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Comment by dshep | Hacker News Reader

Trying to paint this 17-year old kid as a criminal mastermind strikes me as rather gross. I can see it as a kid doing it to see if he could, and using an obviously meme-worthy fake post that got out of hand. I think everyone has done some dumb things at this age without thinking about the consequences. If that is the case here, I hope this doesn't ruin the guys life.

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This kind of feels like "privilege" of the sort where you can kind of identify with this kid (he's a hacker, into computers) so you're excusing his actions.

Yes, everyone has done some dumb things at this age, but the consequences of this were pretty severe, and he certainly knew what he was doing. Just calling this a "meme-worthy fake post" is minimizing what he did.

>but the consequences of this were pretty severe

Can you elaborate on this? The consequences were mild at best, with people easily duped being duped and twitter having a (understandably) worse reputation.

Think of what this teenager could have done if he had hacked Trump's twitter, or any other current head of state. The best case scenario then is a diplomatic incident, the worst is war or genocide.

But then again he hasn't, so what's your point?

But the potential was there. I was providing an all to likely possibility of someone hacking twitter in the way that happened here. Not sure why I have been downvoted for stating something sensible to the question that was asked.

It's the context of the answer; you stated possibilities, but, when considering consequences of actions, possibilities don't matter.

Would that apply to criminals of all ages, based on their intelligence / mental maturity? Plenty of incarcerated 18+ adults with less brainpower than this guy were deemed responsible for their actions.

I think there are some arguments here to be made about the development of the prefrontal cortex. You may not be as “intelligent” as someone who is 17, but if you’re over the age of 25 your decision making capabilities are likely much much better.

There’s a lot of evidence to support this. I will present my own anecdotal evidence because hacker news loves that stuff. I acutely felt my decision making improve a few months before I turned twenty five. It hit me like a wave, and reflecting on my past decisions felt like looking at the actions of a completely different person. If I were in different, more difficult positions when I was younger, it is unlikely that my decisions would be as rationally thought out as they would be now.

> I acutely felt my decision making improve a few months before I turned twenty five. It hit me like a wave, and reflecting on my past decisions felt like looking at the actions of a completely different person.

I don't know if this actually exists, but I experienced something similar: Starting at around 17 I decided to ask myself at every birthday whether I thought I was more mature as a person than the year before, which I think relates to proper and holistic decision making. I kept saying "yes" to this question until I was 24.

It's not like our (the United States) justice system is something to be upheld as an exemplary model, honestly it could probably be viewed as one of the worst in the world in many respects.

So what do you think is an appropriate sentence for him?

Paying back x2 to the ones that got scammed.

And forcing Twitter to pay part of it, for their lousy "security".

Plus three months working in a shelter for homeless people

This isn't grabbing a 10 year old kid pocketing a candy bar at the grocery store.

17 year olds understand the consequences of stealing $100,000 (and honestly they were probably very disappointed with how little they got).

Agree that his life shouldn't be "ruined" because of this, but he's committed a serious crime that was obviously a serious crime.

> dumb things

I never stole $100,000 when I was a kid. Sometimes 17-year olds murder other people too. Society can't ignore it just because he's a minor. If he had posted memes, that would be one thing. But instead he decided to use this hack to commit grand theft.

Any leniency due to his age will come from the Judge.

Would you advocate leniency this forcefully for a 17 year old teenager of color who was charged with committing hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of property theft (e.g. stealing expensive cars)? Or do you want this kid to receive special treatment just because you identify with his demographic? Presumably you were also once a tech-savvy teenage hacker at some point.

People with your mindset are responsible for a lot of the inequity in the criminal justice system. Upper middle class suburban white kids (e.g. Brock Turner) get away with slaps on the wrist all the time for the same crimes that poor and minority teenagers get sent to prison for years over, because judges (who were almost all previously upper middle class white suburban kids themselves) feel sorry for them and chalk their crimes down to kids being kids.

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