It's not about being asked for an email.
It's about being lied to.
You wouldn't be OK with the New York Times writing that Putin died of a heart attack when it's not true. Why would you be OK with this kind of deception then?
If I click on your link, I took a leap of faith on you. If I then find out that you lied to me, you made my day worse and innocent bystanders like the next guy who actually did have a free ebook will get take the damage.
He could have truthfully said: Show HN: Ebook here but you'll have to enter an email address. Then I wouldn't have clicked and we wouldn't be having this discussion now. I suspect the link wouldn't have been upvoted enough to appear on the front page either.
Also note that if I use a burner account from some spam catching service, I'm externalising my damage on to them. They might be OK with that but it's still shitty behavior on my part. So I don't use throwaway accounts. It's a moral thing. You don't litter in the park. You leave it cleaner than how you found it.
First, the word free is most frequently interpreted as not costing money, which in this case is completely true. Second, your comparison to a false claim by the NYT is absurd.
All you had to do was close the tab and move on. I can't imagine getting through life making this big a deal on such a minor inconvenience. Good luck out there.
fefe23|3 years ago
You wouldn't be OK with the New York Times writing that Putin died of a heart attack when it's not true. Why would you be OK with this kind of deception then?
If I click on your link, I took a leap of faith on you. If I then find out that you lied to me, you made my day worse and innocent bystanders like the next guy who actually did have a free ebook will get take the damage.
He could have truthfully said: Show HN: Ebook here but you'll have to enter an email address. Then I wouldn't have clicked and we wouldn't be having this discussion now. I suspect the link wouldn't have been upvoted enough to appear on the front page either.
Also note that if I use a burner account from some spam catching service, I'm externalising my damage on to them. They might be OK with that but it's still shitty behavior on my part. So I don't use throwaway accounts. It's a moral thing. You don't litter in the park. You leave it cleaner than how you found it.
ThisIsTheWay|3 years ago
All you had to do was close the tab and move on. I can't imagine getting through life making this big a deal on such a minor inconvenience. Good luck out there.