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Comment by scott_s | Hacker News Reader

I think he buries the lede that step number one in this endeavor is to entirely unethical. Yes, it turns out that if you take content from others without asking to build a social media following, and then promise to post positive reviews of restaurants to those followers, you can get free meals.

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Really have to love how the HN hivemind can simultaneously defend wholesale intellectual property theft (genlib, piratebay, et al) and claim that copyright law is too strict while getting morally bent out of shape over someone aggregating and curating otherwise low-value instagram posts in order to eat takeout for free.

The lack of moral consistency is astounding.

No, digital information is not the same as a tangible object, so everything, including the morals, is different.

Many people are taking issue with him quote-unquote "stealing" other people's content when he's ostensibly just resharing single images that fit in a broader theme of being vaguely NYC-related. This seems much more defensible as fair use as opposed to rehosting/pirating somebody's entire textbook or TV show.

It's almost as if the "hivemind" isn't a hivemind, but a large set of people with different opinions/morals and different willingness to express it in different contexts.

I am an individual and not a hivemind. I, personally, find piratebay unethical. I pay for what I consume. Paywalled scientific articles are a different beast, which I don't want to get into here.

> The lack of moral consistency is astounding.

Is it? Did you expect all HN users to have exactly the same moral compass?

People can believe that copyright law is too strict while also believing that copying other people work is not moral. Adultery should not be illegal but also should be look at as morally wrong.

Also, the actual harm from downloading one additional episode of game of thrones is nearly non existent. The harm of stealing the photos from individual photographers is surely greater.

Many people believe that it's unethical to use other people's work for profit, at least not without sharing back, which seems to be the case here. It's not inconsistent to believe that, while also believing that non-commercial copyright infringement is not immoral.

I don't like the idea either.

But I think I can also argue in this case that ethics are contextual. That is, in the culture of social media, likes, follows and shares are currency. What looks unethical from the outside is actually a slick automated version of what's going on on the inside.

If it were that taboo - again within __that__ world - there would be repeated spam complaints and blocks. The irony is, these "stolen" shares increase the value of the brand, not devalue it.

Blogs have done this for years via a "pingback".

There could be some confusion between "taking" and "sharing"...

He never claims to own the photo.

He credits the original content creator. Additionally, content creators love when their content is shared, because "Someone with an audience of 20k people just shared one of my photos?! #exposure!"

"#exposure!" is the common refrain of the thieves, not the artists.

very true!

Wow. I cannot believe people still think this isn't copyright infringement. Crediting the work of others saves you from plagiarism, it does NOT save you from copyright. Instagram does not have a "pingback" feature. It's literally a copy pasted image, with a link in the description.

A lot of regrammers try to hide the original poster by cutting off watermarks, and jamming the attribution far below the (more) cut off if they even bother with attribution at all.

The author addresses that directly:

> Now, none of the content my account posts is owned by me. This is a contested topic — some people seem to think this can lead to some issues. However, if you credit where the content comes from it’s usually not a problem. I’ve never had any issues re-sharing content. In fact, I’ve only had people thank me for sharing their photos. Worst case, someone reports your post and it gets taken down by Instagram. As long as you give credit where credit is due, you should be good.

I’m not a social media lawyer or “ethicist,” so I don’t know how accurate the claim is. For all I know it may be legal as far as copyright law is concerned.

I read that paragraph, which is why I felt he buried the ledge. I think that using someone else's work for your own gain without permission is unethical. It also doesn't address writing fake restaurant reviews.

Who exactly decided that reposting others' content, with citation, is unethical? The people getting credits are getting an opportunity to grow their follower count and to gain more exposure as well. If they aren't happy with what he's doing, they can certainly flag his account, and Instagram will eventually ban him if he gets flagged too many times.

A lot of the responses here are dripping with envy and sour grapes.

if you care about your content, you should watermark it.

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