Advice to woman: Run.
Advice to startups: Don't let your sales and engineering teams be giant douche canoes and if they are certainly don't publicly brag about it.
- This was just a fun bet between friends. Justin really didn't think it could be done and I wanted to show him how a little information goes a long way online.
- Justin treated this girl well and she even knew about this bet.
- "Look up online" != Stalking
- None of the discovered information has been posted publicly online. This isn't even her photo.
You are totally lying. I just saw your other comment on this where you admitted you posted her pic in a Facebook ad. I will quote:
>This is the closest I've heard to one of the ideas that we expected to work, so I'll share.
>- Create an ad on Facebook with her picture.
>- Target people that went to her high school within 4 years of the range of years we thought she graduated within. Was only a few hundred people so the cost of running the ad would likely only be a few bucks.
>- The ad copy / landing page just needed to be convincing that we weren't stalking her. We went with the "help us win a bet" approach but the "lost camera" approach would have been good also.
>Ultimately we got the answer sooner from another approach after we found out that we had another picture of the girl that Justin didn't know we had. So we canceled the ad, but I think this would have worked if given enough time.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6369859
I especially like the part about making the ad copy "convincing that we weren't stalking her."
Why is “stalking” a woman bad in the first place? Because the stalker might get so obsessed that they get violent with or rape the woman. Or because the woman might feel like her privacy has been violated. Or the woman might feel nervous around the stalker, not knowing what they want.
None of these bad situations were going to result from this type of information-gathering. The engineer was not planning to hurt this woman or interfere with her in any way. The woman would not feel that her privacy has been violated, because they just want her name, and the woman probably wouldn’t mind if the bet-taker just told the engineer her name. And the woman knows what this “stalker” wants – to win a one-time bet. So she won’t be nervous about his intentions – winning a bet to find out a name is a harmless action that does not inspire worry.
As for posting her information online, yes, it seems like the engineer had an unintentional privacy leak in that they showed Facebook users from her high school her picture. (I don’t think he was purposefully lying about posting her info, I think he just didn’t consider the photo significant.) Showing the photo could be bad if the woman didn’t want anyone seeing that dress she bought, or didn’t want her alumni to be reminded of her. You could argue that showing the photo to those users was a mistake on the engineer’s part.
But you should keep in mind that the chances were pretty low that this woman’s picture leaked anything significant to her former high school classmates. It’s very likely that they didn’t care what dress she is wearing. Many of them saw her face already when she was actually in high school, and as for the ones who had not, seeing a normal photo of a random woman in a dress is unlikely to cause anything bad. There was a possibility, but it was very low.
You say no privacy violations "were going to result from this type of information-gathering". However you then concede that it resulted in a "privacy leak in that they showed Facebook users from her high school her picture," mentioning several reasons why the target may find this invasive. You frame it as "unintentional", but that is irrelevant; you've contradicted your claim.
I would certainly not argue that the critereon is intent to do physical harm, which is how you define "stalking". Boy, would an awful lot of stalking no longer be considered "stalking" under that definition. By your definition cyberstalking is ok if you only want to date them and/or joke with your bros about it, not rape someone.
Rather the issue is whether the actions of, say, posting your photo in a Facebook ad campaign -- and otherwise pursuing means of "information-gathering" so extraordinary that one needs to post to Hacker News to explain them -- might reasonably considered a willful invasion of a person's privacy. Certainly it could be, and these guys just didn't care, because they're just having a laugh, and she's probably cool with it, and if she's not, well screw her because girls should be cool with that sort of thing.
"stalk [verb]: to follow, watch, and bother (someone) constantly in a way that is frightening, dangerous, etc."
-- merriam-webster
This very much was not the case.
If it makes you feel better, the ad was also taken down very quickly.
This would be much more meaningful if you hadn't already stated that you took it down because you already got the information you wanted.
Yeah, no one would ever possibly be creeped out by that.
You think it's ok because you have good intentions. Guess what? So does every other creep. It's not up to you to decide whether your actions are frightening. You took a bet that you could stalk (message all her classmates!) and dox (post her picture online!) a girl without her permission and without even the slightest self-awareness that it's invasive behavior. And then you tried to lie about key details.
You, sir, are exactly the kind of male-privileged "brogrammer" that is giving this industry a bad name these days.
Also the ad didn't say that she was flirting with anybody and it was designed with an attempt to not make her look bad in any way.
Finally, she is aware of the whole deal and has been a good sport, and is not upset.
You said you didn't post any of her info online.. you ran a friggin Facebook ad campaign with her picture on it (which you obtained not from her)! Now you've just edited your comment to say you didn't post any other info about her that you obtained.
You did all this without her permission, according to your colleague. Now you're trying to weasel out of that too with ambiguous phrases like "she is aware". Yeah, after you told her what you already did.
Did it not even occur to you that it could be potentially embarrassing or invasive? What if she wasn't cool with it? What if she's just playing cool because you forced her hand? It's wrong of you to assume it's ok to cyberstalk someone for "fun" because your intentions are good -- your intentions being having a laugh with your bros.
The other point here, even if you think bro'ing out like this is perfectly acceptable workplace behavior / way to treat women, is that it's just incredibly stupid for a startup to tarnish their brand this way. Just don't do it.
No, from what you guys have said you didn't tell her about it until after the fact. That's super douchey and retroactive permission doesn't change anything. If you grabbed a girl's butt and she laughed it off as "fun between friends," it doesn't make it ok. You need to ask permission first.
If you think cyberstalking is only bad if you add doxing to it, then you don't understand cyberstalking.
Keep in mind that the information that they were looking for could just as easily have been volunteered by the sales guy in other circumstances, so it's not like this information was tightly under her control in the first place. "What's her name? Where does she live?" - these are pretty common questions when discussing romantic liaisons with friends and colleagues.
I've just re-read the definitions for "stalking", "cyberstalking", and "harassment" and I can assure you none of what we did qualifies given the actual scenario of how things really occurred.
So which one of you is telling the truth?