Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by jamesjyu 4426 days ago
Exactly.

Would this also apply to products like Uber? I use it all the time, and can't imagine life without it. Am I addicted to it? Is it an unethical company because people love to use it and it provides value to their lives?

3 comments

"Addiction is the continued repetition of a behavior despite adverse consequences, or a neurological impairment leading to such behaviors."

Would you say you have an addiction to Uber?

I chose the word "addiction" pretty specifically - does it enrich the user's life? Uber does. (And you probably don't have a desire to use Uber for hours every day).

Social gaming (someone mentioned below) does, to a point, and then it's engineered to go way, way beyond that point.

It's complicated of course - and there's a spectrum - but I think a bad sign is if your architecture is intended to hack the reward systems of your customers.

"I use it all the time" - you might find it more economical to buy a car. I fail to see how anyone could be addicted to something as basic as transport. It's like saying you're addicted to using BART or MUNI.
It's only unethical if a) Uber has a monopoly and b) they charge a surplus (i.e. price-fixing) due to said monopoly.

Uber doesn't have a monopoly in ride-sharing, and Twitter doesn't have a monopoly in microblogging.