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A comment on Ask HN: What is your money-making side project outside programming?. Parent comment

Re:Ask HN: What is your money-making side project outside pr... by Gpetrium on Sunday April 21, 2019 @02:53PM (#19713808)
You may be following the letter of the law but not the spirit of the law.

The cashback was created as an incentive, you found a way to exploit the business model for personal gain in ways that can have an impact on others ability to enjoy the system while having a material impact on the provider of the service. Most in your position will say "but I am only a small piece of the cog" however, if a small minority starts to think the same way, it can have a real impact on a variety of things, including trust between parties.

Everyone tries to rationalize their actions, whether it is or becomes socially acceptable is another matter.

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Re:Ask HN: What is your money-making side project outside pr... by scarface74 on Sunday April 21, 2019 @05:52PM (#19714791)
Well, everyone that takes a VC subsidized ride on Uber is also having a negative impact on their business. If the business makes rules that are unsustainable for their business, it’s their fault. They could very easily set limits to curb abuse.
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Re:Ask HN: What is your money-making side project outside pr... by IanCal on Sunday April 21, 2019 @05:57PM (#19714813)
Uber are obviously trying to get people to use their service. If using their service is bad for them, that's their fault because they were deliberately trying to encourage a behaviour that was detrimental to their business.

That is different from finding a way through the rules which is clearly unintended.

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Re:Ask HN: What is your money-making side project outside pr... by FPGAhacker on Sunday April 21, 2019 @06:20PM (#19714938)
You don't think offering cash back is a way to get people to use their service?
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Re:Ask HN: What is your money-making side project outside pr... by IanCal on Sunday April 21, 2019 @06:25PM (#19714964)
Of course it is. Do you really think that they wanted to pay eighteen thousand dollars for someone to rapidly transfer money back and forth?
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Re:Ask HN: What is your money-making side project outside pr... by scarface74 on Sunday April 21, 2019 @07:46PM (#19715276)
Hopefully they had the financial wherewithal to model outliers in their profit model.
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Re:Ask HN: What is your money-making side project outside pr... by Starknaked on Sunday April 21, 2019 @05:16PM (#19714631)
It's not the user's responsibilty to ensure these incentives are sustainable. Look at what happened with the Hoover free flight program.
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Re:Ask HN: What is your money-making side project outside pr... by IanCal on Sunday April 21, 2019 @05:26PM (#19714679)
The user is the one, well, using it! Sure, in some cases it's not obvious if you're abusing the system but this seems pretty clear.
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Re:Ask HN: What is your money-making side project outside pr... by Starknaked on Sunday April 21, 2019 @05:57PM (#19714818)
The best way I've seen businesses get around this issue is to just have an upper limit on the incentive like interest applies only to the first $x. Its often a nice bonus for people that were going to use them anyway but not enough for people to justify exploiting the incentive alone.
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