17-Year-Old Turned Down $8M to Keep His Viral Coronavirus Tracker Ad-Free

sciencealert.com

13 points·mhb··6 comments

Let's be honest, that kid is a moron. Most people wouldn't have even noticed the ads as they are so ingrained in the internet these days. The average person I know still clicks on the first google result, without realizing it's an ad, and wonders why it's not the correct website.

I've no doubt he'll make it as a programmer but there was no moral quandary here and the money probably would have done him a lot of good.

Wow, you should be ashamed of yourself. This awesome kid makes a difficult, ethical, well thought out choice (as explained in the article), and you’re calling him names on the internet. Time to reflect a bit on your own choices i would say...

Not necessarily, besides, people are so used to ads nowadays.

Yep. He's not exactly running the Johns Hopkins tracker and his amateur, pseudo-journalism toy has a shelf-life that will be worth nothing within months. It's like bragging about shutting down a startup that was worth money and could've been sold. Destruction of and missing value is stupid.

Having unwavering ethics isn't stupid.

I suspect he turned it down due to being having connections, being hardworking and talented enough for $$ to likely never be a serious issue for him.

4chan's founder and countless others have a similar mentality.

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