This crosses the line into personal attack, which is not allowed on HN. I'm sorry I didn't see it sooner, while the thread was still in high dudgeon.

An internet forum in rage mode provides nothing close to due process, so when people start to target individuals here, I start to feel queasy if not outright sick. The bloodthirsty side of the hivemind is quite capable of jumping to wrong conclusions, indeed routinely does so. HN needs safeguards against this. One safeguard is users reminding one another that witch hunts are a thing, and a bad one—I wish I'd seen more such comments in the current thread, but at least there were some. Another safeguard is moderators drawing lines when the discussion gets nasty.

Some of you will object that exploitation and fraud are also bad things. Indeed they are. All of these are bad things, and an internet thread based on a blog post doesn't have nearly enough information to sort through who did how much of which of them. Therefore we should all curb our impulses.

I've flagged several other comments that target individuals and have closed this thread to new accounts, which have run suspiciously rampant in this discussion. If anyone wants to read the full thread including all the flagged/dead comments, you can do so by browsing HN with 'showdead' set to 'yes' in your user profile.

I've detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12380121 and marked it off-topic.

Witch hunting.

You don't know the real story, especially just how 'evil' Jessica is.

Fraud is the real story and she's doing future victims a favor by dropping just enough hints for others to find out who they are and avoid them. She should have sent the fake wire notices to the local DA as well, but in lieu of it, this should suffice.

How was Jessica involved in fraud?

You have no evidence of that.

The story did not imply it either.

This is witch hunting.

At best a link to their website would have been enough if this really was about "doing future victims a favor"

Not linking employees that were really just a comical side to the story.

> How was Jessica involved in fraud?

> You have no evidence of that.

> The story did not imply it either.

I agree with you that there should be NO witch hunting. Just to clarify Jessica's part in the fraud, she was one of the people vocal about outing the founders after not being paid for over a month. For some reason, she suddenly changes her mind. She starts erasing any evidence of OP doing work and The CEO fires her with cause claiming that he has evidence she's not been doing work. Jess is promoted with a raise and changes her title to CMO.

Now, maybe this is just a bitch move, but if Jess is willingly participating in the CEO's scheme to fire OP with cause, I feel like this is crossing the line into fraud. Again, witchhunting is wrong, but just clarifying Jess's part in the fraud (if it counts as fraud)

I don't know about anyone else, but I didn't read too much bad into the account of Jessica other than a simple power struggle. Those happen all the time anywhere.

The CEO and CTO however...... The allegations there are pretty severe.

I actually feel sorry for the poor girl. She's very, very young and she's suddenly been thrust in a circumstance where she has to decide whether to be loyal or bail. And she's probably getting paid (according to other stories posted).

So here's this kid faced with the choice of basically being homeless or becoming WrkRiot's version of the Minister of Information.

And then the deluge of hate and venom spewed at her direction not just her role at her company, but personally as well. She not only protected her personal Twitter but has now changed it trying to hide.

Yeah, I feel sorry for her. She's a kid who got in over her head and now she's reaping the consequences of those choices.