HN is vastly concerned about privacy and screaming about FB transgression on these issues etc., but the top post here is about disseminating private information of 10's of thousands of people.
You can't put the toothpaste back in the tube. It's out there now, might as well examine what you can learn from it and discuss it.
FB is a business making conscious and deliberate decisions and can be called out on it in part because things like this can happen. I mean they just made such a massive goof that they completely took down their own site, other massive sites they owned, and locked their own employees out of their buildings just two days ago for almost a full day. They can certainly screw up and be victim to a leak like this as well.
> might as well examine what you can learn from it and discuss it.
Thats the sort of high minded thing that WE might do here, but I worry about how this data is going to be weaponised against a whole bunch of people just trying to make a living from things they're passionate about.
I'm not a streamer (yet?) but I kind of see Twitch as this haven for a bunch of people who, until the advent of streaming, didn't really have an outlet, or an easy way to find like minded people, let alone (in some cases) make a living. I used to write off Twitch as a crazy fad that didn't make any sense to me. Then I spent a bit of time on there and realised what an awesome bunch of people (mainly) inhabit that place.
I feel very sorry for anyone caught up in this who goes onto experience some of the inevitable downsides. I can just see morons in the chat on various streams constantly bringing up how much the streamer earns (or doesn't earn) etc.
Oh no, I definitely feel bad for the people who had their data leaked and worry what some malicious people will do about it, but posting about it on HN isn't going to change that.
I've done a tiny bit of streaming myself at some point, and keep meaning to do a bit more. I'll never have any significant following, but it's a cool website. It sucks that's it's gotten out there, but it's too late, it's out.
Might as well satisfy my morbid curiosity of how much some streamers are making on that site, which is about all I'm doing with this data.
This is the same logic that a lot of people used during The Fappening. If we think it is immoral to steal this data then we should not condone people copying it and analyzing it as that's just benefiting from someone else doing the dirty work for us.
Information is subject to Supply and Demand like everything else.
We don't publish the names of victim of certain crimes, and they are not widely known even if they are leaked, thus significantly limiting the damage. Information about how to make 'violent things' with easily acquired materials, certain recruiting videos for 'very bad groups' aka ISIS etc. - all of this is out there on some level but because it's actively not propagated, the likelihood of it having an impact is reduced.
We shouldn't be publishing individual's income, or the private source code of normal, legit private groups.
at least that table above doesn't reveal much you couldn't have estimated from their official twitch page to begin with and I don't really consider earnings that private (neither do most of the top streamers by the way who tend to display their sub count on their streams).
People on HN probably would very much oppose leaking private DMs but transparency on celebrity earnings is not exactly that big of a deal. I'd actually like earnings transparency in general, like it already exists in Sweden.
Given that children's rights on the internet seem to be a hot topic, this might give some of them an idea who they're giving their hard earned money to.
