Ad hominem is when you say someone’s argument is wrong because they’re a bad person. Ad hominem attacks are frowned upon because they cause good discussion to devolve into a shouting match.

In contrast, this thread has simply been establishing that jlcoff is a bad person. It’s not a fallacy or a derailment of the discussion to do so, rather it was the discussion. I can imagine why they feel attacked, it’s because they are literally being told they’re a bad person for their personal views. It would be implausible to expect a debate about the morality of working at a place you believe to be a scam, with such a person, to go without challenging them for it. And I wouldn’t expect such a person to respond without raising some form of “let ye without sin cast the first stone” defence and eventually just dribble out insults. My point is: you don’t have to worry about using community standards or HN policy to protect me from ad hominem attacks from them; all of this was priced in. It is inseparable from the nature of fraudulent schemes and the people who push them.