Considering that if you look closely at the screenshots and see that it is Erik himself commenting on products, so as to have a reason to notify users, no, not really.
Maybe if they made it something you could subscribe to, opt-in, I would think it wasn't spam, but as it stands now, getting a notification on all of my Twitter enabled devices about something I don't care about, that I didn't ask for nor subscribe to, is spam. That some are advocating actually "scraping emails" to automate email notifications because this is so useful just leaves me a little bit dumbfounded.
Is getting an email, albeit unsolicited, about a community having a discussion about your generally new product[0] actually unwanted email for the majority of start-up founders? Especially to an email that is specifically mentioned on the site as a suggestions/feedback email. Both Erik and Ryan have said that many founders were happy with the notification.
It seems to me that companies might even actually pay for a service like this and if enough people thought it added value, I don't see where the issue with scraping emails is. Perhaps you could enlighten me or provide a different viewpoint as this would be something that I'd have no issue implementing myself and the fact that it scares you so much has me worried that I would be overreaching if I ever did. I just don't see why an email scraper is seen as inherently evil?
[0] I imagine a system where there has to be a minimum amount of comments and not one in which the only comment is made by Erik (or a bot) and used as the "motivation" for responding to the thread as a founder.
Why wouldn't you care about it? If you are running a business, and the internet is talking about it (on a pretty popular site with lots of traffic), it seems that should be reasonably high on your list of things to care about. Would you want to know that you are on the front page of Hacker News?
http://www.producthunt.com/posts/instant-chemistry
http://www.producthunt.com/posts/jumpido
http://www.producthunt.com/posts/customeed
Maybe if they made it something you could subscribe to, opt-in, I would think it wasn't spam, but as it stands now, getting a notification on all of my Twitter enabled devices about something I don't care about, that I didn't ask for nor subscribe to, is spam. That some are advocating actually "scraping emails" to automate email notifications because this is so useful just leaves me a little bit dumbfounded.