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"Finally!" the marketers cry. "We know exactly who John Smith's friends are."

Why would it be illegal at all? Facebook isn't a government authority.

Of course it did; there was a big hullabaloo that led to some people migrating to it. That's not really a sign that they did anything right, or that they'll have similar momentum in the future.

The same thing happened to 8chan, and then it entered a gentle but consistent decline: http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/8ch.net

In what language does "stalking and threatening and hurting others" translate into "people I don't like"?

Reddit is rank 32. Hacker News is rank 1,859. Bulbapedia, the Pokémon wiki, is rank 4,101. Voat is rank 25,171.

I don't think I understand your definition of "huge success".

English translation: "I want to be as big a jerk as possible and blame it on everyone else when they don't like it."

This is inspiring and encouraging, thank you :)

I wrote it because it was what I wanted to write, not as a formal teardown of the tech industry. You may notice that I didn't submit it to HN.

I'm fully aware how lucky I am to be able to pull this off. (I don't have nearly enough saved to actually retire on, though.)

Knowing that other people have it worse — or even that I used to have it worse — doesn't make it any better.

Whispered rumors of Yelp's business model have been greatly exaggerated. In almost four years I have never seen anything within the company to substantiate them in any way whatsoever.

This resonates, definitely. I don't "care" about these problems in the sense that my heart can't really be in them, but they are still blinding obstacles for me and my coworkers that I would like to resolve, and it's easy to get... very invested in them.

Until the day I realize all the low-hanging fruit is fixed and everyone else is pretty much content to put up with what's left, making it much harder and much less rewarding to continue.

I have enough trouble with searching for a finish line in projects I start myself, so I guess I'm tired of doing it when it's not even my race.

I used a couple emoji. Snag Symbola: http://users.teilar.gr/~g1951d/Symbola.zip

I'm not exactly a social butterfly, so from my perspective I've been getting much more out of my job by not having to work in an office.

Phew. I was worried for a moment that making the world a better place would be really hard, but it sounds like the GP has set a really low bar for me.

Ah, interesting! Useless in the same way pain is useless, then — not very helpful in the moment, but it sure teaches you what to avoid in the long run.

I grew up on the Internet. I've only ever worked on anything remotely — my job, miscellaneous FOSS, my own things that happened to attract a few collaborators. I met all my closest friends on IRC. I still manage to care about problems. Just not these ones.

Thank you! I'm glad you found something simultaneously worthwhile and profitable. Here's hoping I can do it too.

I understand the math, but I feel like debt is a huge weight on my shoulders.

I grew up with parents who were constantly in more debt than they could handle and constantly reminding me of it. I would rather not be anywhere near that situation again, even if keeping moderate debt would've worked out a little better in the long run.

I was (well, am, for now) working remotely. I've always worked remotely. I couldn't stand doing otherwise. Still drives me up the wall.

I would suggest that maybe 8 hours a day is too much (France has a 35-hour week and, as I recall, is still ridiculously productive) but let's not kid ourselves — I doubt most people commenting here actually work only 8 hours a day.

I am definitely hecka privileged. What would you have me do? Keep working a job I don't enjoy, out of guilt that other people have to do the same?

I crunched some numbers, and the difference came out to losing a couple grand a year over the course of a decade by paying it off now. I decided I'd rather have fewer bills and no debt looming overhead while I figure this out than the slight extra cash.

I do also have some pre-existing savings; I just don't want to use them if at all possible (and have to start all over, sob), so I've been deliberately pretending they're unavailable.

I am absolutely terrified, which is why I didn't quit six months or a year ago.

I'm doing something with a huge financial impact, so I wanted to talk about how I was dealing with that.

I deliberately left out actual numbers, but I don't know how to be any more tactful than that. Sorry.

Is it really "the industry" if I'm not running a business?

Be sure to check back in a couple months. :)

i was kinda following you until that last part, where "not getting more favorable treatment" spontaneously mutated into "getting less favorable treatment"

If you can offer me a more effective GamerGate blocklist, I'll gladly switch to it. Or if you could make GamerGate stop being so repulsive, that would be even better.

Why are you criticizing a solution to a problem you don't have without offering an alternative? It's almost like you don't care about the problem or the people it impacts at all.

So if it's documented, it's not a bug? Oh man I'm about to save so much time.

much appreciated.