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Comment by version_five | Hacker News Reader

> undisclosed advertisement

To be fair, it is disclosed on the FAQ page:

  Another kind of job ad is reserved for YC-funded startups. These appear on the front page, but are not stories: they have no vote arrows, points, or comments. They begin part-way down and fall steadily. Only one is on the front page at a time. The rest are listed at jobs.

I don't know where else they would disclose it, the fact that you can't vote or comment on it clearly shows you it's different. It's way preferable to e.g. astroturfing, and is not a dark pattern a la Amazon tricking you into prime

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It should be clearly stated as an ad though, google wouldn't get away with not marking the top 2 rows of the result page as advertisement because "they disclosed so on the FAQ"

IANAL, but isn't there a law about online ads similar to what you mention? But then again job postings probably aren't typically considered ads...

Not a lawyer either, but the "ads" (and I think they are ads in the dictionary sense, plus HN refers to them as such in the FAQ) are literally on the website of the company they are advertising for. It's hard to imagine that is not allowed.

But it isn't an ad. You are not required or incentivized to buy anything.

'Ad' doesn't require persuasion to purchase anything. Ads for political candidates (urging you to vote) & many causes (urging you to change other behaviors) are still ads. Often such ads are donated, with no payment for placement.

That said, I think the implicit disclosure via the declaration of affiliation with the site operators – YC – & unique behavior of these posts is sufficient for readers to understand the situation. Even without any label, most people would classify such posts as "job ads".

Whatever harm might accrue to the absolutely densest readers who don't get that seems rather small. Probably less than the harm that other readers might suffer from any crude 'ad' label, which risks leading an even larger group of slightly-less-dense readers to make unwarranted assumptions that such placements are sold for cash via some ad department, or that HN is generally open to paid advertising.

All communication is imperfect, with tradeoffs.

The FAQ literally calls it a “job ad”. Ads don’t necessarily need to drive sales for them to be ads.

Fine, if you want to split hairs. But you knew what I meant and are simply responding to the least charitable reading of my comment.

A job ad promotes the existence of a vacancy. The kind of ads that you need to disclose are ads are the ones that are about the product, not about the vacancies at the company producing the product.

> But you knew what I meant and are simply responding to the least charitable reading of my comment.

Um, no:

> You are not required or incentivized to buy anything.

It's a "job ad". Someone paid money to have it put in front of your face.

No, they didn't, actually. It's a perk for YC companies. They paid nothing.

It is a part of an agreement including a financial transaction.

In the other direction than what one would normally expect with an ad.

OK! They didn't pay for it, but it's still an ad, and I still think it should be marked as such.

They didn't.

And neither do you if you post in 'who is hiring' on the 1st of the month.

Currently on the front page is:

>Smarking (YC W15) Is Hiring a Product Lead to digitize the parking industry (lever.co)

You could disclose it as such

>AD: Smarking (YC W15) Is Hiring a Product Lead to digitize the parking industry (lever.co)

> I don't know where else they would disclose it

Inline, I assume; "[Ad] Foo hiring bar"

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