Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit login

An unethical freemium model for such a site: dispense instructions to ensure an even distribution of traffic to free users, but provide a purely optimal path for paying users, perhaps even making suggestions to free users to move them out of the way.



I wouldn't call that unethical - even free users would benefit from such a system, in the same way that non-users would also benefit, but paying users would benefit even more.

The system actually requires itself to be ethical. The ability to make things better for the paying users is dependant on the system having a lot of free users. Those free users have to be getting some utility out of the site, otherwise they won't use it. And without large numbers of free users, the paying services can't be offered!




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: