[thrwawyFrtco675]

Throwaway account.

As an employee I used to help out on the forums, giving non-PR helpful answers.

Then someone extremely angry about a semi-related issue took one of my posts out of context and emailed the executive team, using my truthful post as supposed evidence of the company's wrongdoing against its customers.

It didn't hurt my career and I didn't even get in trouble... but that is not the kind of attention you want to get from your SVP.

I don't post in the forums anymore. There are way too many angry people who will weaponize anything you say against you. Too many journalists looking for a story. Too many YouTubers looking for the next clickbait video. Not worth the risk.

[sircastor]

This is tangential: I wrote a Mac client for a popular internet service early on. I did it on my own time, without any programming background, learning as I went, spending my own money to get it done.

I remember someone on a forum very angrily posting that the program didn’t have all the features he wanted, and all the bugs weren’t being addressed, and of course Mac users were being treated as 2nd-class citizens.

I was shocked at how presumptive he’d been, and tried to explain without going off how much effort I’d put into this, and how wrong he was. It was a harsh lesson on user expectations.