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Comment by thomasgerbe | Hacker News Reader

"Is this 'grey' ? In the sense that it can be interpreted as 'shady' ? Hell yes. But is it "wrong" ? I don't think so."

I post a listing on Craigslist specifically saying it's not "ok for others to contact me about other services, products or commercial interests" (an option in Craigslist) and then a business tries to convince me to use their site using a disguise DESPITE clearly stating that I don't want to be contacted?

No, I'd say the true test of whether something is ethical or not is whether it violates rules and/or the choices of a user. Then again, I'm the type that actually wants businesses to respect my decision.

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But wouldn't you say that's a bit unreasonable given that if you listed your apartment/house for rental on Craigslist - it can be safe to assume that you are interested in renting your house/apartment, no ?

I think every 'savvy' user always checks those boxes, but if there is an option that allows you to actually fulfill your original intent - i.e. you got no hits on Craigslist, but with AirBnB you have tons of requests and make a ton of money, wasn't that a win/win - even though they used a 'grey' tactic to reach you.

You say you don't want to be contacted, but that's to protect you from emails from the Nigerian prince and the blatantly obvious annoying spam. But things that are targeted at you, and can add value - I think it would be safe to say it makes sense in those cases.

They said they didn't want to be contacted. It isn't up to others to decide that they are a special case. Any marketer would find the wiggle room to make their email a special case.

This is spam pure and simple the seller can't decide their product is so in line with what you need that they can spam you. Who is then the judge of what is spam. Contacting user that haven't specified they don't want to be contacted by commercial interest is OK, but not someone who said no.

This is probably why the post is only interesting now (after a huge valuation).

I expect lots of the CL folks were perfectly happy to list their places on AirBnB and so far I've not heard complaints from users about they were approached (although I've not been looking for them either).

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