Comment by joering2 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by joering2 | Hacker News Reader

Why not? PG is about to make killing on AirBnB and co-founder is a well-known spammer from top-100 FBI list [1] that used our tax money to send his spam, and AirBnB been known for spam practices contacting people from Craigslist [2] to crank-start their startup with empty database.

Further, AFAIK his SocialCam is worth tons of money as well, mostly thanks to Facebook overspamming practices [3]

Truly surprised PG is not full time in spam business; he would make triple killing! :)

HN moderators: its OK to downvote if the truth feels uncomfortable to you.

EDIT: Since this is getting strongly upvoted; here are the links:

[1] http://gawker.com/5853754/the-seedy-spammy-past-of-airbnbs-c...

[2] http://www.tnooz.com/2011/06/01/news/airbnb-admits-rogue-sal...

[3] http://www.pcmike.com/what-im-thinkin/beware-of-socialcam

Ironically enough, IIRC PG was one of pioneers of spam filtering.

Yes he wrote the algorithm used in Spambayes.

And Peter Detkin coined the term patent troll and now runs a company that's one of the worlds biggest patent trolls.

Irony? Or just people being willing to do anything for money. There are worse motivations.

There emphatically is not a worse motivation that being willing to do anything for money. Do something to ensure there is a little less tragedy in the commons. Please.

Sorry, this is off-topic but surely hatred is much worse a motivation than anything.

Honestly, I'm not advocating money as a good motivator. I go to work and I buy things and I'm happy with capitalism but really, I just spent the last few months working on something I like with absolutely no money in it (and it's GPLed). Money is just there so I can get by and enjoy the really fun things. Just realised how much of a hippy I must sound, but it's true.

If you are motivated by hate and have money, you can pay people who are motivated by money to do your hating for you.

Money in itself is a fairly neutral motivation. You can perhaps justify doing something immoral for money if you plan to use that money for purposes that are more moral.

I don't think getting rich counts.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com