Oh. Yeah. That's how SV works. (I didn't know about this particular story though... must have missed it). It's basically just another variant of a dark pattern

Oh. Yeah. That's how SV works. (I didn't know about this particular story though... must have missed it). It's basically just another variant of a dark pattern. They're everywhere. It's basically what fast growth is all about. It's about skirting some rule that you know very well is illegal or at least unethical -- and later when you get caught doing it, saying "Ooops!!! I didn't know this was illegal, LOL!" Go to http://darkpatterns.org http://darkpatterns.org to get more examples of dark patterns. Facebook in particular is expert at it, e.g. see http://darkpatterns.org/library/privacy_zuckering http://darkpatterns.org/library/privacy_zuckering - the clear lesson to take away for startups is, don't give a fuck, do whatever unethical shit you can do to attain a large userbase, get big, get funding, and then either a) deny any wrongdoing was ever done, or b) justify it with some excuse like "we were young :)" or "we didn't know!" Sometimes you have to pay a fine, but you can be assured that the fine will be smaller than the profit made/growth achieved by some particular action. It's a winning strategy. p.s.: Here's a fun challenge: try to turn off targeted advertising on an Apple device. Can you do it? (fwiw, it's much easier to do on iOS7 vs iOS6).