I'm very hypocritical.

Yea no kidding.

"AppNexus helps brands connect with consumers, empowering agencies and advertisers with a uniquely powerful approach to programmatic online advertising."

Thanks for working on Ad Tech, the very thing that powers this bubble by trading attention as a commodity. Other people work on silly startups, but this shit is akin to HFT.

Unless microtransactions for content take off, and they haven't, ad tech is necessary to incentivize content on the web. 90% of the websites you read could not exist without the ecosystem that appnexus is a big player in. Hacker News, being one big ad for ycombinator, doesn't need to bother.

So he's doing a real thing that provides real value to the web. And it's actually a sustainable business, to boot.

Lastly, there's absolutely no need to get so personal -- if his article offended you, discuss the article.

See, whether a startup is silly or not is an opinion. I happen to have an opinion that adtech is evil. Whether it has a side benefit like allowing "content" to exist is tangential.

I usually keep that opinion to myself because it's not a popular one, but in this particular subthread we are not discussing the article, we are discussing the author who volunteered his "I am very hypocritical" comment.

Elsewhere in this comment thread I discuss the article.

I don't get it - are you arguing that because you think your opinion is unpopular it's okay to be facetious?

No, I am stating the following (maybe unclearly):

1) In a thread where the author shows up and says "I am very hypocritical", standard rules like "discuss the article, not the author" do not apply. The author is fair game for discussion.

2) I don't usually crap on other peoples' industries, but not in this case, because (1).

"90% of the websites you read could not exist without the ecosystem that appnexus is a big player in."

That's ok. The internet would be better off without most junk websites, and the ones I like, I'm willing to pay for.

Funnily enough, a big side effect of the ad tech's evolution over the last 10 years is that junk websites tend to get junk ads with junk CPM and quality websites get the higher-value stuff.

You don't need to incentivize content on the web. People's interests and need for collaberation and sharing should incentivize content on the web.

We're in enough of a media bubble already - there's so much media and so few trusted sources that its impossible to filter content anymore. Ads inject themselves after people's ability to filter burn out like a virus. Its not good for society.

We like to call out politicians and such for who sponsors them. What's wrong with calling out our information sources in the same way? (serious question)

You know, this might be the year when microtransactions for content actually take off.

We would be ok without 90% of websites. Too much redundancy and junk content.

I could do without 90% of those websites, i suppose

Interestingly, this bubble is not powered by ads. Only one of the top 25 "unicorns" worldwide, Snapchat, is ad-based. The others provide a good or service paid for directly by their customers.

[1] http://fortune.com/unicorns/

Advertising is a necessary part of selling a product. Selling a product is a necessary part of being profitable. Why hate on that? Way better than waste-my-time Farmville or an enhanced "like" button. Adtech actually helps commerce.

Many products succeed with zero advertising.

Facebook stock value is doing well and it is because many products are using it to advertise

And they are by far the exception and not the rule.

Too many fall into the "Field of Dreams" fallacy thinking that if you build it, they will come. Most of the time it doesn't work like that.

To be fair... he's not working... he's on sabbatical :)

Ignoring the hypocritical nature of this statement, I take offense in this generalization in particular.

If you're an engineer with a family here in SV, you cannot take a sabbatical. In most cases you need to get a job in a week or the rent will drive you to bankruptcy.

You probably shouldn't be living in SV if the rent is so expensive that if you lose your job then you go homeless in a month.

Oh come on with the hyperbole, if you didn't spend so much money on a nice area and expensive stuff you could afford it easily.

I don't get people who are so smart and yet simultaneously so stupid that they think spending $100,000 a year is normal.

Wake up, you're rich, you're just too stupid to realize you could be living at a much cheaper level.

Based on when you joined HN, I think it is safe to conclude that you have been here long enough to know the high signal-to-noise ratio that the community strives for here. I think that there are more eloquent and meaningful ways to express your opinion and disagree [1][2].

Just a friendly reminder:

1. There is another human being on the other side of the conversation.

2. Practice compassion when responding.

----

[1] http://paulgraham.com/disagree.html

[2] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Graham's_Hierarchy_o...

Hey, you know that the vast majority of businesses are not very friendly to remote work, and moving away from these areas frequently means a pay cut or sometimes inability to find work?

I'm not defending this at all, as I think it's stupid, but they are not "rich". They are frankly just less screwed than other middle class folks.

The median household income in the US is $51,939 (2013).

You seriously think having double or probably triple from just one salary isn't rich?

And where exactly are all your caterers and cleaners and gardeners and nannies and baristas and tavern workers and shop people living and buying their food with their minimum wage in the bay area? Obviously they aren't remote working.

Perspective is a bitch.

SF has the highest CPI and rent index in the entire U.S., so comparing it with median salary of the U.S. is non-sequitur.

...Especially when talking about perspective.

>You seriously think having double or probably triple from just one salary isn't rich?

First of all, cost of living varies widely from locality to locality. Making 90k a year in middle of nowhere Idaho or some other piece of flyover country is totally different than making 150k in an urban area like NYC or SF.

Saying: "welp, it's your fault your cost of living is so high, you should move 2 hours away to Sacramento, stupid" is not only incredibly naive, but borders on a level of ignorance that I haven't seen in quite some time.

Just your regular self-aware engineer.

There is nothing hypocritical about acknowledging one's self is spoiled.

The combination of a cultural bloodthirst for hypocrisy, as well as the human intelligent capacity for abstraction and pattern matching guarantees that anyone can, and probably will, end up being labeled a hypocrite.

Takes one to know one. ;)

Ah, there's my morning coffee spit take. I've been online for a few hours already; it was late today.

Ad hominem

The author complains about that behavior, labeling it a sign of how 'spoiled' engineers are. The author also engages in this behavior. Pointing this out, and labelling it hypocrisy, does not constitute an ad hominem attack. Because what the author has done is the definition of hypocrisy.

It depends on the implication of the allegation of hypocrisy. Is it intended to discredit the author or his argument? Then it's a tu quoque fallacy.

Yeah but hypocrisy doesn't take away from the point the author is making. Something can be true and also be ad hominem.

It's actually the exact definition of ad hominem tu quoque.