Hacker News Reader

It was opt-out when it first rolled out. I cant speak to now. I had to opt out as soon as I got the original email. My friends did not and I made fun of them for their viewing choices. By that night, they all had theirs set to private.

Could be but I doubt, it, they're a pretty new company that was founded by a bunch of ex vice journos who cover the kinds of things HN finds interesting in a way that HN finds palatable.

>Also is there some astroturfing from 404media going on? This is the third link I’ve seen from them today on HN and I’ve never heard of them

They're a relatively new tech site that are very aware of the value of astroturfing sites like HN and Reddit, so they're obviously doing it. They got a congratulatory "great work going indie" topic when they launched here because a lot of their staff worked on bigger sites, but I've been seeing more "Wow this site is actually terrible, exaggerating crap" comments than anything positive.

This article could've been written without the porn angle, but that's going to be the sensational headline.

I'm not sure but myself and all my server users got the email and I've never intentionally opted into anything related to this.