[zkinion]

This article is nice, and I agree with the part about momentum gained by holding to greater values than simply building a successful company.

However, PG doesn't mention the incredibly successful startups that start out with evil/crime and then later go good: ones that start with spammy & unethical means to get initial users and pirated content startups.

I think most people strive to do good, but the world itself is a very evil place that sometimes needs adapting to.

[eb]

Can you provide some examples?

[zkinion]

There's always the typical examples: myspace with a hardcore spamming operation, facebook with beacon and some minor spamming/data theft in the beginning, youtube - pirated content. Ebaum's world - totally stolen content.

Those are obviously the biggest, most well known. Beneath the surface, a ton of companies are doing similar things, at a lesser level, but it often goes unseen. Many cams and dating sites started out spamming and fake profiles/female profiles. Most startups that require a "network effect" often create a lot of fake users at the start.

[ericb]

American Student Assistance began as a traditional student loan guarantor that made more money when people defaulted--such is the payout structure in the student loan industry. They got paid for defaults, and paid for harassing people who defaulted.

Then they put together a program with the US government that made them money when they prevented people from defaulting, thus reversing the incentive. They built out reminder programs, tested, iterated and improved their default rate to one of the lowest in the industry.

Of course, the bush administration is ending the "Voluntary Flexible Agreement" program which made this possible.

[steveblgh]

I think even YouTube/FaceBook/Flickr started along those lines. Hell, even Jimmy Wales was running a porn website ring before focusing on Wikipedia full time.

[eb]

I don't think that's true. Those sites grew mostly through word of mouth. I don't consider that to be devious.

What's wrong with Jimmy Wales operating a porn site? I don't see how that's related to Wikipedia.

[steveblgh]

Nothing wrong at all. I think he used it to finance wikipedia/nupedia in the early stages though. I just tried to give examples of things that started not necessarily with the thought of making the world a better place.

[andreyf]

Since when is porn evil?

[gommm]

I think the problem here is that evil is relative. You might say that porn is evil and find a reasonable argument for it. And somebody else might not see porn as evil but just as something enjoyable that he likes. If this person creates a porn company, how can he and his company be considered evil if he genuinely can't see why porn would be considered evil?

[yters]

Same way as drugs and alcohol are evil. They create addictions and harm the users. Sure, everything can be used in moderation, but are moderate users of these things the exception or the rule?

[ericb]

I'd like to see some empirical evidence that moderate users are the exception, not the rule. Man smokes weed once a month in his home is not nearly so great a headline as "crack addict leaves baby at grocery store."

[yters]

Uh, how much does the adult entertainment industry make compared to any other internet industry? I thought it was a truism that the internet runs on porn...

Here's something I found by a quick google:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11640411/

Even without stats, it just seems like something that's blatantly obvious. It's a very common problem with couples for the guy to be lusting after other women. We, as a culture, are inundated with erotica. The internet allows people to look at pretty much anything they want in privacy. There are loads of adds for web history cleaners. Etc.

It just doesn't seem like a hard conclusion to draw...

[yters]

So you don't think men have a significant problem with pornography addiction, and/or viewing porn has bad effects on relationships between men and women?

Despite it being a conservative claim, and consequently people don't like it, the breakdown of the family is a very big problem.

[ph0rque]

I agree with you in principle. However, it seems that rape has declined with increasing exposure to pornography: http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/forumy/2006/06/rape-porn-and-crim...

[andreyf]

> the breakdown of the family is a very big problem.

Why assume that "the family" is perfect as it is? If the freedom to trade money for videos is detrimental to a social structure, to limit freedom to preserve a social structure seems regressive.

[euccastro]

What is too much porn and how does it harm you?

[izak30]

My initial lure to Youtube was pirated music videos and sometimes TV, mostly stuff other people owned.

[vesterr]

Facebook.

But they haven't switched to doing good.

[eb]

What has Facebook done that's particularly evil?

[gaika]

beacon?