It doesn't matter. This is how Facebook started. It's how a lot of things started.
Young people doing (sometimes questionable) experiments.
The fact that the default response to this is "omg" and "this guy deserves to be in prison" is an indication of the dark times we're headed towards. A society unable to tolerate deviance from the norm, is a society that will fail to adapt to inevitable changes to the norm. And the norms are changing.
I am pretty pro-privacy. And yes, I find it to be fairly thoughtless, but that's no reason for coercive intimidation. The fact that this was the reaction to someone doing an experiment speaks poorly about the society it took place in, and explains why there haven't been any major breakthroughs - in consumer tech, science or the arts – from within that country.
More generally, HN's reaction is disappointing. This is a very hacker thing to do. Hackers have always been people out at the edge doing things that get them into trouble. The fact that most people on HN want to crush that rebelliousness – that hacker spirit – is sad to me.
I think there's a dark undercurrent in global culture, where people would rather live in a world where they're poor but able to control others as opposed to one where they're wealthy but unable to exert control over others.
If this were completely uncharted territory, you might have a leg to stand on here.
But you are correct that this is exactly how Facebook started, and we know exactly how that goes, the poster is correct that this just leads to harassment at scale.
The author's response was the main problem, showing a complete lack of character or ethical concern.
There is a world of difference between being a hacker with a sense of rebelliousness and a jerk who thinks there should be zero consequences to their actions.
If we're using the Facebook example to call this unacceptable, we should really be fighting a lot harder against Facebook itself. Because it still has a reasonably positive reputation overall and it's affecting billions of people.
> If we're using the Facebook example to call this unacceptable, we should really be fighting a lot harder against Facebook itself.
I don't think many here would disagree with you.
> Because it still has a reasonably positive reputation overall and it's affecting billions of people.
I'm gonna disagree with you. Maybe it's because I live in the Bay Area so the culture is affected by the proximity of tech companies. But my family in the middle of the country mostly seem to be on the same page, so I don't know how you explain that. It may be that I'm drawn to people who care about these topics and some degree of sameness is expected within family dynamics resulting from the parents' values raising us. Whatever.
I think a good portion of society considers FB a garbage product but don't know of an alternative and just accept it for what it is. I think a smaller portion of society recognizes that they are amoral and terrible for society. How many countries have now discussed legislation to limit kids accessing social media (whether you agree or disagree)? That didn't spring out of nowhere fully formed. Years of criticism got us there.
> Maybe it's because I live in the Bay Area so the culture is affected by the proximity of tech companies. But my family in the middle of the country mostly seem to be on the same page, so I don't know how you explain that.
I can explain that. 100% of Americans add up to roughly 5% of the worlds population. As such, there are billions of non American users with very different viewpoints and opinions.
Yes, we really should be! You’ve hit it on the nose with that point: Facebook has been a stalker with effectively legal immunity in a lot of people’s lives for quite a long time. I’m glad to see others realizing it, too. The more that do, the sooner their formerly-untouchable behavior becomes unacceptable.
"There is a world of difference between being a hacker with a sense of rebelliousness and a jerk who thinks there should be zero consequences to their actions."
Given the external consequences of certain actions, for all intents and purposes that "world of difference" may exist only inside their skull.
Go, have your fun, experiment, fuck around, push boundaries. Don't make profiles for me based on info you found, public or not, and then sign me up to receive notifications for messages on it without my permission.
Yeah, Facebook started in college, but it didn't start with scraped data and auto-generated profiles.
I suppose it would be worse without the notifications, even though they are form of spam, because then you wouldn't know what some anonymous posters are writing under a purported profile of yours.
Speaking of which, the author is possibly an even bigger asshole than Zuckerberg. Oh you don't like what anonymous somebodies wrote about you under a profile you didn't even create yourself (because I did it for you)? Why suck my dick!
I don't think this person belongs in prison, but the internet also isn't the place it was in 2004? You do bear responsibility for what you do online, and this was irresponsible. We should encourage kids and others to experiment and make mistakes, but the kid shouldn't have put up this website and should have taken it down as a responsible member of the community
I’m pretty sure thefacebook didn’t scrape data. It was also private.
I got into trouble in college which nearly became a police matter simply for scraping emails. I didn’t even store the data. I was just testing a tool that I had created and actually found a data bug in the college’s IT system where it gave me access to all the emails instead of access to only the group that I was supposed to be part of.
If it wasn’t for the fact that I self reported (actually I reported the bug to IT thinking I would be rewarded, lol) it would have become a police matter. Because I self reported before they reached out to me the Dean and college President let it remain a code of conduct violation.
"A society unable to tolerate deviance from the norm, is a society that will fail to adapt to inevitable changes to the norm" I feel the same way about societies that continue to fail lessons of history and repeat the same damaging (and often easily avoided) idiocy.
>I think there's a dark undercurrent in global culture, where people would rather live in a world where they're poor but able to control others as opposed to one where they're wealthy but unable to exert control over others.
I agree-ish with everything generally except this. I don't think this is a global thing at all. I think this is at best a subset of people in mostly western nations.
That said, I no fan of the author or his actions (which paint him like a real jerk). The facts don't really support the benefit of the doubt you're giving him here.
Look, a piece of valid advice, and let me prefix this with I’ve been in business a long time and I run a big company.
If you want to get anywhere, it’s only going to happen by making deals with others.
For this, you need to be kind and caring. You need to negotiate with people and make everyone feel good, like they’re getting a good deal, not your response: “bitch come suck my dick” which by the way is sexual harassment.
You had one opportunity to remove the account of the guy who complained and issue an apology, and you failed. If you had just done this, your site would still be up and viral.
At any point in your negotiations with the Dean you could have offered to work with him to incorporate his feedback and reinforced how the platform was going viral and that it was going to be good for publicity because of its parallels to Facebook. You needed to identify his core concern (perhaps control) and resolve it mutually (make him an admin account or something). That’s what being a leader is about, not being an egotistic maniac.
Everyone has mentioned this is ethically bankrupt, and I totally agree.
Very little mention of the fact that this project is extremely ho hum from a technical perspective and in terms of creativity.
This is maybe 2 steps up from a Hello World example app. It could have mostly been generated by Rails scaffolding script 15 years ago, not even mentioning AI could crap this out in 20 minutes. Most frameworks have build-a-twitter-clone docs that are actually more complex than this.
And the idea of people having profiles with the ability to comment on them is pretty much feature zero on every social media app ever. I remember thinking this was cutting edge stuff 20 years ago on Xanga.
Cool toy project I guess (morals aside) but not quite the proof of 200 IQ this guy seems to think it is.
I don't know how you could write this and possibly think you come across as smart or mature. How you didn't get kicked out immediately is beyond me. These people did not consent to be included in your site; you had no right to air their personal lives because you think it makes you special.
If you're ever going to record an interaction with people who do not want it seen by the masses that they are breaking the law, you need to ensure that you livestream it.
Then you can tell them, "Go ahead, confiscate my phone. Proof of your illegal acts have already left the building, and the country."
lol this happened at my college (IIT delhi). He's being disengeious in the blog, the reason they made him take the site down is cos people writing some really really bad things about students, and Obv that should not be allowed at a place for higher education. Be more mature.
When I read things like this I glimplse the enormous cultural gulf between generations. I instictively want to take the side of the underdog in most situations. But in this case, I do not find the protagonist very sympathetic. But clearly, many young people feel otherwise. The world is a-changing.
I am 17 from the same country and this is somewhat juvenile, this isn't an age problem for-the-most-part.
The thing I saw was that, they mentioned investor/startup multiple times. I feel like this is their way of getting attention (All PR is good PR)
There could've been better ways to handle it and I feel like there was no deeper reflection. One of the things I wish to do after something is to learn from that. I am unable to find that realization sadly :-(
Currently in High school, so maybe my expectations were a bit higher of University but I expected better from IIT-Delhi Student/Staff (Both)
OP I hope that you can reflect on these things. There are some good things to learn which you are dismissing here, Have a nice day.
With the writing being at the level that it is, I struggle to take the claim "I was telling him, sir, give me one actual rule im breaking and i'll take the site down" Seriously. OP obviously didn't clearly understand why people were having a negative reaction to the site; I expect they might not recognize rules or laws even if they were cited.
I suspect if he changed the name to not include the college name, while people would be angry, there wouldn't be a real reason to take it down. The sending emails to the college system is also iffy.
The implementation of the idea looks more like a kiwifarm egg than a facebook egg.
Thinking about Anonymous posting about non public figures is perturbing. If the poster can't be made responsible for the post, then the platform and the platform of the platform (and so on) are in line. That is: new website, then the hosting servers (and so on)
I mean, this guy seems absolutely clueless. Anyone with even the slightest social awareness would know this site is going to result in hurting people and people are going to really dislike him for making it... and further his own conduct is super immature (wtf is [0])... He basically made a harassment service, complete with allowing anonymous posting? Definite "FAFO" moment. I don't feel a shred of sympathy for his situation.
When you build social technology, you have a responsibility to put some serious thought into what the social effects are of what you're producing. Every feature will have social and psychological implications for the people using the service. If you don't care about that, you especially shouldn't even be trying to make social-related software.
The admin behaviour is expected in an Indian context, provided you behave the way this guy did. I am not saying it's good to snatch the guys phone, but it's expected.
Let me explain the core issue here.
The issue is that if the platform ever devolves into something that can be construed as cyberbullying, then the admin is suddenly in trouble.
In the Indian context, elite public colleges like IITD have some students from quite poor non urban backgrounds, These colleges are cheap, have a strict entrance exam (JEE) and there's no money requirement so you have people from all financial strata. As such, the social dynamic is that the parents "entrust" the college with "taking care" of their kid. Especially in first generation educated. In contrast, in private colleges with homogenous, richer families the social dynamic puts more responsibility on the student. The age of 18 is completely irrelevant in this dynamic.
The point is, the admin in this college is also somewhat of a caretaker of the students. And will face social liability for cyberbullying "happening under their nose". This is true even if it happens on reddit by the way (and the bully is in the same college). Essentially, if there is a way for the dean to intervene and he doesn't, he has failed in his job as a caretaker. That's the dynamic here. Obviously he has deniability if some random american bullies a IITD kid on say HN. But if a IITD kid bullies a IITD kid on any social platform they will come down on it heavily.
Thus, the platform was never going to work and it's problematic before the law even comes into play. Talking about "tell me what rule I broke" without considering the above social dynamics is fairly immature. If they had done the same thing at say an Ashoka University (expensive private college) then they would have faced none of these issues by contrast. If I'm allowed a swipe at the author, this situation is entirely expected given their privileged background.
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What the site was is that, I had scraped data for all students at IIT Delhi, and made a profile for all of them.> anyone could make an anonymous account, and then comment anything on anyone's profile.
Oh, good, they made a harassment factory.
Young people doing (sometimes questionable) experiments.
The fact that the default response to this is "omg" and "this guy deserves to be in prison" is an indication of the dark times we're headed towards. A society unable to tolerate deviance from the norm, is a society that will fail to adapt to inevitable changes to the norm. And the norms are changing.
I am pretty pro-privacy. And yes, I find it to be fairly thoughtless, but that's no reason for coercive intimidation. The fact that this was the reaction to someone doing an experiment speaks poorly about the society it took place in, and explains why there haven't been any major breakthroughs - in consumer tech, science or the arts – from within that country.
More generally, HN's reaction is disappointing. This is a very hacker thing to do. Hackers have always been people out at the edge doing things that get them into trouble. The fact that most people on HN want to crush that rebelliousness – that hacker spirit – is sad to me.
I think there's a dark undercurrent in global culture, where people would rather live in a world where they're poor but able to control others as opposed to one where they're wealthy but unable to exert control over others.
The author's response was the main problem, showing a complete lack of character or ethical concern. There is a world of difference between being a hacker with a sense of rebelliousness and a jerk who thinks there should be zero consequences to their actions.
> If we're using the Facebook example to call this unacceptable, we should really be fighting a lot harder against Facebook itself.
I don't think many here would disagree with you.
> Because it still has a reasonably positive reputation overall and it's affecting billions of people.
I'm gonna disagree with you. Maybe it's because I live in the Bay Area so the culture is affected by the proximity of tech companies. But my family in the middle of the country mostly seem to be on the same page, so I don't know how you explain that. It may be that I'm drawn to people who care about these topics and some degree of sameness is expected within family dynamics resulting from the parents' values raising us. Whatever.
I think a good portion of society considers FB a garbage product but don't know of an alternative and just accept it for what it is. I think a smaller portion of society recognizes that they are amoral and terrible for society. How many countries have now discussed legislation to limit kids accessing social media (whether you agree or disagree)? That didn't spring out of nowhere fully formed. Years of criticism got us there.
> Maybe it's because I live in the Bay Area so the culture is affected by the proximity of tech companies. But my family in the middle of the country mostly seem to be on the same page, so I don't know how you explain that.
I can explain that. 100% of Americans add up to roughly 5% of the worlds population. As such, there are billions of non American users with very different viewpoints and opinions.
> we should really be fighting a lot harder against Facebook itself.
yes. correct.
> Because it still has a reasonably positive reputation overall and it's affecting billions of people.
does it? its like the power company -- you just kinda have to use it, or else you just have ot go without.
Given the external consequences of certain actions, for all intents and purposes that "world of difference" may exist only inside their skull.
Yeah, Facebook started in college, but it didn't start with scraped data and auto-generated profiles.
I got into trouble in college which nearly became a police matter simply for scraping emails. I didn’t even store the data. I was just testing a tool that I had created and actually found a data bug in the college’s IT system where it gave me access to all the emails instead of access to only the group that I was supposed to be part of.
If it wasn’t for the fact that I self reported (actually I reported the bug to IT thinking I would be rewarded, lol) it would have become a police matter. Because I self reported before they reached out to me the Dean and college President let it remain a code of conduct violation.
>I think there's a dark undercurrent in global culture, where people would rather live in a world where they're poor but able to control others as opposed to one where they're wealthy but unable to exert control over others.
I agree-ish with everything generally except this. I don't think this is a global thing at all. I think this is at best a subset of people in mostly western nations.
That said, I no fan of the author or his actions (which paint him like a real jerk). The facts don't really support the benefit of the doubt you're giving him here.
If you want to get anywhere, it’s only going to happen by making deals with others.
For this, you need to be kind and caring. You need to negotiate with people and make everyone feel good, like they’re getting a good deal, not your response: “bitch come suck my dick” which by the way is sexual harassment.
You had one opportunity to remove the account of the guy who complained and issue an apology, and you failed. If you had just done this, your site would still be up and viral.
At any point in your negotiations with the Dean you could have offered to work with him to incorporate his feedback and reinforced how the platform was going viral and that it was going to be good for publicity because of its parallels to Facebook. You needed to identify his core concern (perhaps control) and resolve it mutually (make him an admin account or something). That’s what being a leader is about, not being an egotistic maniac.
> "the DEAN threatened to kick me out"
So when did the clickbait title apply? The author is honestly, from this article, quite a horrible person.
Very little mention of the fact that this project is extremely ho hum from a technical perspective and in terms of creativity.
This is maybe 2 steps up from a Hello World example app. It could have mostly been generated by Rails scaffolding script 15 years ago, not even mentioning AI could crap this out in 20 minutes. Most frameworks have build-a-twitter-clone docs that are actually more complex than this.
And the idea of people having profiles with the ability to comment on them is pretty much feature zero on every social media app ever. I remember thinking this was cutting edge stuff 20 years ago on Xanga.
Cool toy project I guess (morals aside) but not quite the proof of 200 IQ this guy seems to think it is.
Then you can tell them, "Go ahead, confiscate my phone. Proof of your illegal acts have already left the building, and the country."
The thing I saw was that, they mentioned investor/startup multiple times. I feel like this is their way of getting attention (All PR is good PR)
There could've been better ways to handle it and I feel like there was no deeper reflection. One of the things I wish to do after something is to learn from that. I am unable to find that realization sadly :-(
Currently in High school, so maybe my expectations were a bit higher of University but I expected better from IIT-Delhi Student/Staff (Both)
OP I hope that you can reflect on these things. There are some good things to learn which you are dismissing here, Have a nice day.
Sites like these are only one step up from revenge porn.
Thinking about Anonymous posting about non public figures is perturbing. If the poster can't be made responsible for the post, then the platform and the platform of the platform (and so on) are in line. That is: new website, then the hosting servers (and so on)
When you build social technology, you have a responsibility to put some serious thought into what the social effects are of what you're producing. Every feature will have social and psychological implications for the people using the service. If you don't care about that, you especially shouldn't even be trying to make social-related software.
[0] https://monyatwu.com/blog/iitsocial/pic7.png
The admin behaviour is expected in an Indian context, provided you behave the way this guy did. I am not saying it's good to snatch the guys phone, but it's expected.
Let me explain the core issue here.
The issue is that if the platform ever devolves into something that can be construed as cyberbullying, then the admin is suddenly in trouble.
In the Indian context, elite public colleges like IITD have some students from quite poor non urban backgrounds, These colleges are cheap, have a strict entrance exam (JEE) and there's no money requirement so you have people from all financial strata. As such, the social dynamic is that the parents "entrust" the college with "taking care" of their kid. Especially in first generation educated. In contrast, in private colleges with homogenous, richer families the social dynamic puts more responsibility on the student. The age of 18 is completely irrelevant in this dynamic.
The point is, the admin in this college is also somewhat of a caretaker of the students. And will face social liability for cyberbullying "happening under their nose". This is true even if it happens on reddit by the way (and the bully is in the same college). Essentially, if there is a way for the dean to intervene and he doesn't, he has failed in his job as a caretaker. That's the dynamic here. Obviously he has deniability if some random american bullies a IITD kid on say HN. But if a IITD kid bullies a IITD kid on any social platform they will come down on it heavily.
Thus, the platform was never going to work and it's problematic before the law even comes into play. Talking about "tell me what rule I broke" without considering the above social dynamics is fairly immature. If they had done the same thing at say an Ashoka University (expensive private college) then they would have faced none of these issues by contrast. If I'm allowed a swipe at the author, this situation is entirely expected given their privileged background.