Comment by BugsJustFindMe | Hacker News Reader

Comment by BugsJustFindMe | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

Preliminary comment on tone and behavior in writing: Everything about the story, from the described details about what allegedly happened to the way those details are communicated, is infantile. That makes it very hard to treat the author as a reliable narrator about specific details.

Anyway...

> anyone could make an anonymous account, and then comment anything on anyone's profile

Jesus christ. You built a platform specifically designed for targeted abuse. I know that you're still young, but one day when you're older I hope you come to realize that a platform for spreadings rumors about others is not an ok thing to want to build. You don't have the moral high-ground here. The only thing you accomplished was being a creep.

This whole blog post shows an extreme level of immaturity that I really do hope you grow out of. Literally every line is absolute cringe.

> this is that story. its really really fucking crazy.

The craziest thing to me about this story is that everything in the story makes you look bad and yet you chose to post it anyway.

You either:

A) never realized that you were building a harassment platform despite being told this multiple times, which demonstrates a complete lack of awareness

or

B) thought it would be a good idea to build a harassment platform, which demonstrates a complete lack of empathy

I'm surprised at how few comments there are about just how creepy this is. Going to a university is not implied consent for random people to throw up searchable websites with your name and face, let alone allowing random, anonymous other people to attach anything they want to it in a comment section.

I get it he was copying The Social Network, but just because it's been done before doesn't make it better now.

I wish the people currently building the global terror nexus would have that mature realization.

I'd rather live in a world where a student's website hosts an anonymous mean comment about me than live in the authoritarian nightmare of how the school officials, guards and police acted in this behavior.

Tea is still available on the app store, which is a far more targeted harassment and slander app, than this one that was clearly more of a 4chan style "for the lulz" that no one would take seriously.

> I'd rather live in a world where a student's website hosts an anonymous mean comment about me than live in the authoritarian nightmare of ...

False dichotomy fallacy. Also fallacy of emotive language. That is a deflection, not a rebuttal.

> Tea is still available on the app store

Whataboutism. Fallacy of relative privation. That is a deflection, not a rebuttal.

Since we're talking about worlds we'd like to live in, I'd like to live in a world where people believe that it's bad to think harassment platforms are ok/cool/fun.

The manner in which the school got the website taken down was via an authoritarian nightmare, so it's not exactly a false dichotomy in this case. If not for the authoritarian nightmare the site might still be up.

Though it's admittedly possible they could have eventually gotten the website taken down through less thuggish means.

The false dichotomy is that the two scenarios are presented as the only two options when they aren't the only two options. The use of "authoritarian nightmare" is the emotive language.

"Authoritarian nightmare" is an accurate description.

Calling this student's project a "harassment platform" is misleading, emotive language.

Tea being available is relevant! Your list of fallacies is less useful than the comment you replied to, despite its flaws.

Also using emotive language isn't a fallacy, get out of here with that. Using the phrase "authoritarian nightmare" does not replace logic with emotion like an actual fallacy would.

My intention was not to build a “targeted abuse” platform and thats not what was built either. “Abuse”, if you can call it that, was just a small part of the site. The main point was to make the social life more happening, which it did… people got to discuss things, confess to people, hangout and make posts with their friends

For the “immature and infantile” part, i disagree with you on it. I do not believe someones style of speaking should have an effect on your interpretation of their words. Youre just doing yourself a disservice

It doesn't matter what your intention was, the point was that that was what it did. You didn't think hard enough about how people would use it given the (lack of) constraints and moderation you designed it with and you didn't take responsibility / accountability for what you had facilitated.

Your response to this seems to be: "People need to be more thick-skinned, I would take it down if they asked & it's unfair that they escalated to the dean." as if that somehow invalidates the criticism you're receiving. It doesn't. The fact that you don't really own up to that shows a lack of emotional maturity which makes it hard for people to feel sympathy for you. Until you actually understand why people had problems with what you made, you won't get a lot of sympathy for how you were treated either.

It's like those videos where some clueless racist spouting off garbage on the subway eventually gets punched by someone else. Yes, the assault is definitely "more" wrong. But you won't find a lot of people feeling sorry for the racist.

Not looking for sympathy lol, just wanted to share a cool story

Why is your intention relevant here? Sure: in the US if you kill somebody accidentally then you'll be convicted of manslaughter instead of murder. In your situation, intention is relevant to whether the school decides to throw you out or just discipline you in some way.

But intention is irrelevant when understanding what harms the site will cause. Plenty of sites have been created for noble purposes, and achieved great things, and yet still ended up driving some users to suicide. "Oops, I didn't expect that to happen" might make someone punish you less, but it's not going to change what was built or what effects it had on people.

I mean, at that age I did some stupid shit too and thought it was cool. I'd even get defensive and double down when someone challenged me by saying I had fucked up and hurt people. Hopefully you're still just in that defensive stage and you'll be able to see things more clearly when you get some distance from it.

Hint: if this continued to be popular, there is no way you could control it. (Never mind that you clearly had little interest in controlling it thus far; you've basically stated that your opinions on what is serious vs trivial harassment are all that matter, and when you could get around to deleting things is soon enough.) You would be directly responsible for trashing the school's social environment and harming a lot of people -- many of whom aren't male and/or whose daddy and mommy are not in the military. You don't get to decide who is and isn't vulnerable.

Please learn something about human nature and what people do when given the power over people they feel rejected by or superior to. Especially when the attacks are anonymous.

> I do not believe someones style of speaking should have an effect on your interpretation of their words.

It has an effect on interpretation of your character. That's unavoidable. Welcome to the real world, I guess.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com