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Comment by saagarjha | Hacker News Reader

> when you abstract away the nature of this business, you get to solve some really interesting problems

This is how a lot of people justify working on some pretty awful things :(

Sure, but Affiliate Marketing is just marketing. It's not the best thing in the world, but it sure as hell isn't worse than the likes of Facebook, Google, etc.

Why should it be one or the other? Let’s just do away with both.

It’s like a criminal justifying his actions with “well at least it isn’t murder so I’ll keep going”.

That's not what I am saying. Any large web platform will use these tactics, the worst offenders being the ones on top of the chain. Even if you truly believe your platform or employer does not use these tactics, they are being positively affected by the platforms that do. Your work more than likely contributes to this massive market - and it is massive, it pays a lot of wages, directly and indirectly.

That's again like saying, "I'm technically in the mafia, but I work the small jobs that don't involve threatening or killing people, so this is OK".

> isn't worse than the likes of Facebook, Google, etc.

I didn't qualify my statement to leave these out…

When I read these sentiments, I usually see it as people that naively believe the "badness" of the internet is limited to a selected list of players. If we could magically get rid of these players, you might as well shut down the whole internet.

The internet, sadly, still runs due to these shady platforms. Without them, businesses wouldn't sell enough, "good sites" wouldn't have a revenue model, people that falsely believe their work is ethical and good wouldn't be paid.

The solution is not to purge, but to improve and clarify.

There's nothing inherently wrong with Google or Facebook, and they clearly provide value to many people. It's their methods I have issue with, and you're right: if they could improve them I might not feel that they were doing wrong anymore. They haven't yet, though…

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