It's an exciting time to be in San Francisco. This is partly because of the speed and magnitude of the way it is changing. As one of the rare unicorns who was actually born and raised in "The City," I have seen it transform from the gritty, blue collar, underdog town it always was, to the Goliath of influence it has become.

The thousands of tech workers flooding into SF and the effect their money has had on the cost of living here has been an increasingly explosive issue. There have been protests from local activists and even a weird bar fight involving Google Glass. Journalists from the East Coast like to come out here now and opine about how the city itself is being changed irrevocably; that it "doesn't know what to do with" its newfound cash. Over the weekend, Kevin Rose was the latest object of ridicule. That kind of came out of nowhere for me, and didn't seem quite appropriate.

Look, I'm not a huge fan of Kevin Rose. As one of the several hundred Digg "power users" who for years selected stories for his site, I was dismayed by how he botched Digg version 4 in 2010, directly leading to its demise. His eventual reemergence as the head of Google Ventures some years later was greeted with scorn by many a marketing colleague who will never forgive him, not just for destroying his own creation, but for the all-too-easy way he seemed to land the plum Google job later on.

However, protesters went too far this weekend in some key ways by targeting Rose. Their words and actions were too harsh and were mainly designed to attract attention. They publicly displayed his address and called him a "parasite" and a "leech." I met Rose at a party some years back and he was nice. I have heard stories about his personal demeanor and nothing "parasitic" has ever come up. Quite frankly he's made a legitimate contribution to the technology world. He synthesized a way of measuring popularity on the internet that was genuinely transformative for its time. He's not a leech.

In their flyer, the protesters said what makes Rose a parasite is that he's part of a system that is widening class differences:

“As a partner venture capitalist at Google Ventures, Kevin directs the flow of capital from Google into the tech startup bubble that is destroying San Francisco...more and more ambitious tech-workers flock to the city and displace underemployed service workers to the cities at the far reaches of the BART line. These workers must then commute back to San Francisco or Oakland every morning, in most cases to perform menial tasks for the entitled scum who drove them out in the first place.”

I do have sympathy for the anarchist protesters (that is what they call themselves), but I think they need to soften their approach somewhat. They are railing against what many say is an unjust capitalist system that funnels money in directions that do not provide for the common safety and wellness of millions of people. There are ways for which that system might be tweaked so as to change this, but those tweaks may not get serious consideration if people tend to focus more on harsh, disrespectful actions of protesters.

There is plenty of goodwill for the protesters' cause out there. In a tweet, Rose himself even sympathized, saying "I agree with them that we need to solve rising rents, keep the SF culture and crack down on booting folks out." However, I'm sure he didn't like it when they told the world where he lives. I also think the usage of words like "scum" and "parasite" won't get you far with many people.

PETA, although a good organization that is trying to do good things, has offended people in the past with its protests featuring almost-naked women covered in blood. These protesters are making a similar mistake. In an effort to get attention from the press and the public, these amateurs are making people focus on their mistakes more than the good causes for which they are trying to raise awareness. For instance, it might be better to protest in front of one of Google's offices rather than focus on Rose, who is basically doing a job for the company, and doesn't have tremendously great power.

To the protesters I say this: If you want to put the spotlight on the ills of capitalism - fine. But making yourself part of the show by taking such an amateur, harsh approach, both in language and action, only muddies the issue and sets back your cause.