These are social sites and subject to the same kind of first impression biases that we all face in person.
Imagine showing up at a party with 2 guys sitting on a couch talking to each other compared to a party with people out front talking, people inside dancing and a small group in the back yard sharing a laugh. Social proof matters & I'd hardly consider this cheating or slimy.
If you say, "Ah, my party will probably only be three of us, I better pay 100 people to stand around so that I don't look bad", do people normally think this is an honest practice? You're still perpetrating a deception that could have real consequences.
Sounds fascinating to me
If it were a dating site and the founders filled it with a bunch of fake profiles with pictures of models, then I would have an issue with it because I'd feel the user is being taken advantage of. If there's a fake profile submitting links to news stories, there isn't much of a victim.
ADD: sure it's unpleasant, so let's just downvote and stay happy.
"Heavy weighs the head that wears the crown"; when you lead a large entity, there are always going to be people that are unhappy with your choices. I think by and large the great majority of businesspersons attempt to conduct business morally in general.
I can only speculate, but a site ostensibly where "all readers are editors" full of posts from only "kn0thing" and "spez" doesn't make for the best first impression of a community. Something to also remember is that in 2005, it was MUCH harder for buzz to spread online; I saw this firsthand launching hipmunk in 2010 and what a difference just 5 yrs made in producing all those 'social media' websites.
>Instead of starting out with false pretenses, could they have encouraged their friends to contribute?
Believe me, I did. Maybe 3 of them became regular submitters: Morgan, Connor, and Steve's girlfriend. Perhaps I'm not persuasive enough, but the 1% rule applies -- 1% or less of the traffic that visits a user-gen site actually creates content. So even if you had 100 friends who became regular visitors, you could only count on a few of them to become submitters.
>I think once one goes down this path, the success of the whole endeavor is tainted. Yes, crime frequently pays and cheaters often win, but that's something that we as a community should work to change.
Wow. That's quite the charge. I'm sorry you feel that way. I agree we should work to fight cheating, which is something we to this day take very seriously when it comes to trying to game reddit -- one of the reasons why reddit triumphed over digg.
I suppose if all your comments were things like, "Cool story, I'm glad you posted it", there's not much of a problem, but that doesn't seem like it would really drive engagement.
I have been a member of sites that grow organically with [almost] no activity. You just have to find a group of people that don't necessarily mind a slower pace; it really only takes a relatively small base of active users to get a snowball going. I don't think resorting to astroturfing is a necessity and I do think there is a permanent taint on sites that gain success by dubious methodology like this instead of slower, truer organic growth.
I worry that if people "bend the rules" in cases like this, they are likely to bend other rules that will cause harm to me and others. I'm very leery to do business with anyone who appears to boast of prior deceptions, as I have to presume they will attempt to deceive me in the future. I probably shouldn't have used the word "crime", but as with attracting subscribers with false profiles on a dating site, I'm not certain that it shouldn't be one.
I don't mean to single you out in particular. Talking about what's necessary to get a site like that going is better than everyone doing it in silence. I guess my real worry is that it's all a downward spiral, with ever more egregious tactics necessary to make a site stand out from the crowd. Maybe it's just a convenient excuse for my personal relative lack of success, but I've never been comfortable with the moral compromises that being in business seems to require.
Based on similar comments it appears most HN commenters assume we astroturfed discussions when in fact we had no commenting system; the only user generated content on reddit was only a username and submissions (there are no 'profiles' to speak of either).
But I've been presuming we're talking about submissions rather than comments. I'd be even harsher (and more incredulous that you are defending your behaviour) if I thought you were using shill accounts to falsely attribute comments!
It's clear that we have different value systems that we use to evaluate this. It's also clear that you've thought this through and decided you are OK with it. I'll keep trying to understand how this is, but for now I'm still baffled.
That is a severe judgement. I see it more as a clever hack. Building a community site or a marketplace is the age old chicken and egg problem. Without an existing community, you cant get users. And without users you cant build a community.
http://www.seunosewa.com/2012/03/social-network-chicken-and-...
It's common practice to use throwaway accounts when writing personally.
As someone just starting out, you need to bend the rules once-in-awhile to succeed.
The problem with any forum is the chicken and the egg problem. You won't get people posting/coming back unless it seems like there are lots of people posting (the forum isn't dead).
You either need to fake the content yourself or pay people to do it for you. Most forums do this. There are many other types of sites that most likely need to do this as well (dating sites, for example)
Yes you could say cheating always causes damage in some shape or form and you would probably be right, but I'm not a good enough person myself to judge anyone on a such nuances of morality.
Of all not quite morally flawless sales practices this one is on the harmless end of the scale in my view.
I think this is not a fair comparison. Shady businesses try to rip you off and somehow give you less for your money - while they tried to set the tone and really submit legit content or as he put it "high quality content". So while the traffic in general was staged at least the content was in fact real and you had the real benefits of reddit.
Would the site really have been worse off if the same posts had been submitted under the founders' real names? Instead of starting out with false pretenses, could they have encouraged their friends to contribute? I think once one goes down this path, the success of the whole endeavor is tainted. Yes, crime frequently pays and cheaters often win, but that's something that we as a community should work to change.