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Comment by ks2048 | Hacker News Reader

ks2048·

"Since I've added gambling and pornography to my old niche hobby website, my profits are up 4% - how can anyone criticize me?"

Not a perfect analogy, but adding some bait that does indeed work for grabbing attention can of course be criticized.

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And of course those criticisms can and should be dismissed if the creators goals are purely to maximize engagement

You can dismiss criticisms of theft if you look at the goals of the thiefs

No that _is_ the criticism

The goal of purely maximizing engagement should itself be dismissed.

Lying, grifting, and promoting conspiracies online also maximizes engagement and drives revenue. I guess we should go ahead and do that too.

This whole conversation makes me want to throw up

This does make me wonder if I'm being disillusioned or if the community has genuinely shifted in the past 2–3 years or so. Or of this merely a greater societal shift as "history culture" takes off. You'd think sentiments like "clickbait is bad" would be a common sentiment here, but now I'm not so sure anymore.

I feel very similarly. I would’ve assumed we all obviously don’t want all this chaff in our lives

I don't think its specific to the community here. Seems the whole world has decided that everyone should be a grifter.

No no they’re entrepreneurs

You are on a site that's part of the SV culture. The culture that approves if everything not explicitly lillegal done to increase the ROI on startups. The culture that celebrates negative externalities as "disruption".

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