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Comment by wpietri | Hacker News Reader

The conflict of interest here concerns me. I don't object to content marketing, but I'd rather a) you were clear from the start that you work for this company and are promoting its product, and b) that this "revolves around [...] using Cohere’s Embed endpoint", so that people can judge how much they want to "get into language models" with pay-per-character pricing, as opposed to something more open.

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Do you advocate for the disclaimer only because 1) the sample uses their product or 2) just because they sell a product correlated to the topic?

I see a lot of articles that fall into #2 being published here without a disclaimer. And I think a disclaimer isn't necessary for #2. Even for #1 I wouldn't bother, but I understand the expectation.

Many advocate a lot against ads, targeting, etc. If we also advocate against promotional content, what would companies do to get attention and traffic?

most content marketing goes to a post on the company's own website, which is a sort of inherent disclosure.

i don't think asking people to disclose that they work for the company whose product they're promoting is "advocating against promotional content".

That's true, it's not advocating against. Bad way of expressing.

But I do think it may undercut the power of content marketing by introducing an unconscious and unjustified negative bias.

If a stranger shares it on HN, should I judge it in a different way? What is the true value of highlighting that the author works for the company?

Do you have a better way of distinguishing between (1) somebody sharing a product because they genuinely think it is good (2) somebody sharing a product because they have a profit motive, despite the product being sh*t.

Proper disclosure is a means to expose bias and external motive. It's not perfect but it's arguably the best method we have right now. There's a reason it's written into law [1]

[1]: https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/resources/disclosures-...

I think the link you shared is about a potentially separate issue.

First, it's advertising in the form of paid sponsorship. Second, people have reasons to trust what a social influencer says.

I'm doing neither if I have a business or work in a business and I share here an article that I wrote that happens to promote this business.

I'm not paying a stranger to talk about the business, and you don't have any reason to trust what I say without the usual judgement you'd employ towards a stranger.

There is still some trust I have with a stranger that posts on hackernews. Perhaps misplaced, but it's there nonetheless. I trust that if they took the time to post about a product, that they genuinely believe in it. If I later learn that they are just a marketer for that product, that trust will get diminished.

To give another example, why do we trust product reviews by strangers on Amazon? They could all be just marketers in disguise after all. But Amazon actually puts effort into removing fake reviews. Why? Because honesty matters. And when you have a bias or profit motive, it's important to disclose that part too, so people can judge your review appropriately. Paid reviewers exist, but they are usually disclosed.

But amazon is full of fake reviews, and product listings, and shit... because it makes amazon money.

and the more fake reviews, the less I trust them. Likewise, the more people here advertising their products without proper disclosure, the less I'll trust the honesty of the posts. So imo it's in the interest of the community to encourage proper disclosure, so that a certain level of trust is maintained.

I don't understand why you think asking that conflicts of interests being clearly disclosed is me wanting to "advocate against promotional content". Do you believe content marketing only works if it's quietly manipulative? That seems like a pretty grim take.

True, a bad way of expressing it.

Correcting myself, what I mean is adding a disclaimer may make people look at it with suspicion. Or even walk away not giving a fair chance to get to know it.

Whether I received a note from a stranger or from the company employee, it shouldn't change how I judge and evaluate it.

Yet, I think the latter introduces bias and undercuts what could be an honest marketing effort.

This is all speculative. No data-driven backing.

If telling the truth about the origin of content created with intent of manipulating them makes readers look at it with suspicion, why is that a bad thing?

I am just gobsmacked that you think an "honest marketing effort" requires being less than honest about the fact that it's a marketing effort.

Thanks. I just added a disclosure to the comment (can't edit the parent anymore). The full embeddings are freely provided here without the need to use the service.

Thanks! I appreciate it.

"Show HN"s regularly have commercial models behind them. Not sure what your stink is...this is normal.

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

"Normal" doesn't mean good, so that line of argument doesn't work for me.

But the specific "stink" I'm objecting to here is, as I said, a conflict of interest. In specific, saying, "If you've ever wanted to get into language models, this is a good place to start" purports to be neutral and helpful. When instead, this person is promoting a product. Maybe using a (to my eyes expensive) commercial service is the truly the best place to start learning that. Maybe this is truly the best service to learn it with. But we can't expect a fair answer to those questions from a person whose works at the company and whose apparent job is promoting the product that pays their salary.

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