Hacker News Reader

Comment by nolok | Hacker News Reader

Does that changes anything to the truth and validity of the points he is making, though ? Because if yes I would like to know what and how, and if no then this is an ad-hominem.

Nobody said advertising wasn't paying the bills.

View on HN

This is not ad hominem. It’s directly relevant. No attempt was made to avoid discussion of the issue at hand by attacking Doctorow. Let’s please keep our fallacies straight.

I actually think if he was more transparent the piece would have been significantly better. For example, "At BoingBoing we rely on these systems as well. Why? The simple fact is we have virtually no alternatives to the adtech status-quo and our choice is either to participate in the system as it is or go out of business. This is why I'm calling on likeminded publishers to...". Instead he passes himself off in a disingenuous way, and people reading his words could reasonably assume that his own site was perhaps better, when in reality it far exceeds the mean for the amount of tracking on a website.

Yes it says boingboing are hypocrites and not the right people to spread this message. At the very least they could have used this as an opportunity to say “you may have noticed we have tons of tracking on this article, here’s why...”.

There’s something to be said about being a trustworthy source.

The capitalist will gladly sell you the rope you hang him with.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com