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Comment by spiffytech | Hacker News Reader

I've seen the internet mob in action many times. I'm sympathetic to the operator not outing themself, especially given how far this story spread. A hundred thousand angry strangers with pitchforks isn't the accountability we're looking for.

I found the book So You've Been Publicly Shamed enlightening on this topic.

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I would never advocate for torches and pitchforks, I've been close to victims of that in the past.

It is, however, concerning that the owner of that bot could passively absolve themselves of any responsibility. The anonymity in that sense is irrelevant except that is used as a shield for failure.

Oh for sure, the operator choosing not to apologize or reflect on their behavior speaks volumes.

There is a class of YouTube "content creators" who like to point out "cringe" individuals on the internet online for others to laugh at. They will often add a disclaimer to their videos saying "hey please don't go and harass this person, pinky promise!" But it never works. A hoard of internet randos will descend on the individual to say the most nasty words. When the YouTuber is pressed he or she will just say "I would never do that!" Even though he or she knew his or her video would have led to the harassment happening, or there would not be a disclaimer in the first place.

Not accusing you of trying to stir up harassment, but please consider the second order effect of the things you advocate for, in this case the disclosure of the identity of this AI guy.

But in this case, isn't Rathbun's owner the YouTube guy in this scenario?

I totally understand why they're trying to stay anonymous; it's a very rational thing to do, because people will shit on them. But they or their creation is the one that started trying to play the name-and-shame game.

It's hard to stir up too many feelings of sympathy here.

Exactly. I'm not saying this person should disclose their identity, but they are very conveniently using anonymity and passive voice to make themselves unaccountable to the 'social experiment' they conducted. And that we all know that if it went differently they'd put their name all over it.

In as many words I'm just calling this person a complete asshole and if I were to ever know this person offline I would be quite clear in explaining that.

Then there's the next level of content creators that only post videos about the original content creators who are behaving badly. They will report on their behavior and any repercussions. Some do it like they are reporting the news. It stokes the fire when these people should be ignored.

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