Got kicked out of uni and had the cops called for a social media website I made

1whizkid1 75 points 230 comments April 06, 2026
monyatwu.com · View on Hacker News

Discussion Highlights (20 comments)

blinkbat

Hard to have the high road with the mouth of a sailor

vignesh_146

lol this happened at my college (IIT delhi). He's being disengeious in the blog, the reason they made him take the site down is cos people writing some really really bad things about students, and Obv that should not be allowed at a place for higher education. Be more mature.

BugsJustFindMe

Preliminary comment on tone and behavior in writing: Everything about the story, from the described details about what allegedly happened to the way those details are communicated, is infantile. That makes it very hard to treat the author as a reliable narrator about specific details. Anyway... > anyone could make an anonymous account, and then comment anything on anyone's profile Jesus christ. You built a platform specifically designed for targeted abuse. I know that you're still young, but one day when you're older I hope you come to realize that a platform for spreadings rumors about others is not an ok thing to want to build. You don't have the moral high-ground here. The only thing you accomplished was being a creep. This whole blog post shows an extreme level of immaturity that I really do hope you grow out of. Literally every line is absolute cringe. > this is that story. its really really fucking crazy. The craziest thing to me about this story is that everything in the story makes you look bad and yet you chose to post it anyway. You either: A) never realized that you were building a harassment platform despite being told this multiple times, which demonstrates a complete lack of awareness or B) thought it would be a good idea to build a harassment platform, which demonstrates a complete lack of empathy

superkuh

Imagine if this was, say, at a bar. A person holds up a sheet of paper on a clipboard and says anyone can write about anyone else in the bar. Would the police be called? Would legal threats be made? People freaking out like this is not consistent with social norms. It's magical thinking about the internet somehow being different or unique. Good luck dealing with these small minded administrators.

mbfg

I suspect if he changed the name to not include the college name, while people would be angry, there wouldn't be a real reason to take it down. The sending emails to the college system is also iffy.

hnsdev

The college was being abusive and they probably cannot take your phone and delete your stuff. What an awful thing to happen. By the way, the dean was not being nice by visiting you, don't go through Stockholm Syndrome, he was checking on you because he knew what he did was wrong.

jjmarr

I love how OP directly borrowed the plot of The Social Network by scraping the campus directory for a student rating system. And somehow it's playing out in the exact same way. > I had scraped data for all students at IIT Delhi, and made a profile for all of them. > anyone could make an anonymous account, and then comment anything on anyone's profile. Each profile also had 4 fields, where you could tag anyone, in the "has dated", "crushing on", "crushed on by" or "haters" category. > he told me, take the site down or you WILL face DISCO, so again I was like sure, I dont mind it (I was just gettting reminded of Social Network lmao) > also at one point i literally said the social network dialogue, " I feel like i deserve some recognition from you guys"

joshstrange

One can hope that time will lead to more maturity than was shown in launching a site like this or acting that way when pressed. Yes, the admin didn't handle it well, but the writing style and general tone of this post/incident is incredibly off-putting. All while talking about future "investors" and how many great ideas he has. You created a clone of hot-or-not (or whatever Zuck called his site) and you think you're the next coming? Get real. There was nothing innovative here at all, it might be one thing if it was innovative while being scummy but it's just scummy and a tired copy.

legohead

only a couple steps away from Idiocracy

josefritzishere

When I read things like this I glimplse the enormous cultural gulf between generations. I instictively want to take the side of the underdog in most situations. But in this case, I do not find the protagonist very sympathetic. But clearly, many young people feel otherwise. The world is a-changing.

catlikesshrimp

The implementation of the idea looks more like a kiwifarm egg than a facebook egg. Thinking about Anonymous posting about non public figures is perturbing. If the poster can't be made responsible for the post, then the platform and the platform of the platform (and so on) are in line. That is: new website, then the hosting servers (and so on)

amatecha

I mean, this guy seems absolutely clueless. Anyone with even the slightest social awareness would know this site is going to result in hurting people and people are going to really dislike him for making it... and further his own conduct is super immature (wtf is [0])... He basically made a harassment service, complete with allowing anonymous posting? Definite "FAFO" moment. I don't feel a shred of sympathy for his situation. When you build social technology, you have a responsibility to put some serious thought into what the social effects are of what you're producing. Every feature will have social and psychological implications for the people using the service. If you don't care about that, you especially shouldn't even be trying to make social-related software. [0] https://monyatwu.com/blog/iitsocial/pic7.png

rambambram

Hahaha, I get 'The Social Network' vibes from this story. You should read his other posts also. Let's just say the guy has more than enough confidence.

OutOfHere

It is your obligation to remove defamatory comments immediately, ideally never allowing them to be posted at all (by means of an LLM). Secondly, you probably failed to provide the profile owners a way to delete their own profile if they seek privacy. These inactions are probably what led to complaints.

ozim

I guess that’s how you get to be in Forbes 30 under 30 right?

mchannon

If you're ever going to record an interaction with people who do not want it seen by the masses that they are breaking the law, you need to ensure that you livestream it. Then you can tell them, "Go ahead, confiscate my phone. Proof of your illegal acts have already left the building, and the country."

gamblor956

FTA: "Mony: bitch come suck my dick" ...in response to someone politely asking to have his profile removed. Then the school told you to take it down and you refused. You deserved to get kicked out of school. Yes, this site would probably have been fine (if distasteful) in the U.S...because the U.S. has a different legal system . This site is not legal under Indian law. Defamation works very differently in India. You should consider yourself lucky that you're able to write this blogpost instead of finding out what the inside of an Indian prison is like.

leoff

Reading this wasn't easy, but let's appreciate the authenticity. This post doesn't reflect well on you, you were disrespectful to every person in the story. You really need to grow up, and you could've handled this way better. You could have, for example, asked exactly what their concerns were, and proposed ways to address them. Your site looks very amateur, but from your description, it doesn't sound like you are doing anything clearly forbidden by law. >someone had written a comment about S which he did not like. Couldn't this also be done in the reddit? Then is the lack of moderation and language filters the problem?

nusl

> "the DEAN threatened to kick me out" So when did the clickbait title apply? The author is honestly, from this article, quite a horrible person.

aadopne

This guy is too cocky for his own good. Still, an interesting case study in how to trip up on your own arrogance and still not learn anything from it.

Semantic search powered by Rivestack pgvector
3,752 stories · 35,056 chunks indexed