= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
thomblake comments on Let them eat cake: Interpersonal Problems vs Tasks - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (568)
Well... you're absolutely right! I'm on my second project right now, and would never dream of guilt-tripping a client into a sale :-) But still, a lot of successful projects get started without much regard for ethics. This especially applies to online communities: LessWrong's launch is actually an outlier. Creating hundreds of sockpuppet accounts to simulate active life on the site is pretty much standard industry practice, Myspace got its startup push from a huge spam emailing (insider info I saw somewhere), etc. Because the choice is either this or 5 visitors/day, month after month, who look at your comatose website and leave.
For an especially clear-cut example, SEO is certainly unethical from the customer's point of view, but I absolutely have to do it, and will. Sounds a bit like PUA practices, no?
SEO is not unethical when it focuses on findability. Making your site reachable by the people who are looking for it is not manipulative - it's just good customer service.
If you are doing something unethical, you should reconsider whether you "have to" do it. Hurting your customers is not good business, and you're making yourself an enemy of the people you purport to help.