Item — HN Reader

Honestly, I find this kind of comment not useful at all. Considering how internet / tech / security savvy the HN crowd is, I'm sure we don't give our personal / work email addresses willy nilly.

There are a huge number of anonymous email services available. I came across this list from a basic search [0].

In fact, recently, there was submission for https://33mail.com on ShowHN also.

So, my question is, why don't we do this and add comments about the application itself.

I agree there are many ways to persist data even without a login. But that in turn means wasting a huge amount of resources for anonymous users with hardly any return at all. Why should developers do that?

In my opinion, what I find worse, is this expectation of getting something for nothing. Facebook, Google and others have grown to this size because of this sense of enlightenment. And we complain about them all the time.

So, in short, my suggestion is - if you don't find use of a service without submitting an anonymous email, don't use it. There's really no point in adding a comment which does nothing towards the understanding or increasing our knowledge.

[0]: https://www.techuntold.com/mailinator-alternatives/ [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25434753

2 comments

I don’t get your comment. First you agree we don’t like to share our email and then you suggest going to a 4th party as a workaround. If requiring an email was ok, you wouldn’t having to use workarounds.

A comment like OP has 2 purposes: saves me from ever trying the app; suggests to the author that they made an unpopular choice.

You can sign in with Apple and avoid sharing your email with exactly 2 taps. This "workaround" is available to everyone to whom this app is available in the first place, and it is literally less work than actually typing in your email, and it doesn't involve a 4th party. So not trying the app because of that is completely pointless, and the same goes for complaining about requiring email.

Apple logins are great, but they don’t save you from spam nor guarantee that they don’t also ask for more personal info right after.

I wish I had a weekly triple vote I could use on this comment.

FWIW, I wish I had such a thing for the comment above that one :/. One of the only (arguably "the only"!) remaining decentralized platform protocols we have on the Internet is e-mail, and using it for authentication is so much better for everyone than virtually every single alternative (absolutely including even a bespoke username). That tech people, of all people, hate on email so much that they refuse to give it out or use systems built on it--seemingly preferring worlds with walled gardens of centralized moderation and push notifications with permissioned / gated sign-in systems--makes the world universally worse for everyone. Being so uptight about "spam" in general is a big reason why we are falling into the surveillance capitalism dystopia that even end users are finally waking up to hate. (For the record, my email address is saurik@saurik.com.)

Uh no. If you want to test your spam filters go ahead. All they really need is a name and login for me to try their product, if it works well for me I'll be happy to pony up my email and payment information. Otherwise, I'll move along and they won't have an email to bug me with.

> e-mail, and using it for authentication is so much better for everyone than virtually every single alternative (absolutely including even a bespoke username)

Why is it better than a username?

Time and again it was shown that people forget their user names. At least if you use the same email address (or a few), you will not get locked out.

No I found it useful. I don't install "free" trials either if they want my email. Assign me a random/unique ID to track me for a bit. I found the comment quite useful. I'm currently doing ok without their software, and I appreciate the comment personally. I don't want to encourage the behavior and I don't want to use anonymous emails, I think that's an antipattern that I don't want to get used to