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Comment by gizmo | Hacker News Reader

Cheaters think everybody cheats when given the opportunity. Thieves believe only fear of the law is what keeps the masses in line. Liars believe lying is normal and that they’re only embellishing anyway and really it’s for the greater good and also pragmatic and necessary to succeed.

There are many people who would not f their users and employees over when given the opportunity. Be like that.

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Well, first of all, it’s transactional. I have no particular affinity for any given service I use. If another service comes along that has enough upside to overcome the momentum of switching, I’ll definitely do it, and I’m sure you would too, and maybe that will annoy the company. That goes the same for the company; if they have a chance to cash out, I’m sure they’d take it. And maybe that will annoy me.

But the bigger point is that you conflate selling to a bigger company with more resources with “f[ing] their users,” which is just naive.

I'm a Bandcamp user, the sale to Epic fucked me over.

I’ve admittedly aged into a stereotype out of an Hard Times article and so haven’t bought an album in years…

What did they do exactly? My music is there I bought years back.

Like the sibling comment, I'd honestly be interested in hearing how they fucked you over. I know the whole "we will keep running it just like it's always been" trope is very hard to swallow, but it seems to me they actually had left it alone thus far. Am I wrong about that?

Same. The best online music service since Napster got screwed and it's never coming back. The writing is on the wall and it's clear that the "enshittification" officially begins.

> But the bigger point is that you conflate selling to a bigger company with more resources with “f[ing] their users,” which is just naive.

Because that's what happened to a lot of companies who got bought out - eventually the MBA sharks wanted their returns. Minecraft, MySQL, StackOverflow, Tumblr, Reddit, TwiXXer, they all fell victim to enshittification.

Others just ossified with steady streams of Big Money coming in like Mozilla, Wikipedia or a ton of stuff from Adobe. Or they got closed down by Big Corp because they were no longer "profitable" enough like Google Reader.

Personally, I'm happy enough that HN still exists.

"It's just transactional"

"I don't owe anybody anything"

"You're just naive"

These are the rationalizations used to justify antisocial behavior. It's nihilistic and destructive to society.

I've heard people espouse this kind of logic even when talking about employees who have worked for them for 20 years. They exchanged labor for pay and therefore nobody owes anybody anything. Yeah, right.

I wish I worked with people that share your philosophy.

> But the bigger point is that you conflate selling to a bigger company with more resources with “f[ing] their users,” which is just naive.

It's not naive, it's how these things go the majority of the time. I think that expecting otherwise is a bit naive.

Thing is, we are in a pretty ruthless society governed by sometimes insane amounts of money - and eventually, anyone will sell out given the right price, and no matter the purchase contract, eventually big-corp culture will seep in. See e.g. Atlassian, Apple, Oracle, Microsoft or Facebook who have been on the buyer side, and Minecraft and MySQL for infamous cases of companies that got bought out.

Would like to think i wouldn't sell, but if someone massive company is offering my money, the worry is always they'll build their own later and stomp me anyway.

That and there's probably an element of wishful thinking. "I built this nice thing, and they promised me they won't mess it up."

That's why the product itself should not just be the technology stack (as GP might allude to), but something larger. In the case of Bandcamp, it's the relationships, community, trust and integrity that makes it what it is, and another massive company won't just be able to create those things by throwing random employees at the problem.

Bandcamp did have investors, they weren't 100% bootstrapped. Those investors likely had board seats and a significant say in whether to accept Epic's offer.

Not to mention that COVID led to a steep increase in the site's traffic. It's possible that the added operational burden meant that Bandcamp was no longer the chill lifestyle business that it used to be.

I agree with you on not wanting to fuck the users over either. Personally I don't want to do that.

But the reality is, I have other things I need in life too, and those things require money. My dad is working into his 70s, what if I could fund his retirement? What if I could pay for my brothers uni? Or for my grandma's nurse?

When our basic necessities are not secure, we can't always make the ethical choice. Until then, people will keep selling out.

Literally everybody has family members who could use extra money. If having family absolves you from ethical constraints we can dispense with the notion of ethics altogether.

Sure, and that's why most people would sell.

Having a family doesn't "absolve you" from ethics, but it means that you have to weight doing right by your family vs doing right by your users. Most people choose their family, and nobody blames them for it.

> nobody blames them for it

I do.

If somebody has to do wrong by their customers to do right to their family, they've seriously messed everything up.

Ok well, that's alright but you have to realize that you're in the minority here.

And no, they haven't messed everything up, society has failed them

I don't think selling your company is unethical

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