Over the years a fair number of people have contacted me through HN. Only one time did I feel like the person was trying to sell me something, all the other interactions were positive. So I'd recommend doing this.
It doesn’t feel like a startup forum anymore. When is the last time you’ve seen a post about improving a landing page?
It’s more of a general tech forum now.
It was always an "anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity" forum (at least since I was first aware of it), but it grew out of a startup incubator, so the early focus was inevitable.
To anyone doing this; please stop. Cold-contact unsolicited outreach for sales is spam. It is not appreciated. The only thing worse than adding me to some newsletter are the ones who keep nagging when I don't reply.
> Consent of the data subject means any freely given, specific, informed and unambiguous indication of the data subject’s wishes by which he or she, by a statement or by a clear affirmative action, signifies agreement to the processing of personal data relating to him or her.
And 6-1:
> Processing shall be lawful only if and to the extent that at least one of the following applies:
> the data subject has given consent to the processing of his or her personal data for one or more specific purposes;
So whether consent is given or not depends on what people would write in their HN bio next to their email.
I'm not a lawyer, but I don't think Googling a person's email address and contacting them in regards to something they posted on HN qualifies as "processing of personal data".
I was recently contacted about helping shaping an alternative search engine by posting one unusual page.
A few mails. They were responsive when I asked questions back.
Yes, maybe a sales pitch but I found it interesting.
Other than that a few people hqve asked me about lobste.rs invites and I generally give them after looking a few pages back in their comment history to try to verify I don't let in anyone with a trollish or hostile attitude.
If you use a gmail account, how do you know when someone subs you to a spam list vs just having a gmail account? It's incredible how fast a new gmail account starts receiving spam.
I have a old Gmail account from years ago I don't use as my main account anymore. It's amazing how much spam messages it gets. I swear my main account with Fastmail receives a tiny fraction of the spam despite the address for that account being available in plain text in mailing list archives and the like.
Remember, it's a feature, not a bug. Cynic me suggests that when you register a gmail account, G autmatically sends that out to all of its ad buyers. "It's a twofer!"
