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Making it opt-out instead of opt-in is shitty. Here's a better idea: don't disrespect the hackernews users in the first place.
by superloika 22d ago
Making it opt-out instead of opt-in is shitty. Here's a better idea: don't disrespect the hackernews users in the first place.
- sillysaurusx 22d agoI mean no disrespect. The site simply wouldn't work without it. HN has a million users or so. Opt out is the best compromise I can offer. Without it, no site is possible.
- akerl_ 22d agoWhy does the site need to be possible?
- sillysaurusx 22d agoPhilosophically, it doesn't. No art project needs to exist. Neither did the first HN client app, or any of the dozen HN readers on the app store. But "Why does it need to exist?" kills every art project, side project, or anything built for the love of building. None of those need to exist either. There's also the argument that if something isn't forbidden, it should be allowed. The way you lose rights over time is by your existing rights getting clipped off at the edges. A lot of the criticisms leveled at me here would also apply vs Google back when Larry and Sergey were grad students. If they'd had to worry that indexing content equals copyright infringement, they'd have a steep hill to climb.
- akerl_ 22d agoExcept this isn't indexing, this is creating a replacement frontend. > There's also the argument that if something isn't forbidden, it should be allowed That's a really fun legal argument but a pretty irrelevant ethical one.
- ButlerianJihad 22d ago> replacement frontend No, they are not "replacement frontends". Those are known as "3rd party clients". These are not clients but clones. They are cloning all the content. That means they've replicated the backend, the frontend, and the database full of content, by scraping/pirating it from the original source. old.reddit.com is an "alternative frontend". Clones of scraped content are not.
- akerl_ 22d agoIt feels odd to nitpick the terminology of somebody who is agreeing with your concern.
- DANmode 19d agoI considered your point deeply, across days. If they don’t muck with the data, difference between this and caching is…?
- sillysaurusx 12d agoThanks. And I'd never muck with the data. I worry about it being stale, but it won't ever be modified.
- krapp 22d agoI don't know why people decided to jump on this one specific project but there have been numerous replacement frontends for HN published over the years, and put on Show HN. And clones of HN. And datasets of HN comments.
- akerl_ 22d agoI can't speak for other people, but I commented here because the person I replied to shared their project and then in response to concerns about it copying other people's content, tried to position that first as being OK because they'd offer opt-out, and then said that was viable because if it were opt-in the site wouldn't be possible.
- swyx 22d agoi love that you patiently answer these hopelessly antagonistic comments with reason and substance. you'll never convince them, but still i respect that you don't lose your cool. ofc, you're no stranger to this.
- sillysaurusx 22d agoThank you. That meant a lot.
- xigoi 22d agoHow is archiving content disrespectful toward the creators of the content? Are you also going to sue the Internet Archive?