It's true that our society has commodified and mechanized a lot of what used to be, and arguably should still be, human relations. But we shouldn't let the good be the enemy of the better. Your comment reminds me of a Launch HN from last week of a startup that provides advances to blue-collar workers on their wages (in a better way than payday loans). They had a story of some guy who ran out of gas, signed up for their app from the side of a highway, and got enough money to get gas and keep going. My first thought was: people shouldn't be paid so little that that can happen to them in the first place. On the other hand, those economics aren't going away soon, and it was much better for that man that the app existed, instead of staying stranded on the side of the road.
In that case the active ingredient (the drug, one might say) was money and in this case it's sex, but either way, the startup is (presumably) doing some good, even if the broader context isn't changing much. I'm sure a lot of us feel queasy about the mixture of for-profit companies and helping people—but this is the nature of the web of economic and social relations in which we're all embedded. Non-profits have their own problems and it's certainly not the case that they are somehow immune from that web or pure of it. Quite the opposite.
One other thing: to say we're all embedded means we're all embedded. That includes you; I mean, you're expressing your desire for supportive relations to be free of profit motives on a forum operated by a company with profit motives—not only that, the very company that funded just the startup you're dissing, and why? Profit motive. I think it's important for people who care about human relations not to take the stone-casting attitude of pretending to be pure and denouncing others, as if they/we weren't also implicated in the system that has these properties. To pretend otherwise is self-deceptive and for my money that can only add problem, not solution.
If we can't allow profit motives to be mixed with nobler motives and call that a relatively good thing, the endgame of that stance is to leave nothing but profit motives. Of the available options, I think we should take the impure mixed bag.
Doctors also earn money, but they're human beings with actual identities, not legal entities that don't even list contact information on their website, and they're at least sort of bound by professional oaths and privacy laws.
The only reason I would trust a therapist with my personal life details is because of doctor patient confidentiality and there's absolutely no digital record of our conversation.
I think trusting any app or online service with such details is absolutely wrong with zero room for budging, and arguing that "well, maybe this company is okay" is naive to say the least.
If you post snarky, shallow internet rhetoric, of course it will be misinterpreted in all sorts of ways. That's precisely to be expected.
Would you please stop posting like that to HN? It's destructive of what this site is supposed to be for. Please make your substantive points thoughtfully. Other people will be more likely to hear what you actually mean in that case too.
Support groups help in real life, not over some app where a faceless entity's purpose of existence is to extract your money.
It's laughable that you think the solution to a problem like this is to share one's own vulnerabilities with a faceless private company.