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"How much do you have to pay for a quick boot, no ads, and a private movie or music experience? Just like every retailer has embraced usury with their credit ca

"How much do you have to pay for a quick boot, no ads, and a private movie or music experience? Just like every retailer has embraced usury with their credit card programs, every technology company has decided they are in the data harvesting business." isn't like this our goal here??? I mean we are comment on YC site that produce startup aiming just that

pembrook 1y ago
Originally yes, but now this is a complaint forum for pessimistic big tech worker bees to vent their frustrations while never actually having to invest time, money or effort on actually doing anything. Generally though, consumers have already spoken with their wallets on this topic and they have told many thousands of doe-eyed founders loud and clear: “we will happily sacrifice our time and privacy to save a $3, bring on the ads” Hence why YC focuses on B2B Saas for B2B Saas companies who sell to other B2B Saas companies.
- Goronmon 1y ago
  Originally yes, but now this is a complaint forum for pessimistic big tech worker bees to vent their frustrations while never actually having to invest time, money or effort on actually doing anything. I don't know, going back years ago, if anything it would have been YC figuring how to push ads/bloatware. It would have just been more subtle about the phrasing and meaning behind what was trying to be accomplished, but the underlying 'value extraction' stories were still there. The "entrepreneur" aspect of YC generally was about "enshittification" before that word became more used.
- immibis 1y ago
  It's fundamentally still a forum for VCs to VC. You see this periodically where some topic comes up that's completely antithetical to VC, and gets quickly flagged or downvoted to oblivion, even though there may be lively discussion. For example, this occurs when open source licenses are being discussed. The remaining undead comments are the ones favouring licenses that favour venture capital interests.
  - pembrook 1y ago
    I find this fascinating as my impression is usually the exact opposite (all I see is lots of open source fetishism and anti-VC, anti-big tech, anti-AI, anti-risk, anti-new stuff, anti-everything sentiment). However it could be certain headlines attract a certain type of person, allowing for an entirely different subjective experience of what "people on hacker news" are like.
    - immibis 1y ago
      Please note there are two main branches of open source: there is permissive, which is a donation to venture capitalists, and there is copyleft, which is prohibited from use by venture capitalists unless they play nice. This forum champions the former and is generally opposed to the latter, and the more copyleft it is, the more this forum is against it (LGPL vs GPL vs AGPL vs SSPL).
deleted 1y ago
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bayindirh 1y ago
> isn't like this our goal here??? I mean we are comment on YC site that produce startup aiming just that Abusing customers as a business model should not be legal. It's not ethical to begin with, actually, and applauding this practice is interesting.
- pc86 1y ago
  I don't know that they're disagreeing with you, more just pointing out the hypocrisy of people railing against adtech on a forum run by an investment company that has made [tens of?] billions off of... adtech. And countless more off companies that paved the way for the internet's enshittification.
phkahler 1y ago
>> isn't like this our goal here??? I mean we are comment on YC site that produce startup aiming just that NO! I've been here long enough to remember PG saying to build something people WANT. YC has become less about technical founders building an MVP and more about the investors finding something they can make money from. The later often depends on "monetization" which has become the driver of enshitification, which is precisely the opposite of what people want and the antithesis of what YC once was.
- skeeter2020 1y ago
  Agree; though it's not just a change in the type of people involved in YC, the actual people - Paul Graham included - have changed dramatically. When I look at PG's essays over time I see an obvious shift from someone trying to explain th HOW (often naively or inaccurately, but usually genuine) to someone trying to rationalize the WHY of positions, ideas and actions that seem inconsistent and at odds with the hacker sensibility.
  - immibis 1y ago
    I think we should just embrace the fact that more money is made from worse products, and we live in a system where the point is to make as much money as possible. If you don't like that, you should campaign to change the system, not just complain about the people doing it.
- mcosta 1y ago
  People WANT Tik Tok. Sad but true.

pembrook 1y ago

Originally yes, but now this is a complaint forum for pessimistic big tech worker bees to vent their frustrations while never actually having to invest time, money or effort on actually doing anything. Generally though, consumers have already spoken with their wallets on this topic and they have told many thousands of doe-eyed founders loud and clear: “we will happily sacrifice our time and privacy to save a $3, bring on the ads” Hence why YC focuses on B2B Saas for B2B Saas companies who sell to other B2B Saas companies.

Goronmon 1y ago
Originally yes, but now this is a complaint forum for pessimistic big tech worker bees to vent their frustrations while never actually having to invest time, money or effort on actually doing anything. I don't know, going back years ago, if anything it would have been YC figuring how to push ads/bloatware. It would have just been more subtle about the phrasing and meaning behind what was trying to be accomplished, but the underlying 'value extraction' stories were still there. The "entrepreneur" aspect of YC generally was about "enshittification" before that word became more used.
immibis 1y ago
It's fundamentally still a forum for VCs to VC. You see this periodically where some topic comes up that's completely antithetical to VC, and gets quickly flagged or downvoted to oblivion, even though there may be lively discussion. For example, this occurs when open source licenses are being discussed. The remaining undead comments are the ones favouring licenses that favour venture capital interests.
- pembrook 1y ago
  I find this fascinating as my impression is usually the exact opposite (all I see is lots of open source fetishism and anti-VC, anti-big tech, anti-AI, anti-risk, anti-new stuff, anti-everything sentiment). However it could be certain headlines attract a certain type of person, allowing for an entirely different subjective experience of what "people on hacker news" are like.
  - immibis 1y ago
    Please note there are two main branches of open source: there is permissive, which is a donation to venture capitalists, and there is copyleft, which is prohibited from use by venture capitalists unless they play nice. This forum champions the former and is generally opposed to the latter, and the more copyleft it is, the more this forum is against it (LGPL vs GPL vs AGPL vs SSPL).

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

bayindirh 1y ago

> isn't like this our goal here??? I mean we are comment on YC site that produce startup aiming just that Abusing customers as a business model should not be legal. It's not ethical to begin with, actually, and applauding this practice is interesting.

pc86 1y ago
I don't know that they're disagreeing with you, more just pointing out the hypocrisy of people railing against adtech on a forum run by an investment company that has made [tens of?] billions off of... adtech. And countless more off companies that paved the way for the internet's enshittification.

phkahler 1y ago

>> isn't like this our goal here??? I mean we are comment on YC site that produce startup aiming just that NO! I've been here long enough to remember PG saying to build something people WANT. YC has become less about technical founders building an MVP and more about the investors finding something they can make money from. The later often depends on "monetization" which has become the driver of enshitification, which is precisely the opposite of what people want and the antithesis of what YC once was.

skeeter2020 1y ago
Agree; though it's not just a change in the type of people involved in YC, the actual people - Paul Graham included - have changed dramatically. When I look at PG's essays over time I see an obvious shift from someone trying to explain th HOW (often naively or inaccurately, but usually genuine) to someone trying to rationalize the WHY of positions, ideas and actions that seem inconsistent and at odds with the hacker sensibility.
- immibis 1y ago
  I think we should just embrace the fact that more money is made from worse products, and we live in a system where the point is to make as much money as possible. If you don't like that, you should campaign to change the system, not just complain about the people doing it.
mcosta 1y ago
People WANT Tik Tok. Sad but true.