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.

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

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.

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!

"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 don't think "this is how facebook started" is much of a defense.

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.

> The fact that the default response to this is "omg" and "this guy deserves to be in prison"

Straw man fallacy. Literally nobody here has said he deserves to be in prison.

> This is a very hacker thing to do. Hackers have always been people out at the edge doing things that get them into trouble.

It saddens me that you don't recognize a difference between "thing that gets you in trouble" and "thing that harms others". Getting in trouble is not the problem here.

>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.

Great swathes of adult nations vote for and tolerate idiocracy writ large, whilst young people are trying something, anything, in a strange new society. I can't always agree so I stop and think more, if it's not already too late.

it's not 1999 anymore. you can't create malicious sites and then cry "I'm just a nerdy teeeeen" afterwards

Thank you for this comment.

I printed it out so I could paste it on my toddler thrashing machine :)