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Comment by kemiller | Hacker News Reader

You are not alone in this attitude, so don't take this personally, but I'm going to reply to you because you're the top comment. This is an incredibly destructive point of view. Promotion is essential to any software project, even open source, and in the vast majority of cases, word of mouth is not enough. This is an ethical, up-front, straightforward ask that costs you and anyone you might contact very little and is optional in any case. He's a solo developer. Cut him some slack.

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But what am I endorsing? I haven't tried the product myself yet. It's not unethical, but it's also simply not something I'm prepared to do - I will not recommend something to anyone without having been able to evaluate it myself first.

This.

In a world where publishing is essentially free, reputation is an extremely valuable commodity. The ask here is not trivial.

Yes, it is trivial. You have a warped perspective of importance if you think giving the nod to a new mail app is some holy thing.

I tell my friends about new apps, startups, and projects all the time. None of them think I'm staking my reputation when I shitpost about some new thing in Slack.

We are different. If I recommend a piece of software to someone these days, it means it's truly exceptional and they should really check it out.

Apart from that, the e-mail form doesn't let me control what I'm sending.

Recommending a product you haven't reviewed is a form of lying. Some of us value our integrity.

Literally, nobody said to do that. Good lord, are you aware of nuance? You can make people aware of something that looks promising, without lying.

> You have a warped perspective of importance if you think giving the nod to a new mail app is some holy thing.

You're taking a needlessly confrontational stance here with insulting language, and people are responding to that.

Isn’t this true of all advertising, except in the rare cases where the publisher only accepts ads for products they endorsed?

How can we ever expect a reliable, non-garbage-dominate internet when it is funded by perverse incentives?

The distinction is that if I see a billboard (or magazine ad, or TV commercial) advertising a product I don't think that I have a relationship with the billboard and they know me pretty well and have my best interests at heart... so I don't think that if this particular billboard that knows me so well is promoting a product to me then it must be a pretty good product for me (especially because this billboard doesn't usually go out of their way to recommend products to me).

But if a friend of mine recommends a product to me, well, I do think all of those things.

I don't think the parent is claiming its a holy thing. But I certainly feel the same way.

My reputation is worth more to me, than trying to get higher up in a queue to a product i haven't tried. I don't share things with people lightly, and there are clearly a bunch of us out there.

Any certainly, nobody is advocating that our view of the world is the correct one, just that we hold that view.

This is an awesome debate and one of the reasons I love HN

and yet to make this comment you do it from an account created just for this purpose... why? to protect your reputation?

It's almost as if context matters

But you're not giving the nod to it -- you don't even know yet if it's any good or not -- you're only telling them about it because you've got something to gain yourself from doing so.

Yeah! Now you've got it! You're just telling people about something. It's not a big deal.

Spam is also "just telling people about something".

Imagine what the world would be like if everyone had the same attitude towards other people's attention and time as you do.

I'm sure this behaviour doesn't seem like a big deal to you because relatively few people are so inconsiderate.

This is the essence of the crap filled internet. Everyone makes these local trade offs and before you know it we all lose. We are prisoners of the dilemma.

> Yes, it is trivial.

Then why are you posting anonymously?

  reputation is an extremely valuable commodity

But how does pre-use endorsement have any actual value toward a positive reputation? Did the definition of "reputation" change when I wasn't watching?

Whenever anyone makes a recommendation you have to ask yourself: is this person making this recommendation because they have actually investigated the thing they are recommending and found it to have merit, or are they doing it simply because they are getting some personal benefit from making the recommendation. I hope I don't have to explain why a recommendation has much more value in the former case than the latter.

This may not matter much if the thing you're recommending is an email client. But it matters a lot if the thing you're recommending is, say, an investment in a startup company. It also matters a lot if you're, say, Amazon or Yelp or TripAdvisor and a big part of your stock in trade is an enormous volume of product recommendations.

Then don’t refer anyone.

Or maybe only send to your friends who a new email client would interest?

Is “hey, saw this on HN, this looks interesting” really going to hurt your reputation?

He’s a dev trying to market, that’s all.

I was going to say this.

It's totally optional to invite more people, so if it goes against your ethical views, just don't.

Yeah, but by engaging in this behavior, the dev has convinced me this whole thing is click spam, so I’m done evaluating it before I even downloaded it.

Sure, put my reputation behind something I have never tried. That makes sense.

It's actually dangerous and unethical TO put my name behind this untested product. It's not open source, and I'm being asked to put my seal of trust and approval on their project. That's a hard no.

So don’t? The dev isn’t forcing you to give five referrals to sign up.

"Incredibly destructive"

Incredibly hyperbolic

Extremely redundant and reductive

Spam your friends and sites to jump forward in the line!

I agree with the premise, but please, do it after I tried it, not before. Otherwise it might as well be a smart e-mail harvesting thing. How do you know these days?

Top secret product built in stealth mode rarely achieves success.

Where are the boring products without dumb marketing techniques to generate hype, with actual things to show other than a waiting list?

It's simply a blocker to adoption. What's dropoff rate from people who land on it to people who actually go through with this request?

Well, you don't have to invite anyone to join the waiting list, it is totally optional.

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