until they see destroying you as an opportunity to gain voters. As more media attention gets shun on this type of stuff, it won't be long before some politician sees this as a good opportunity.
I guess, twitpic and about.com are now going on my shit list.
Yes, there have been things we didn't invest in because we thought they were too evil. We don't have any actual policies about it though; we decide case by case.
I know I'm late to the game, and it's really more of a full on essay than a comment, but I would be really interested to hear about your moral framework; how you decide what is "evil" and how you integrate that into your business decisions.
It's something we all have struggled with at some point or another. I think an essay from you on the subject would be quite interesting.
A lot of HN discussions relating to business ethics revolve around narrow questions of law, politics, and economic imperatives, as applied to some company in the news.
A future article on how successful investors with different perspectives arrive at a consensus on these issues would be most interesting, as would hindsight into what 'evil' ideas have common, if anything.
Let's not forget the startups and other companies building on top of RapLeaf. Rapportive is one that probably couldn't do their core features without Rapleaf (they would have to look up people based on email address themselves then)
Emily Steel got in a nice dig at the NYT, but are we really to believe Newscorp doesn't do tracking? Someone needs to tabulate the content of their cookies.
PS: the Journal asks for your real name before you comment.
