Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by pibaker 123 days ago
The downside is he will likely receive a lot of death threats. Probably in his literal, physical mailbox.

Having seen what a self righteous online mob can do in the name of justice over literally nothing, I fully defend his decision to stay anonymous. As much as I find his action idiotic and negligent.
2 comments
sonofhans 123 days ago
Does your defense extend to others? Do you believe that anyone should be able to avoid consequences if they’re clever enough to stay anonymous?

Avoiding consequences for unethical actions is, itself, unethical. If you don’t want the time, don’t do the crime.

link
Kim_Bruning 122 days ago
Fair. If before an impartial judge and/or a jury of your peers. Not so much in the case of an internet mob.
link
sonofhans 122 days ago
Same answer, though — if you don’t want to get hung by an Internet mob, don’t poke one with a short stick.
link
bayindirh 122 days ago
I believe the rules are simple.

    1. Don't do anything you don't want to experience yourself.
    2. If you don't want to find out, do not fool around.
As an arguable middle ground, they can plead to Scott non-anonymously while addressing the public anonymously. That'd work to a point, but it's not ideal.

Also, their tone is coming through very cocky. Defining their agent as a "God!", then giving it a cocky and "you're always right, don't stand down" initialization prompt doesn't help.

I mean, prompting a box of weights without any kind of reasoning or judgement capability with "Don't be an asshole. Don't leak private shit. Everything else is fair game." is both brave and rich. No wonder things went sideways. Very sideways. If everything else is fair game, everything done to the bot and its "operator" in turn is a "fair game". They should get on with it, and not hide behind the word "anonymous". They don't deserve it.

All in all, they doesn't give impression of being a naive person who did a mistake unintentionally, but on the contrary.

link
skeledrew 122 days ago
If it was malicious then a call for deanonymization is meaningless. Similar in spirit (though not intent) to how Anna's Archive, etc just ignore court orders and continue doing their thing.
link