[fefe23]

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.

[ThisIsTheWay]

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.