumpy. It's fine if you want to be grumpy! But it's worth examining why this is a particular thing that triggers you. Far worse lies are told by politicians of all stripes every day, and we accept it as part of the system (particularly if it's a politician we voted for, not so much if it's one we voted against.) We should have a think about why we're getting tied up in knots over some shenanigans played by a couple of early 20-somethings almost two decades ago.
- ekianjo 3y ago
  > ar worse lies are told by politicians of all stripes every day, and we accept it as part of the system Who pretended that we were OK with politicians lying through every breath? Don't put words in people's mouths.
  - tomhoward 3y ago
    Sure but the point is we all have our own standard for what kinds of subterfuge can be acceptable in certain circumstances. As I said in the first comment, we all accept the concept of white lies. We also accept jokes, pranks, stunts and hacks of various kinds. We can choose to be grumpy, moralistic and finger-waggy about Reddit’s method of breaking out of their chicken-and-egg trap, or we can see it as a harmless, funny prank. It all comes down the the question of who was harmed, and in this debate, nobody has even tried to point to any case of a real person who was in any way harmed by this act. Any claims of harm are imagined hypotheticals to justify the finger-wagging, which is what this is really all about.

narag 3y ago

Why do people have to be such grumps about this kind of thing? Years ago, I was trying to rent an apartment. After the visit, the owner, an old lady, invited me to some tea in her own home nearby. Not sure how the conversation came to that, I think it started with me asking about a parking spot, but she told me that washing the car is for poor people. "For someone that drives a nice new car like yours it doesn't matter too much if it's clean. It's the guy with an ugly old car that spends a lot of time cleaning it, hoping that it will look better". I didn't rent the apartment, but I learned a valuable lesson: don't worry about a little dust here and there.

autoexec 3y ago
The weird old lady clearly didn't live anywhere it snowed very often.

hardware2win 3y ago

Huh, HN and as usual giving benefit of doubt to startups Is upvoting your own submissions on HN ok too?

tomhoward 3y ago
The site is literally called Hacker News and it was built from the start to be a community of current/potential startup founders. (And no, self upvoting/ringvoting isn’t ok on HN and probably hasn’t been on Reddit for 17.5 of the past 18 years either. We’re talking about bootstrapping a totally new site in 2005, nothing more.)
- hardware2win 3y ago
  Both self upvote and creating X accounts are form of manipulation. If vote manipulation is bad, then why r u ok with artifical increase of users? Artifical users on dating apps are OK? >The site is literally called Hacker News and it was built from the start to be a community of current/potential startup founders. Im aware, so thats why probably ppl here are ok with those manipulative practices used to bootstrap.
  - tomhoward 3y ago
    I've addressed these questions in several other comments in the thread. To repeat: no laws/rules of any kind were broken. Nobody was harmed. Nobody who was a user of the site in those days has complained of feeling deceived. It's a funny, playful thing to do with zero harm done. I like funny, playful things. The only people who care about this are people who like to finger-wag. Knock yourself out if that's what you like to do.
    - hardware2win 3y ago
      This is similar to buying fake traffic or reviews, it is just manipulation.
      - 3y ago

ekianjo 3y ago

> No laws were broken, Who cares about laws? It's just bad karma. You are deceiving people for your own profit. Whether it's legal or not does not matter at all. it's just what douchebags do.

tomhoward 3y ago
I can think of several things the Reddit founders have done to summon bad karma, but a bit of sockpuppeting in the first few weeks to prevent the site from being empty is not one of them. How many people who visited Reddit in those days and enjoyed the content would have ever complained about being “deceived”. Absolutely zero. Nobody cared then and people only care now so as to fingerwag.
- Arkhaine_kupo 3y ago
  His ethic treaties are the most boring of his work, but Kant the german philosopher had an opinion on ethics around your actions becoming universal. So in this case, would you want most internet traffick to be sock puppets that increase visibility for companies? I think the obvious answer is no. So if we do not want to have the entire internet be fake content pretending to be organic users, we should not want it for Reddit either
  - autoexec 3y ago
    > So in this case, would you want most internet traffick to be sock puppets that increase visibility for companies? I might if it were only for the first few weeks/months of a totally new internet almost nobody except sock puppets was logging into. If there's nothing on the new internet, anyone who does log in will log out once they see they can't find anything. > So if we do not want to have the entire internet be fake content pretending to be organic users, we should not want it for Reddit either No one wants the entirety of reddit to be fake content, and thankfully it isn't because the founders could back off once they got momentum. Of course there are still sockpuppets on reddit, and the internet as a whole, but that doesn't mean there's never a time, a place, duration, or proportion at which they're acceptable. It's kind of like saying: "You should never ever eat ice cream because of how terrible it would be if everyone on the entire planet ate nothing at all but ice cream for every single meal. We'd all get sick so clearly eating ice cream at any point for any length of time must be inherently wrong!"