I don't think the parent is claiming its a holy thing. But I certainly feel the same way.

My reputation is worth more to me, than trying to get higher up in a queue to a product i haven't tried. I don't share things with people lightly, and there are clearly a bunch of us out there.

Any certainly, nobody is advocating that our view of the world is the correct one, just that we hold that view.

This is an awesome debate and one of the reasons I love HN

We are different. If I recommend a piece of software to someone these days, it means it's truly exceptional and they should really check it out.

Apart from that, the e-mail form doesn't let me control what I'm sending.

Recommending a product you haven't reviewed is a form of lying. Some of us value our integrity.

Isn’t this true of all advertising, except in the rare cases where the publisher only accepts ads for products they endorsed?

How can we ever expect a reliable, non-garbage-dominate internet when it is funded by perverse incentives?

The distinction is that if I see a billboard (or magazine ad, or TV commercial) advertising a product I don't think that I have a relationship with the billboard and they know me pretty well and have my best interests at heart... so I don't think that if this particular billboard that knows me so well is promoting a product to me then it must be a pretty good product for me (especially because this billboard doesn't usually go out of their way to recommend products to me).

But if a friend of mine recommends a product to me, well, I do think all of those things.

> You have a warped perspective of importance if you think giving the nod to a new mail app is some holy thing.

You're taking a needlessly confrontational stance here with insulting language, and people are responding to that.

and yet to make this comment you do it from an account created just for this purpose... why? to protect your reputation?

It's almost as if context matters

But you're not giving the nod to it -- you don't even know yet if it's any good or not -- you're only telling them about it because you've got something to gain yourself from doing so.

This is the essence of the crap filled internet. Everyone makes these local trade offs and before you know it we all lose. We are prisoners of the dilemma.

Yeah! Now you've got it! You're just telling people about something. It's not a big deal.

Spam is also "just telling people about something".

Imagine what the world would be like if everyone had the same attitude towards other people's attention and time as you do.

I'm sure this behaviour doesn't seem like a big deal to you because relatively few people are so inconsiderate.

> Yes, it is trivial.

Then why are you posting anonymously?