Hacker News Reader

Comment by bipson | Hacker News Reader

I don't know man. I was really happy about DDG existing and making an effort (although I am not a user).

But they now clearly shifted from a "Noble Actor" to a "Competitor" with this aggressive marketing. I don't appreciate these marketing campaigns that are directed at the competition. I never liked the "I'm a Mac"-campaigns, nor the all the "Bing"-fearmongering.

It signals to me that you're not a fighter for a noble cause, letting the product speak for itself, but actually in for yourself in the first place. I'm rather turned off by this.

View on HN

Preventing noble actors from doing aggressive marketing causes them to stay small. Marketing is required to get market share nowadays. If the marketing causes people to find you to whom your are the better choice, then it is good marketing ⇒ https://www.draketo.de/anderes/honest-marketing

Maybe I was using too much understatement:

The kind of marketing is not only "aggressive", it is overly aggressive IMHO. It is vilifying, demonizing.

You can do aggressive marketing all you want, but in my eyes when arguments become hyperbolic, they get less and less believable.

The way they write their piece, FLoC is the worst thing that has ever happened, worse than everything that came before (how on earth is this worse than strictly personalized cookies all over the place?!) and only DDG and their extension can save you.

But why even try a different product if you don't know why it exists? And what makes it better? How do you communicate that?

Different messages have different appeals. Perhaps DDG's marketing "secret sauce" is word of mouth? And the message you don't like - as an admitted non-user - isn't meant to drive your behavior, but the WoM behaviour of current committed users?

I agree. I used to think both sides were about equal. And then one side got more extreme and did really bad things to lots of people. The other side called them out. I think calling them out wasn't very nice, so they're basically twisting my hand forcing me to ~vote~ select the extreme option. Not my fault.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com