7 ms·

The why is just as important as the what in these sorts of decisions. So, this post was my attempt to explain the thought process I went through that finally ti

by ericd 14y ago

The why is just as important as the what in these sorts of decisions. So, this post was my attempt to explain the thought process I went through that finally tipped the scales. Some people make life better via charity, I try to do it via software. So that's what's tipping the scales on my moral compass. Money can be useful for that too, but mostly as a tool, it's not my main motivator.

phillmv 14y ago
+1 That was just my immediate reaction. You sound like you're alright.
- ericd 14y ago
  Thanks. Sorry if Andrey gave you any grief over this, he sort of alluded to that when we were chatting on IM.
scarmig 14y ago
I would respect you more if you just came out and said "fuck Craigslist, we're using their data" than go through a bunch of pie in the sky philosophical reasoning to justify your decision after the fact. Let's be frank and direct: you're being a dick to Craigslist, and you're doing it so you can build a better product. I even agree with that decision--Craigslist has brought it upon itself by creating what is (IMO) a mediocre and clearly substandard UI. But your choice is what it is. Embrace it.
- stcredzero 14y ago
  > I would respect you more if you just came out and said "fuck Craigslist, we're using their data" The material facts of a listing on Craigslist don't belong to Craigslist. You can't copyright the fact that a given listing is for $2400 a month. You can't copyright that it's at a given street and cross-street and the number of bedrooms and bathrooms on the premises. I don't even think anyone should copyright the aggregate of the above data. To do so would be evil. (In that there would be widespread implications.) It's not their data. It's their listing. Those are two different things. Are you saying that Craigslist doesn't own the data, but it still owns the aggregation of the data?
  - scarmig 14y ago
    I have no real skepticism that what Padmapper is doing is legal, and Craigslist doesn't own that data in any legal sense. Sure. But once you get down to arguing "yes, I have a legal right to use this data, as your attorney can see by looking at section VI.A.5.b of the Online Bullshit Act," you've already given up the game. Legal arguments are ones that are essentially saying "I have government violence backing me up." Padmapper likely does. But if that's what it's coming down to, it doesn't change the fact that Craigslist is being screwed. Maybe they had it coming and maybe it's good for the grand moral arc of human history, but whatever: they provided the forum and a way to structure and organize all that data, and without that structure it'd be hard to pick out the signal from the noise of the internet.
    - stcredzero 14y ago
      > Legal arguments are ones that are essentially saying "I have government violence backing me up." I am not arguing from that standpoint. I'm thinking about the implications for the freedom of data. You are essentially saying that anyone who has done work resulting in the aggregation of public data somehow "owns" or holds the rights to the aggregation of that data. By this same logic, the first company that published a general-interest encyclopedia would own the general concept of the same aggregation of data. That can't be right, otherwise there could only be one encyclopedia in the world. By the same token, the current search companies own the reference graph of the web, and anyone who starts another web crawler is in violation. In so far as what Padmapper is doing is the re-aggregation of already public data, he has to be in the clear, otherwise the concept of "owning" an aggregation of data becomes restrictive.
    - tikhonj 14y ago
      In this case, just like in most cases about freedom to use information, a legal argument means the opposite: rather than saying that they have government violence to back then up, PadMapper is saying that Craigslist doesn't. In the absence of any sort of enforcement, Craigslist would not be able to do much about people's using their data, after all. Now, I'm not commenting on whether their behavior is justified or not; I'm merely talking about the role of the government in this particular case.
- jbigelow76 14y ago
  > I even agree with that decision--Craigslist has brought it upon itself by creating what is (IMO) a mediocre and clearly substandard UI. But your choice is what it is. Embrace it. So are you saying that if CL had a more elegant UI you would be against the OP continuing agasinst CL's wishes? Seems like very arbitrary ethics.
  - TylerE 14y ago
    I don't think it's arbitrary, just selfish(1). As a user, I want the best experience possible, and don't really care wether I get it from Bob's House of Widgets, or Alice's Sprocket Emporium. I don't even especially care if Bob sort of copies some of what Alice is doing. I just want the best widget for my dollar/time spent. (1) In the Objectivist/Randian sort of way, not in a negative way.
  - Eliezer 14y ago
    If CL had a more elegant UI, I would also be against the OP continuing against CL's wishes. What makes CL the bad guy in this case is that they're locking up a critical system-economic element, not doing anything with it, and trying to prevent others from using it; exerting minimal effort to progress human economics while also exerting legal force to prevent others from progressing human economics. Consequentialism! Consequentialism! If CL had their own Google Maps API then the loss of renter-hours would not be nearly as severe and the negative consequences of Padmapper not adding the service back in would not be as bad, nor the gain to other people from adding it as great. Of course the right thing to do might change, if the consequences change!
    - saurik 14y ago
      You consequentialist morals then seem to be operating under multiple unfounded assumptions: 1) that the only thing that a company such as this could be doing with their value/income is building "an elegant UI" (it seems an insulting stretch to believe that their 30 employees are just sipping martinis at their office; one would imagine that there are complex social management problems that Craigslist has become experienced with and spends most of their time managing) 2) that "an elegant UI" provides positive value to this type of interaction (there have been reasonable arguments in previous PadMapper v. Craigslist posts that, in fact, the UI provided by CL is semantically more optimal than competitors providing fields; part of this argument hinged on the benefit of not requiring certain kinds of information, which makes some sense if you look at the low-key way people prefer to interact with it) 3) that there would be a long-term benefit to handing these keys to PadMapper <- this one is exceptionally bothersome due to your multiply-emphasized cry of "consequentialism"; please remember that the long-term goal of companies with this business model (I have consulted for multiple, and have multiple friends personally involved with them) is to become the portal and then marginalize the data sources as they become the new de-facto standard: in this case, PadMapper's service called PadLister. 4) that the result of this set of policies would not actually increase the number of "renter-hours" wasted, due to the (I will happily argue, but will not bother here as to me the mechanism is trivial and obvious) likely outcome that there would no longer be a centralized source for this kind of data, and renters would instead end up scouring numerous sites in the attempt to piece together who was renting what where, despite "elegant UIs". (I will point out, in case it isn't clear: I am not arguing that this is necessarily a net negative, but your position did make this assumption, so I am pointing it out) There is absolutely no reason to believe that PadMapper would be a better long-term holder of that vision than Craigslist, and in fact numerous reasons to believe that they would actually suck at it (including, but certainly not limited to, the "this is a shady way to make this argument" comments in the parents of this part of the thread): you really have to ask yourself "who would I be happier with as ruler... Eric, Craig, or no one"? Regardless, as I have others, I encourage you to read articles on the history of Craigslist. In this case, the article published by Wired a few years back "Why Craigslist is Such a Mess" comes to my mind as a rather key one to start with. http://www.wired.com/entertainment/theweb/magazine/17-09/ff_craigslist?currentPage=all http://www.wired.com/entertainment/theweb/magazine/17-09/ff_...
- ericd 14y ago
  I wanted to explain what I was doing. In a lot of ways I still admire Craigslist, so I wouldn't say fuck them. I feel some remorse for being a dick, but that's strongly outweighed by the other side of the argument for me.
  - pickettd 14y ago
    In contrast to what other people seem to be saying in this thread, I personally appreciated your explanation of the logic behind your decision. It didn't feel sleazy to me and I think I would have been somewhat turned off by a confrontational tone. I am definitely biased though. I used PadMapper a ton in May when I was looking for a sublet for the summer. Last week I started browsing again for the next apartment and felt the distinct lack of CL listings. Honestly, my solution was to start using PadMapper (for non-CL listings) + another site that shows CL data on Google maps. I can't imagine going back to CL's vanilla interface for apartment searching. In conclusion, thanks for making an awesome service and good luck with figuring something out with the Craigslist folks.
    - elsewhen 14y ago
      the blog post was changed during the time that comments were being added to this thread. from the original post: "If it takes half of PadMapper’s millions of monthly users 3 hours longer now to find an apartment, that’s over 350 man-years wasted per month, or 5 lifetimes. Sorry for cursing, but fuck that. Seriously, fuck that completely. That really pisses me off….So, effective as soon as I can bring the new code up (almost certainly by the time you read this), I’m bringing the Craigslist search results back."
      - jongraehl 14y ago
        I approve of that as well.
      - ericd 14y ago
        Was that the sleazy-sounding part?
- JackC 14y ago
  The idea that he's "being a dick to Craigslist" is the weirdest part of this whole thing. The PadMapper service consists of advertising that certain content is available on Craigslist. I mean, it literally consists of saying, "oh, you're looking for a 3-bedroom house under $3,000 in this neighborhood? Here's a page on Craigslist you might want to check out." That's the extent of the appropriation. I mean, imagine I was reading the Craigslist apartment listings for my own housing search, and I knew you were looking for 3-bedroom Craigslist listings in a given neighborhood, so every time I saw one I sent you the link. Heck, imagine I even charged money for that service. In what universe am I being a dick to Craigslist? How on earth does that follow? I understand that it's a little different here because Craigslist has asked PadMapper not to help people out that way. But the information PadMapper is passing on, it's not getting from Craigslist anymore. It's getting it from a third party. So it's the equivalent of me saying, "hey, you know you were looking for a 3-bedroom in that neighborhood? I'm not allowed to visit Craigslist myself, but a dude told me about these pages on Craigslist you might want to check out." There is purely no way that this constitutes dickish behavior toward Craigslist, and Craigslist has no moral right to forbid it.
  - ericd 14y ago
    Yeah, I agree, it's just that advertising them when they don't want to be is dickish. It's not super dickish, but it is somewhat, and I feel a little bad about that.
  - MattSayar 14y ago
    "...I knew you were looking for 3-bedroom Craigslist listings in a given neighborhood, so every time I saw one I sent you the link. Heck, imagine I even charged money for that service." You mean like a realtor? Maybe craigslist should go after realtors.
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
  - intended 14y ago
    As has been said by jessedhillon above http://news.ycombinator.org/item?id=4220812 http://news.ycombinator.org/item?id=4220812 > "Disintermediation -- getting your users used to coming to my site to look at your data is the first step to making you irrelevant and forgettable. PM knows who the renters and the listers are; it's a small step to convince some listers to list with PM first. Maybe PM will agree to repost on CL as well, but as long as listers come to PM first, the relationship between PM and CL is flipped."
- skue 14y ago
  YOU might respect him more, because that's what YOU would say. But Eric isn't you. He isn't a dick. He doesn't believe he's "fucking" Craigslist. He found a solution that fit with his own moral framework. If this doesn't fit within your framework, that's fine. The world doesn't revolve around you. So please deal with it and stop calling him names.
blhack 14y ago
>Some people make life better via charity, I try to do it via software. ...wow. Are you seriously saying that building padmapper is a charitable act? Or am I totally misunderstanding what you said there, because... ...wow.
- jacoblyles 14y ago
  "lifetimes saved" is a rhetorically powerful metric. Shitty UI kills - one hour at a time.
- ericd 14y ago
  Heh corny, I know, but I think that's the majority of my motivation. Otherwise I would be making a lot more money off of it and it would be a very different site.
  - Eliezer 14y ago
    Padmapper certainly helped me find an apartment. Twice, and the second one was so difficult that I might not've successfully moved to be near the rest of the Singularity Institute (no relation to SU), if not for Padmapper. If you did it mostly out of charity and haven't been trying to profit much, then I am even more grateful for that. Please let this flow of positive reinforcement encourage you to continue doing it, and ignore negative reinforcement from haters, because haters gonna hate. (You should see the hate I get for the things I give away ad-free online!) Also, consider making larger profits, because I wouldn't hate you for it, trust me.
    - ericd 14y ago
      Well awesome! Eh, I have pretty simple tastes, if I didn't, I might care more about money.
      - guga31bb 14y ago
        Add me to the countless number of people who found their place on padmapper (just moved in last week!) and are thankful for its existence. It's a great service.

by ericd 14y ago

phillmv 14y ago

+1 That was just my immediate reaction. You sound like you're alright.

ericd 14y ago
Thanks. Sorry if Andrey gave you any grief over this, he sort of alluded to that when we were chatting on IM.

scarmig 14y ago

I would respect you more if you just came out and said "fuck Craigslist, we're using their data" than go through a bunch of pie in the sky philosophical reasoning to justify your decision after the fact. Let's be frank and direct: you're being a dick to Craigslist, and you're doing it so you can build a better product. I even agree with that decision--Craigslist has brought it upon itself by creating what is (IMO) a mediocre and clearly substandard UI. But your choice is what it is. Embrace it.

stcredzero 14y ago
> I would respect you more if you just came out and said "fuck Craigslist, we're using their data" The material facts of a listing on Craigslist don't belong to Craigslist. You can't copyright the fact that a given listing is for $2400 a month. You can't copyright that it's at a given street and cross-street and the number of bedrooms and bathrooms on the premises. I don't even think anyone should copyright the aggregate of the above data. To do so would be evil. (In that there would be widespread implications.) It's not their data. It's their listing. Those are two different things. Are you saying that Craigslist doesn't own the data, but it still owns the aggregation of the data?
- scarmig 14y ago
  I have no real skepticism that what Padmapper is doing is legal, and Craigslist doesn't own that data in any legal sense. Sure. But once you get down to arguing "yes, I have a legal right to use this data, as your attorney can see by looking at section VI.A.5.b of the Online Bullshit Act," you've already given up the game. Legal arguments are ones that are essentially saying "I have government violence backing me up." Padmapper likely does. But if that's what it's coming down to, it doesn't change the fact that Craigslist is being screwed. Maybe they had it coming and maybe it's good for the grand moral arc of human history, but whatever: they provided the forum and a way to structure and organize all that data, and without that structure it'd be hard to pick out the signal from the noise of the internet.
  - stcredzero 14y ago
    > Legal arguments are ones that are essentially saying "I have government violence backing me up." I am not arguing from that standpoint. I'm thinking about the implications for the freedom of data. You are essentially saying that anyone who has done work resulting in the aggregation of public data somehow "owns" or holds the rights to the aggregation of that data. By this same logic, the first company that published a general-interest encyclopedia would own the general concept of the same aggregation of data. That can't be right, otherwise there could only be one encyclopedia in the world. By the same token, the current search companies own the reference graph of the web, and anyone who starts another web crawler is in violation. In so far as what Padmapper is doing is the re-aggregation of already public data, he has to be in the clear, otherwise the concept of "owning" an aggregation of data becomes restrictive.
  - tikhonj 14y ago
    In this case, just like in most cases about freedom to use information, a legal argument means the opposite: rather than saying that they have government violence to back then up, PadMapper is saying that Craigslist doesn't. In the absence of any sort of enforcement, Craigslist would not be able to do much about people's using their data, after all. Now, I'm not commenting on whether their behavior is justified or not; I'm merely talking about the role of the government in this particular case.
jbigelow76 14y ago
> I even agree with that decision--Craigslist has brought it upon itself by creating what is (IMO) a mediocre and clearly substandard UI. But your choice is what it is. Embrace it. So are you saying that if CL had a more elegant UI you would be against the OP continuing agasinst CL's wishes? Seems like very arbitrary ethics.
- TylerE 14y ago
  I don't think it's arbitrary, just selfish(1). As a user, I want the best experience possible, and don't really care wether I get it from Bob's House of Widgets, or Alice's Sprocket Emporium. I don't even especially care if Bob sort of copies some of what Alice is doing. I just want the best widget for my dollar/time spent. (1) In the Objectivist/Randian sort of way, not in a negative way.
- Eliezer 14y ago
  If CL had a more elegant UI, I would also be against the OP continuing against CL's wishes. What makes CL the bad guy in this case is that they're locking up a critical system-economic element, not doing anything with it, and trying to prevent others from using it; exerting minimal effort to progress human economics while also exerting legal force to prevent others from progressing human economics. Consequentialism! Consequentialism! If CL had their own Google Maps API then the loss of renter-hours would not be nearly as severe and the negative consequences of Padmapper not adding the service back in would not be as bad, nor the gain to other people from adding it as great. Of course the right thing to do might change, if the consequences change!
  - saurik 14y ago
    You consequentialist morals then seem to be operating under multiple unfounded assumptions: 1) that the only thing that a company such as this could be doing with their value/income is building "an elegant UI" (it seems an insulting stretch to believe that their 30 employees are just sipping martinis at their office; one would imagine that there are complex social management problems that Craigslist has become experienced with and spends most of their time managing) 2) that "an elegant UI" provides positive value to this type of interaction (there have been reasonable arguments in previous PadMapper v. Craigslist posts that, in fact, the UI provided by CL is semantically more optimal than competitors providing fields; part of this argument hinged on the benefit of not requiring certain kinds of information, which makes some sense if you look at the low-key way people prefer to interact with it) 3) that there would be a long-term benefit to handing these keys to PadMapper <- this one is exceptionally bothersome due to your multiply-emphasized cry of "consequentialism"; please remember that the long-term goal of companies with this business model (I have consulted for multiple, and have multiple friends personally involved with them) is to become the portal and then marginalize the data sources as they become the new de-facto standard: in this case, PadMapper's service called PadLister. 4) that the result of this set of policies would not actually increase the number of "renter-hours" wasted, due to the (I will happily argue, but will not bother here as to me the mechanism is trivial and obvious) likely outcome that there would no longer be a centralized source for this kind of data, and renters would instead end up scouring numerous sites in the attempt to piece together who was renting what where, despite "elegant UIs". (I will point out, in case it isn't clear: I am not arguing that this is necessarily a net negative, but your position did make this assumption, so I am pointing it out) There is absolutely no reason to believe that PadMapper would be a better long-term holder of that vision than Craigslist, and in fact numerous reasons to believe that they would actually suck at it (including, but certainly not limited to, the "this is a shady way to make this argument" comments in the parents of this part of the thread): you really have to ask yourself "who would I be happier with as ruler... Eric, Craig, or no one"? Regardless, as I have others, I encourage you to read articles on the history of Craigslist. In this case, the article published by Wired a few years back "Why Craigslist is Such a Mess" comes to my mind as a rather key one to start with. http://www.wired.com/entertainment/theweb/magazine/17-09/ff_craigslist?currentPage=all http://www.wired.com/entertainment/theweb/magazine/17-09/ff_...
ericd 14y ago
I wanted to explain what I was doing. In a lot of ways I still admire Craigslist, so I wouldn't say fuck them. I feel some remorse for being a dick, but that's strongly outweighed by the other side of the argument for me.
- pickettd 14y ago
  In contrast to what other people seem to be saying in this thread, I personally appreciated your explanation of the logic behind your decision. It didn't feel sleazy to me and I think I would have been somewhat turned off by a confrontational tone. I am definitely biased though. I used PadMapper a ton in May when I was looking for a sublet for the summer. Last week I started browsing again for the next apartment and felt the distinct lack of CL listings. Honestly, my solution was to start using PadMapper (for non-CL listings) + another site that shows CL data on Google maps. I can't imagine going back to CL's vanilla interface for apartment searching. In conclusion, thanks for making an awesome service and good luck with figuring something out with the Craigslist folks.
  - elsewhen 14y ago
    the blog post was changed during the time that comments were being added to this thread. from the original post: "If it takes half of PadMapper’s millions of monthly users 3 hours longer now to find an apartment, that’s over 350 man-years wasted per month, or 5 lifetimes. Sorry for cursing, but fuck that. Seriously, fuck that completely. That really pisses me off….So, effective as soon as I can bring the new code up (almost certainly by the time you read this), I’m bringing the Craigslist search results back."
    - jongraehl 14y ago
      I approve of that as well.
    - ericd 14y ago
      Was that the sleazy-sounding part?
JackC 14y ago
The idea that he's "being a dick to Craigslist" is the weirdest part of this whole thing. The PadMapper service consists of advertising that certain content is available on Craigslist. I mean, it literally consists of saying, "oh, you're looking for a 3-bedroom house under $3,000 in this neighborhood? Here's a page on Craigslist you might want to check out." That's the extent of the appropriation. I mean, imagine I was reading the Craigslist apartment listings for my own housing search, and I knew you were looking for 3-bedroom Craigslist listings in a given neighborhood, so every time I saw one I sent you the link. Heck, imagine I even charged money for that service. In what universe am I being a dick to Craigslist? How on earth does that follow? I understand that it's a little different here because Craigslist has asked PadMapper not to help people out that way. But the information PadMapper is passing on, it's not getting from Craigslist anymore. It's getting it from a third party. So it's the equivalent of me saying, "hey, you know you were looking for a 3-bedroom in that neighborhood? I'm not allowed to visit Craigslist myself, but a dude told me about these pages on Craigslist you might want to check out." There is purely no way that this constitutes dickish behavior toward Craigslist, and Craigslist has no moral right to forbid it.
- ericd 14y ago
  Yeah, I agree, it's just that advertising them when they don't want to be is dickish. It's not super dickish, but it is somewhat, and I feel a little bad about that.
- MattSayar 14y ago
  "...I knew you were looking for 3-bedroom Craigslist listings in a given neighborhood, so every time I saw one I sent you the link. Heck, imagine I even charged money for that service." You mean like a realtor? Maybe craigslist should go after realtors.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- intended 14y ago
  As has been said by jessedhillon above http://news.ycombinator.org/item?id=4220812 http://news.ycombinator.org/item?id=4220812 > "Disintermediation -- getting your users used to coming to my site to look at your data is the first step to making you irrelevant and forgettable. PM knows who the renters and the listers are; it's a small step to convince some listers to list with PM first. Maybe PM will agree to repost on CL as well, but as long as listers come to PM first, the relationship between PM and CL is flipped."
skue 14y ago
YOU might respect him more, because that's what YOU would say. But Eric isn't you. He isn't a dick. He doesn't believe he's "fucking" Craigslist. He found a solution that fit with his own moral framework. If this doesn't fit within your framework, that's fine. The world doesn't revolve around you. So please deal with it and stop calling him names.

blhack 14y ago

>Some people make life better via charity, I try to do it via software. ...wow. Are you seriously saying that building padmapper is a charitable act? Or am I totally misunderstanding what you said there, because... ...wow.

jacoblyles 14y ago
"lifetimes saved" is a rhetorically powerful metric. Shitty UI kills - one hour at a time.
ericd 14y ago
Heh corny, I know, but I think that's the majority of my motivation. Otherwise I would be making a lot more money off of it and it would be a very different site.
- Eliezer 14y ago
  Padmapper certainly helped me find an apartment. Twice, and the second one was so difficult that I might not've successfully moved to be near the rest of the Singularity Institute (no relation to SU), if not for Padmapper. If you did it mostly out of charity and haven't been trying to profit much, then I am even more grateful for that. Please let this flow of positive reinforcement encourage you to continue doing it, and ignore negative reinforcement from haters, because haters gonna hate. (You should see the hate I get for the things I give away ad-free online!) Also, consider making larger profits, because I wouldn't hate you for it, trust me.
  - ericd 14y ago
    Well awesome! Eh, I have pretty simple tastes, if I didn't, I might care more about money.
    - guga31bb 14y ago
      Add me to the countless number of people who found their place on padmapper (just moved in last week!) and are thankful for its existence. It's a great service.