I worked at a company very briefly in the early aughts. I thought I was hired to be on the team that built the platform. But before we would do that we needed t

I worked at a company very briefly in the early aughts. I thought I was hired to be on the team that built the platform. But before we would do that we needed to have a list of beta users. So my job was writing bots that scoured forums and other social networks for contact information (emails, phone numbers, names, etc.) It took me a week to realize what I was actually doing then another week to plan and execute my escape. The rest of the team were east european and did not give a fuck about what they were doing, it was good money to them. They eventually did release a product with a few thousand users. Not long after, Facebook changed their signup strategy from schools to the general public and the rest is history.