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Comment by ChicagoBoy11 | Hacker News Reader

Wait but what about what he is doing is unethical? Isn't he promising restaurants a promotion on the instagram page in exchange for a free meal? And aren't the restaurants getting promoted on the page and giving him a free meal? What's morally grey about it?

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He is promoting a business to his followers as a place they should patronize without any actual belief that they should patronize it (other than his belief that businesses that pay him should be patronized).

He is behaving honestly with the restaurants but not with his followers. Unless he is actually posting things like:

"Hey, I've never been to Moe's Tavern but they said I could have a free burger if I posted this picture, so here it is. Go check it out! You should totally spend money there. Moe's is awesome!! (at least, they were awesome enough to offer me a burger to type this!!11!!!)"

Ok, I'll accept that. I hadn't wholly considered the relationship with the channels followers.

That's what all so called "influencers" do: selling their followers to a highest bidder. Actually, that's what every advertisement business do.

I wish this craze go wider and wider, so people finally stop believing what they are told from billboards, TV screens and social media apps.

I don't think that agency selling places on bus stops has actually tries any of the promoted products.

I think the difference here is that he is actively making a claim which is based on a completely false premise. I know that Roger Federer gets paid a pretty penny to wear a Rolex, but in every ad for it he is still wearing the Rolex; Golfers swear that they trust ball X or club Y, and even though their equipment has been individually engineered to a point that mine never will, they do head to the golf course using those clubs. Giselle Bundchen never says she actually wears Victoria's Secret underwear; she just has pictures of herself taken in it.

Influencers are regulated by the FTC and have to disclose that they're compensated for the review: https://www.ftc.gov/about-ftc/foia/frequently-requested-reco...

So ethical or not, it's illegal to not disclose.

Isn't that what ad agencies do? And many paid reviewers.

Which is why I hate ads, and most online reviews.

"Homer: You mean the mob only did me a favor to get something in return?? Ohhh, Fat Tony! I will say good day to you, sir!"

I did not read the article, but that is a false dichotomy; most places have at least a few good sides, could be location, could be opening times, could be the music. I do not know what kind of reviews he is offering, but positive reviews do not mean he is lying.

In addition to what several others have said, this has the problem of being a strategy that only works because most people wouldn't do it. If everyone were running bots asking for free meals in exchange for good reviews, no one would bother reading reviews, and consequently, no one would give out free meals.

This isn't complicated. This person is a freeloader. It only works while times are good: https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms4713

Uhh, he's taking other people's photos for his own gain. He even thinks crediting them makes it okay, when in fact it works against him by showing that he knows he is stealing.

Forget about all the other morally grey things about this, this is blatant copyright infringement. There truly is no such thing as a free lunch, the content is where 100% of the work and money is, and its completely stolen.

I re-read his article to see if he took steps to work around this. My god, he even seems proud that he directly scrapes from other people's instagram. I would go as far as to report this guy.

I mean, I agree with you philosophically, but he's not stealing their photos - he's re-sharing other people's photos and giving credit back to their pages. This is common Instagram practice - it's essentially a "re-tweet".

If he were copying and pasting the images, that's one thing, but what he's doing has no losers - it amplifies the original user and falls within acceptable instagram practices.

That doesn't mean that I don't feel slimy about the whole thing.

It's a rather common practice on instagram. In the absence of some sort of official "retweet" mechanic, this is what people have taken to doing. As he mentions in the article, the response is often very positive from the original content creator, since he credits them (and presumably drives traffic to their property).

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