Hacker News Reader

Comment by anon1385 | Hacker News Reader

It's worth noting that PG has defended this practice when YC Companies do it.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5092711

The apps that get installed are "crapware." This one seems a matter of opinion. A lot of the world's most popular apps and sites seem like junk to us. But the users are choosing to install these things.

If you want to stop this kind of thing you need to get angry at the people who fund it and make money from it. That includes Paul Graham and Y Combinator.

More about the YC funded InstallMonetizer:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5059806 Y Combinator is funding the future of spam in Windows (467 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5086043 InstallMonetizer quietly starts editing website, privacy policy http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5059454 Y Combinator-Backed InstallMonetizer Is A Selective Ad Network For Desktop

View on HN

The prospect of making money does strange things to people's perception. PG knows damn well that is garbage that provides no value (rather, negative value) to the user and just pollutes society's computers. There is no way he would defend it under normal circumstances. Who would? Good job YC, you're the new Bonzi Buddy, the PC cancer. I can't wait to clean that shit out of my elderly relatives computers when they complain of sluggishness, crashes, and intrusive ads, like the good old days.

"The users choose to install these things."

GMAB, you know better.

I have a very high opinion of PG

But he's not objective if topics touch Y-combinator startups¹, the same happened during the AirBnb PR disaster.

¹ and when he talks about programming languages ;)

Nobody thinks bad things of his/her own children. That includes both startup children and programming language children :-)

I do as well, which is why that one bothers me. If it was some random slimeball spammer, I don't think I'd care.

If I recall, the things that InstallMonetizer installs are less of the "persistent memory-resident toolbar-like crap" variety, and more of the "hey, would you like us to install VLC while you're here? Maybe Firefox? Google Earth?" type. Those aren't quite as bothersome (though they still are a nonzero amount of bothersome), because they don't do anything unless you choose to launch the program.

It is worth noting that PG's "white paper" came in response to pointed criticism leveled by a broad segment of the HN community and numerous opinions that YC was adding suck to the world. PG's points were the ending point of a long HN discussion not another of his essays.

In that context, PG didn't defend the practice, so much as report the facts on the ground in the software industry - i.e. it goes without saying that some industry people will rationalize crapware as no more intrusive than other software which collects data on users.

More relevant is that YC's association with the crapware provider was unrelated to crapware. See this post from the same thread:

They're working on something new, and all the office hours I had with them were about that. They're not even in our database of companies as InstallMonetizer but as the new thing.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5093047

I've gotten several emails from InstallMonetizer to use their system on my free app, but I didn't want to ruin the customer experience by bundling adware with the application. I've probably lost a not insignificant amount of money from not trying to capitalize on my free downloads.

Would you mind posting the url to your app, for those of us too lazy to visit your profile page?

EDIT: Never mind. I'll do it: http://batterybarpro.com

"If you want to stop this kind of thing you need to get angry at the people who fund it and make money from it."

I actually believe that the people making money from it are: (1) the big search engines (2) companies promoting toolbars (3) toolbar publishers.

I believe the main issue is not DIVX's Conduit Toolbar (which from what I can see is fairly transparent - see below for my notes on their installation flow), but the parasitic nature of this industry funded mainly by the big search engines themselves: Google, Bing and Yahoo.

Conduit and Babylon toolbars generate revenue via their partnerships with the big three. They get paid to help search engines gain market share and generated revenue. This revenue model is similar to a parasitic model because the product, often very inconspicuously, "attaches" itself to the browser. This "attached" entity provides no real added value to the "host" or user. It "feeds" off of the user's searches and sponsored result clicks. On top of that, toolbars are often harmful to the user by causing browser slowdowns, freezes, crashes, HTML/JS injections, ad insertions, page rendering errors, etc.

However, the worst that I have seen in this space are advertisers pushing toolbars on Google, Bing and Yahoo by hijacking the products of popular freeware publishers (VLC, Adobe PDF Reader are examples). Here's an example with VLC: http://i.imgur.com/wesQBcF.png

Users trying to get VLC are duped into running these hijacked products. Though VLC is ultimately delivered at the end of the installation, most users won't see that they are also installing several add-on components like a Conduit toolbar.

If you download from VLC.Download-Insider.com and install their toolbar you'll get the following:

- Bing as default browser search - Conduit homepage (Bing-powered) with banner ads: http://i.imgur.com/8MIG9Lb.png - Ad injection on Google search results page: http://i.imgur.com/A2XrQxF.png - Coupons on some shopping sites: http://i.imgur.com/2tR88DG.png

I'm actually quite surprised that this is still going on and that the big search engines are still allowing them to advertise a product they clearly do not have the rights to.

* NOTES - DIVX INSTALLATION FLOW *

Chrome already seems to be detecting the downloadable file on divx.com as malicious: http://i.imgur.com/9qs4tex.png

I ran through the installation process on a VM. Here are the screenshots.

1 - Startup with language selection: http://i.imgur.com/9qs4tex.png

2 - EULA (agreement unchecked, no mention of Bing or Conduit): http://i.imgur.com/DB37y8I.png

3 - Installation components (all DIVX-related): http://i.imgur.com/q7wsLeL.png

4 - Conduit offer screen: http://i.imgur.com/fOgUnrO.png - Conduit Toolbar (opt-out) - Conduit Search + Search Protect(opt-out) - EULA and Privacy Policy as text links

5 - Post-install email collection: http://i.imgur.com/9Ym3mkh.png

6 - The toolbar itself: http://i.imgur.com/dQdsaic.png

Based on the installation flow, the offer was stated, albeit very discretely. I hate homepage and search takeovers as much as everyone, but DIVX appears to be doing it in a transparent way (and I'm not sure why Chrome flagged their exe as being malicious).

I think if people would just accept that software costs money instead of wanting everything free*, we wouldn't have all this crapware.

(I meant "free with an asterisk," because software developers will find a way to be compensated, one way or another.)

(I also am talking entirely about free-as-in-beer, not free-as-in-speech.)

That's an interesting sentiment, because most of the software in the Ubuntu, Debian, and other repositories is largely free yet we don't see this crapware there.

I think the problem is that these applications get to decide what gets installed with them. There's no reason to allow them to make that decision anymore.

You missed the part where Ubuntu was sending search requests to Amazon?

Ubuntu "exists" but it is not "stable" because Canonical, the company that creates the Ubuntu distribution and is losing money [1]. Their efforts at capturing sustainable funding have been largely unsuccessful. So eventually they too will be gone.

[1] http://www.linuxinsider.com/story/74511.html

>You missed the part where Ubuntu was sending search requests to Amazon?

I don't think this is as bad as the other cases.

I actually don't see the difference between Ubuntu's Amazon search bar and a crapware browser toolbar.

In both cases, there are some defenses for it: it's not a terribly big problem, the developer can rationalize it in terms of obscure use cases where someone might actually want to use it, and you can always disable it once you realize it's there.

But in both cases, it's making your computer perform worse, showing you things you never asked for, and possibly breaking your expectations of privacy, just so that the developer can make a trickle of money from you.

The "crapware browser toolbar" is a browser add-on that takes extra time to load on startup, for one thing.

That quote is taken a little bit out of context. The first part is referencing the opinions of others about InstallMonetizer - people said they think IM was installing crapware. PG said that crapware is a relative term, and if people have the option of declining to install something, then they deemed it to be not crapware. We can't handcuff everyone into making the same decisions we do - regardless of what we think the quality of the software and motives are. Educating users is the goal we should be shooting for, so when they see a screen with check boxes, they don't just hit agree and go on, they realize what clicking "I Agree" could entail. I think that message could be something along the lines of "Don't just agree, think before you click".

At the end of the day, if people really wanted this software, the providers could default to making it opt-in and on balance they wouldn't be any the worse off for it.

There is a clear reason "I Agree" is pre-checked. Educating users is a band-aid, treating the symptom and not the cause. The cause is scummy companies like InstallMonetizer, and hopefully people like PG/YC will come to see how it hurts their brand, no matter how they think reality differs from peoples impressions of such companies.

Bullshit. These kinds of installers trick people into installing things they would never install by choice. For example there are windows where ticking one checkbox disables installation of a toolbar, but ticking the next one enables a different one. So people read the text on the first one and then tick everything, which results in spyware being installed on their machine. The entire installation process for these kinds of things is like that because NOBODY who knows what they are actually wants to install spyware toolbars on their computer.

Would you consider tricking a person with poor literacy skills into signing a contract that gives them your house a moral thing to do? Why is tricking somebody into giving you full access to their computer any different? Also, much like legal contracts can still trick the literate, these installers can trick even technically proficient users who weren't expecting to suddenly have to engage in a battle of wits with their computer.

I believe that InstallMonetizer in particular designed the screen where you agree to install their crapware to look like other installers' EULA-acceptance page - see e.g. the second screenshot here http://www.little-apps.co.uk/blog/2012/11/why-was-this-other... In order not to get unwanted crapware, you have to click the Decline button, which would normally stop your desired software from being installed.

They even put the Decline button on the left, which goes against how virtually every other Windows installer (and wizards in general) are supposed to work.

If something you didn't ask for defaults to being installed along-side what you did ask for, regardless of that thing is, it's crapware (imo).

Smashing 'next' in an installer should do the right thing: it should install the things you most likely need in the app you downloaded, in the place that makes the most sense on your system, etc. In almost no cases is the right thing installing some random ass toolbar.

Defending fraud is never acceptable. Those installers are designed to con users into economical exploitive agreements. Its no difference from sending false bills to people, or calling them on the phone and offer a "free"¹ subscription.

I have seen installers with right bottom for OK, and left to Cancel install, as is is standard. However, a few steps into the installation, a toolbar question came up where OK meant install toolbar and Cancle meaning not installing toolbar but continue install. Bascially, left button Cancel went from aborting the install to continue the install through a sleight of hand trick (deception). Since its done for economical gain, its fraud - As clear case as it can get.

Fraud: intentional deception made for personal gain or to damage another individual.²

¹: 3 year binding agreement with first month free.

²: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fraud

sadly that won't count as fraud. if you read the text it does say cancel = don't install crapware. which is not deception just unethical.

If a person sends "offers of subscription" that just happen to look like a invoice, that is still fraud. It doesn't matter that people can elect not to "buy" by following the fine print that say "this is a offer".¹

If you want, I can list several similar crimes like salting the mine², the Romance scam², or the classic Nigerian scam. Each too allows the victim to opt out, each are equally fraudulent behavior, and equally illegal. The law do not require that the criminal has lied, only that deception has happened.

Giving the victim a chance to opt out does not give scammers a "get out of jail card". If it did, that would be the first thing any caught scam artist would say.

¹ http://www.actionfraud.police.uk/fraud-az-invoice-scams

² https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salting_%28confidence_trick%29

² https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romance_scam

Whatever helps him sleep at night

Oh, well post under your real name then, so you won't run the risk of being tainted by his money, ideas and connections, should the situation ever arise that you've done something he would be a part of. (And I doubt very much that YC operates this way anyway.)

What's that? It's too convenient to vociferously denounce someone for having an imperfect track record while doing something so grand that you could scarcely imagine the decisions he's had to make? (If you tried, that is.)

There's a reason why the word "anonymous" is often followed by "coward" -- it's abusing anonymity when you run to it as a shield from which to make pointed criticisms against actual people who will actually read what you write. Anonymity, used bravely, can provide a defense against the mob. Used cowardly, it's a defense against scrutability.

First of all, if you click on anon1358's profile you'll see 3.5k karma... about as much as you have. If you read through his previous comments they are pretty mundane, so I don't think he's just changing nicks for comments like these.

Which is to say that there are reasons to use a different name online that don't involve secretly wanting pg to give you money/help...

It's also true that people doing grand things make more decisions, and hence more bad ones. I don't think that makes discussion of those decisions somehow off limits for discussion.

Like, I'm reading anon1358's comment, and yours. Yours reads like an ad-hominem. His reads like a "As a community we seem to disagree with pg on X, maybe if we band together he will listen". I agree he doesn't seem open to hearing the other side, but I think his tone is much more constructive than yours.

It's not ad hominem -- I'm not saying he's wrong because he's a coward. I'm saying if you're going to be so judgmental and flippant about a process you probably have never been involved with, and also so personal as to call out a person by name for their own decisions, don't be cowardly when you do it.

He could have very well-placed criticisms actually, I don't make any assessment one way or the other as to that question.

Bottom line -- the guy wants to hold PG accountable to some imaginary (but popular) standard, while evading accountability himself.

You're pretty much making a text book ad hominem attack. You're going after him instead of his argument. It's as simple as that.

"You're going after him instead of his argument."

That doesn't make it ad hominem. That's a phrase used in the context of a debate. jessedhillon isn't after the argument at all. He's attacking a certain behaviour.

ad hominem: "Your point about global warming is invalid because you slap your children and I don't like that."

not ad hominem: "You slap your children and I don't like that."

Well by that measure it's off-topic then.

He basically admits he didn't even consider the arguments. He calls the person a coward for posting anonymously. He's attacking the person's behavior irrelevant to the argument. Attacking the man, and admitting he never considered the argument at all. So if it's not considered ad hominem it's just trolling.

> It's not ad hominem

Heh. Reread your initial statement.

Putting crapware in installers and tricking people into installing it is unacceptable. Of course, I can't stop people doing it, but everyone who does it knows they are hurting their users in return for money.

I am easy to connect to my account name.

Happy now? How about you now discuss the issue, rather than ranting about how we shouldn't disagree with people who have more money than us.

so let me share this -- I've watched prominent HN users (top 10 leaderboard) attack a user's company because they disagreed with that user's posted opinion about software. Given their willingness to drag employers into a pissing match, not posting under your real name, or at least making it difficult to find, is perfectly rational.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com