[drivingmenuts]

Why not? Saves you the trouble of building and maintaining a secure access system. You likely gain more users because of network effects, which doesn’t cut your advertising budget so much as supplements it. If your trying to preserve user privacy, there’s a good chance you’re too late there - they most likely already gave that up a long time ago.

[eli]

My relationship with my readers is our most valuable asset, and I don't want it mediated by companies who compete with me for ad dollars. It's the same reason I publish content on our own domain and not Medium or Facebook or LinkedIn.

[eitland]

> there’s a good chance you’re too late there - they most likely already gave that up a long time ago.

People on HN keep using this in a number of contexts as an excuse to not even try.

I'm tired of it. Maybe we are to late. But if try to avoid failure then at least we have a small chance.