Know how you found the computer you're using? It was marketed to you. The books you read, the movies you watch, all marketed. Do you read content online? It's paid for by advertisers who're marketing their products. If you've seen a movie in the last decade you've seen things paid for by product placement. Every article of clothing you wore was marketed to you, either in a catalogue or just positioned in the store in a way to catch your eye.
Marketing is an incredibly subtle trade. I should know: It's what I'm learning. Practically everything counts as marketing. When I make my headline big on a web site, that's to market the title to you. When I make my fonts attractive, I'm marketing a certain attitude as a designer, which is why a site that uses certain fonts looks and feels different than other fonts. It's all manipulation, which isn't to say it's bad. Manipulation is a natural part of life, and it helps us find things we wouldn't see otherwise.
Because I'm learning this, and spending quite a lot of effort to comprehend it all, it rather bothers me when you, Anonymous Internet Person, denounce it while simultaneously showing you don't know what marketing is. I follow politics, too, does that mean I approve of Naziss? And I really do like technological advances, which means I definitely support nuclear weaponry. Of course I don't like spam. But this isn't spam. It's marketing.
Second, yeah, my response was a bit short, as I did not have enough time.
Third, I hope as you study more, you'll abandon your tunnel vision with respect to marketing. At the moment "to a person with a hammer, every problem looks like a nail" comes to mind.
I have nothing against people writing interesting articles for marketing, that is, marketing essentially paying for those articles. That doesn't imply I have to like EVERYTHING that is done in the name of marketing. For Hacker News there is a certain expectation. I don't think "save 20$ on groceries with this cool voucher" would be welcome here, for example. The expectation is that the articles posted have some relation to "hacking" (in a certain wider sense), that is, enables me to learn stuff.
That is why I mentioned spam, because if you pour marketing content into a channel where it isn't welcome, it is spam - that is the analogy I saw, even though it is a grey area. I just wanted to refute your argument that marketing is always OK. Some people might subscribe to a "the best free offers" list, and they would welcome news about vouchers.
Since this MacHeist stuff got a lot of upvotes, obviously opinions in this community also differ. I am just surprised, that is all - I think it is an Apple effect... Because I don't see the big difference to a groceries voucher.
Perhaps one could argue that the MacHeist way of selling stuff is in itself an interesting hack (a marketing hack). They sold a frigging 4 millions pieces of software people wouldn't probably have bought otherwise. I would be interested in discussion on how they pulled it off...
Edit: to make it clear, if the news had been something like "new version of ShoveBox is out", I would have felt differently. It would have been new technology that is available. "ShoveBox now costs 20$ less" is just a voucher.
I was fine with the submission, because it let me get six applications for free. That's a good alert to send out.
As for anonymity: I consider everybody I don't have a personal relationship with to be anonymous. Knowing who you are doesn't make you any less of an Internet Person to me.
Furthermore, take a look at the top 30 currently on HN, approximately 1/3 of them are in some way promotional (either of some product or self-promotion, delivered as news or a testimonial or story).
Like these headlines: 1. Thank You Rails 2. The article about Mark Pincus at a startup at Berkley Mixer 3. HP working on distributed sensory mechanisms 4. The physics of bras 5. How to write a great novel 6. The interview with Y-Combinator that wasn't 7. Japanese teenage boy improves rails 8. Being open and honest about the startup process
In some way, these articles promote a company, a technology, the author of the posts value, and so on.
This post about MacHeist is just feels more blatant.
But I am happy to have people like you in the community that open up debate.
I am sorry, I just don't see the MacHeist thing in the same category as those other articles you mention. There is no information or news in the MacHeist thing. Obviously a lot of readers here disagree, so whatever...
So can I sell your email address to all the spammers?