I reiterate your parent: please don't do this. Scraping a resource for email addresses and sending unsolicited email would be understood by a lot of people as spam. This would be different if they put something like the following in their profile:

  clap.chat: myemail@example.com

Edit: spelling

> Scrapping a resource for email addresses and sending unsolicited email would be understood by a lot of people as spam

We don't even want to dance the line with spam. Thanks for the feedback.

What if when you try to message a user who hasn't signed up and it opens their profile page and the user can type in the email address manually if it is available. Then we don't have to pay for mechanical turk and the user is just using ClapChat as their email client in a way. I'm convinced we can crack this nut in a way that works and doesn't bother people :)

I appreciate the dilemma: you understandably want to limit the friction in connecting HN members, and one of the means by which you're considering doing so has historically been abused so people are sensitive to it. I think 'zitterbewegung still has the right idea: it needs to be opt-in.

I don't see an issue with having a user type in an email address from someone's profile. Like the parent says in this case they're basically just using clapchat as their email client. Perhaps they could even set-up an SMTP gateway such that hn users could receive clapchats from emails sent to them @clapchat.io or whatever. Then maybe in the email they send have a tasteful link to also sign-up for clapchat.

Edit: upon thinking about it more, it might be better to randomly generate an address used for each conversation, to prevent a spammer from sending email to someone's @clapchat address

Perhaps it's useful to approach this from the other side.

Say I want to be able to communicate with HN members via email, so I include my email address in my profile. clap.chat makes it easier for clap.chat users to send me email using the email address in my profile, though ideally they want to clap.chat with me. I don't want to use clap.chat. If I don't want to use clap.chat but am getting invitations to use clap.chat, the burden to deal with that is now on me, be it with a filter, or perhaps adding a note to my profile. Perhaps clap.chat includes a record of people who have opted-out.

All of these methods parallel the behavior and handling of spam. Whether or not there's daylight between these types of invites and spam depends on one's perspective.

I think that forwarding them to their profile page, which is under their control and public is totally reasonable. It means less work for you and no less control for the users.

But it doesn't have to be like that. I bet a lot of people have a public email somewhere (think public page) so if someone would reach out via one like that what's the harm?

I would adopt this method. Its a really good idea that avoids spam.

What if I then remove my email? Will clap chat remove it as well?

Good idea, if we do decide to go that route we need to be sure that the email is still in the profile before sending a message.

ClapChat sounds really cool and I can definitely see myself using it. To give my two cents here, I just made an HN account yesterday and my interpretation of HN's policy regarding emails is not that by entering an email you are agreeing to the possibility of being contacted by other users. I don't have an email in my profile now and the banner at the top of my profile page says "Please put a valid address in the email field, or we won't be able to send you a new password if you forget yours. Your address is only visible to you and us. Crawlers and other users can't see it." To me, that means that by entering an email address I'd only ever be contacted for password resets.

That is correct. We cannot see that email. The only email people would see is one you put in your bio section. See my profile for an example

Got it, makes sense. Thanks for the clarification!