Comment by sillysaurusx
1 day ago
I mean no disrespect. The site simply wouldn't work without it. HN has a million users or so.
Opt out is the best compromise I can offer. Without it, no site is possible.
1 day ago
I mean no disrespect. The site simply wouldn't work without it. HN has a million users or so.
Opt out is the best compromise I can offer. Without it, no site is possible.
Why does the site need to be possible?
Philosophically, it doesn't. No art project needs to exist. Neither did the first HN client app, or any of the dozen HN readers on the app store.
But "Why does it need to exist?" kills every art project, side project, or anything built for the love of building. None of those need to exist either.
There's also the argument that if something isn't forbidden, it should be allowed. The way you lose rights over time is by your existing rights getting clipped off at the edges.
A lot of the criticisms leveled at me here would also apply vs Google back when Larry and Sergey were grad students. If they'd had to worry that indexing content equals copyright infringement, they'd have a steep hill to climb.
i love that you patiently answer these hopelessly antagonistic comments with reason and substance. you'll never convince them, but still i respect that you don't lose your cool. ofc, you're no stranger to this.
1 reply →
Except this isn't indexing, this is creating a replacement frontend.
> There's also the argument that if something isn't forbidden, it should be allowed
That's a really fun legal argument but a pretty irrelevant ethical one.
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