Android app scans products, reveals SOPA support status of creator

I'm confused. Are you saying that the person you are replying to is only interested in aligning consumer action with consumer beliefs because of a shallow interest? He is explicitly saying he thinks a roughly shallow idea could be taken further...

Or are you saying we should avoid topics that could broadly be considered political? If this is the case I don't understand why you didn't reply to OP instead of this comment (and how that meshes with pg taking a stand on SOPA in general).

Or that you think the suggested application isn't of the caliber that ideas would have been in the old days pg refers to? I have only used hn for a year or so, but have read some of the archives and this doesn't feel correct. It's an interesting idea -- perhaps a browser extension that modifies sites like amazon.com?

Please explain what you meant; I am very curious. Thanks.

What I think pg is refering to is making shallow political comments. (The comment you linked to is in reply to a post containing the f-word twice.)

The OP is suggesting features for an app, it's a totally different thing.

The comment seemed apolitical to me -- it was a statement on the future of purchasing where consumers have access to a great deal more information. Instead of only considering the price of a product, consumers of the future could be making their decision based on factors such as the environment, political stance of companies, reviews of return policies and so forth.

I think the way to go here is have the user fill out some sort of questionnaire in their preferences section that spec's out their ideals. The the app assigns scores of desirability to scanned objects accordingly. This would allow the user to vote with their dollars in a very powerful and easy way.

Companies support SOPA based on that reasoning, it only seems consistent to say "by your own metric, you lost $XM of sales".