
Ask HN: You cannot delete comments posts or your account on HN. Concerned? - headShrinker
Today I found out after 11 years on this platform there is no way to delete anything you create and post, including the account itself on Hacker News.<p>This seems strange and ironic considering a lot of our online comments revolve around data privacy, individual rights and the right to be forgotten.<p>I have deleted Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and reddit accounts my life has dramatically improved. However I am unable to delete my hacker news account... leaving me wondering what is the status of my online data and status on this network. Clearly it is meant to be permanent. I wonder if you knew nothing is deletable here, and if knowing at some point you might want to, you’d regret existing on and supporting a network that will profit or benefit from your content in perpetuity without input from you.<p>Meanwhile they reserve extravagant rights to flag censor and ban any content you post at their discretion indicating they’re fully willing to remove content that they disapprove of.<p>My opinion: you should be upset that this platform&#x2F;network is benefiting off you and not allowing you the rights and benefits to delete and control your own content... Much less paying you for the content you provide.<p>I have emailed HN@ycombinator.com and they don’t respond.
======
dang
> Today I found out after 11 years on this platform there is no way to delete
> anything you create and post

How did you "find that out"? It's not true. We take care of these requests for
people every day.

> I have emailed HN@ycombinator.com and they don’t respond

We always respond. It may take a while though, because the inbox gets brutally
piled up. It looks like you emailed 3 days ago. There are 32 ahead of you in
the queue. I'm sorry, but there's not much I can do but answer emails in the
order they were received. (The actual process is more complicated, but that's
what it boils down to.)

~~~
j88439h84
Why does this require human intervention at all? If I want to delete my
comment or account, why do I have to give you my email address in exchange?

~~~
dang
Allowing wholesale deletion of account histories would gut the threads an
account had participated in, which would be unfair both to any commenters who
replied, and also to the community, which has an interest in maintaining its
archive. We need to balance individual protections against these other
concerns. To do that requires an approach with a bit more nuance than clicking
a button to wipe everything. Threads are co-creations, after all. pg wrote
about this in 2013:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6813226](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6813226).

This has been the approach for a long time. Here's me saying the same thing 4
years ago:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11543284](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11543284).
The main thing that has changed since then is that we now have the ability to
rename accounts. When people want to delete their accounts, a combination of
randomizing the username and/or deleting some posts and/or redacting sensitive
information has proved able to satisfy nearly everybody.

~~~
WheelsAtLarge
Points of view are changing. People are being more concerned about their data.
I suspect many people here are feeling different about not being able to
delete data. Other companies have given users the ability to delete their
data. You might want to define a Hacker News policy that addresses it.

I suspect that you'll be addressing the same question over and over as time
passes. It won't go away.

~~~
dang
Things are changing in that we get more of these requests than we used to, but
they're not changing in the sense that the current approach shows signs of not
working. On the contrary, it works very well. The main problem is that it's
not universally known, and so occasionally complaints like the current thread
show up, or people tell each other things that aren't actually true. It's on
my list to add to the FAQ, which would help, if anyone actually read the FAQ.

Addressing the same questions over and over is much, if not most, of my job.
In recent months I've started to link more systematically to past
explanations, since the sequences of questions on many topics have started to
converge. I intend to compile these into either a v2 FAQ or a series of short
essays about moderation topics, or something, which in the future can simply
be linked to. The question of account deletion will certainly be in there.

~~~
dwaltrip
Adding it the FAQ would be awesome.

------
paloaltokid
I think it's pretty sad that they don't warn you when signing up. And I think
it's pretty lousy that they won't let you delete your account. I had an
account that got into 4-digit karma before I realized I couldn't delete it. I
was younger and wrote some stuff I'd love to get rid of. I've emailed the guys
who run HN about it several times and every time it's the same lame excuse.

~~~
dang
When did you email us and what did we say? This does not sound at all like the
email conversations we have with users.

If someone emails "I was younger and wrote some stuff I'd love to get rid of",
the obvious response is: "Happy to help! What are the links? We may not be
able to delete the posts altogether (it depends on whether they got replies,
and how many) but there's nearly always something we can do, and we don't want
anyone to get in trouble from anything they posted to HN." I've written that
kind of thing so many times I'll probably start mumbling it in my sleep soon.

~~~
paloaltokid
I'll admit I'm impressed you responded to my comment! The last time I tried
was a few years ago.

I would have to go back to my inbox to find your response but I remember being
pretty disappointed. I don't think you wrote anything that was specifically
unkind but I remember being struck by the response. I thought "wow, these guys
really don't care if someone wants to delete or hide their account." It is
completely possible I caught you on a bad day.

I'll try again.

~~~
dang
Please do! I'd love to see the old emails, too, because maybe there's
something to learn about how to respond better. Or maybe we already learned it
in subsequent years.

------
andrewstuart
You should be allowed to delete your own comments for alot of reasons.

In particular, if you decide that a comment you made was overly negative, or
offensive or has some other issue, then it is good for the quality of
discussion that you be able to take the action and remove it. You are allowed
to do this for a short time period after creating it, I think you should
permanently be allowed to delete it.

I know HN does not like comments to be deleted because it breaks the
historical value, but I think people, privacy, quality of discussion and
individual personal right to curate your own online presence are more
important than HN's right to maintain historical integrity. HN doesn't see it
that way as far as I understand but hey, it's their site. Don't like it, don't
comment.

~~~
austinheap
You can delete comments within a time limit.

~~~
jki275
2 hours, I think -- which is essentially nothing.

~~~
dang
I wrote about this here
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23623839](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23623839).
If there's something that remains unaddressed, let me know.

------
kohtatsu
I found this out maybe 15% into my HN career. I've emailed in the past to have
specific posts removed and received a timely response doing so.

I didn't request a blanket delete however. I do understand the desire for
posterity, and generally very much appreciate the lack of [deleted] a la
reddit.

It's not hard to notice the lack of delete: it's somewhat well known edit
windows close; then the delete window soon after. Maybe upfront documentation
would be welcome. I imagine many people like us didn't think of it until after
wanting to delete something.

I'd be very open to removing usernames from posts (they bear little in >99% of
cases anyway). I'm wary of having entire posts be easily deleted, especially
considering replies. My country does have a right to be forgotten (Canada), so
I assume I could easily email or snail mail to have my profiles wiped. I
wouldn't exercise this, though perhaps I'd consider a disassociation in the
future.

~~~
UnpossibleJim
How does one's right to be forgotten apply when there's no true link to one's
identity? Does it apply to pseudonyms, as well?

I've long wished for such laws to pass in the US, but there are far too many
hands in too many cookie pots paying too many Senators for that to happen, I
fear.

------
kordlessagain
> Today I found out after 11 years on this platform there is no way to delete
> anything you create and post

> This seems strange and ironic considering a lot of our online comments
> revolve around data privacy

I agree it seems strange this just now occurred to you after 11 years.

> I have deleted Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and reddit accounts my life has
> dramatically improved

Why is that, exactly? Because you waste less of your time on them, or because
nobody has your data from those services? If it's the later, how do you
calculate value from something you can't observe?

> Meanwhile they reserve extravagant rights to flag censor and ban any content
> you post

Yeah, using a site that someone else wrote and pays for running the servers
doesn't give you magical rights on the service. A fun fact is that free speech
is frequently misinterpreted as the ability to say anything anywhere, but it's
not that at all.

> My opinion: you should be upset that this platform/network is benefiting off
> you

That's not an opinion, it's telling people what to think which seems somewhat
in vogue recently.

~~~
austinheap
“if I can’t spew my opinion with your bandwidth I’m oppression”

------
gabrielsroka
From dang (mod), Mar 2019:

> We delete comments for people nearly every day. It's true that we don't
> allow wholesale deletion of account histories, because that would gut the
> threads the account had participated in. But we also don't want anyone to
> get in trouble from anything they posted to HN...

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19459744](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19459744)

~~~
philliphaydon
I would be happy if they allowed usernames to be changed or accounts to be
deleted where the username is just changed to _deleted_ or something and the
comment stays.

~~~
AnonC
If you have been careful all along, this would help. But it wouldn’t solve the
problem where someone has inadvertently added some personal information or
hints/links to who they are or where they are. People may also not remember
where they posted what that links back to them.

~~~
dang
We're always happy to delete or redact identifying information. We don't want
anyone to get in trouble from anything they posted to HN. We don't do it by
allowing wholesale deletion of account histories, because that would gut the
threads the account had participated in, which would be unfair to any
commenters who replied, as well as to readers and to the community.

That doesn't mean we don't care about individual users' needs for
protection—we care a lot about it, and help people with these requests every
day. We just have to do so with sharper tools, and we have a big bag of tricks
for taking care of these things. They include renaming accounts, retroactively
assigning comments to throwaway accounts, deleting specific posts (especially
if they don't have replies), redacting specific info from posts, and more.

------
caf
I cut my teeth on Usenet, mailing lists, and IRC - on all of which the idea of
unsaying something you said was a self-evident absurdity.

So no, I don't have a problem with it here either.

If I feel badly enough about something I've said in the past, I can always
follow up that I've changed my mind / disagree with my past argument and the
reasons why.

~~~
apta
> I've said in the past, I can always follow up that I've changed my mind /
> disagree with my past argument and the reasons why.

Yes, that's the rational way. However, with today's SJW and Twitter mobs, you
don't know what someone might dig up in order to make your life hard going
forward.

~~~
blaser-waffle
Or if the pendulum will swing the other way, and the Mega-Nazis who will be in
charge in the future will use bots to search twitter for SJW posts.

Just cuz you're in lock-step with the zietgiest now doesn't mean you will be
in the future.

See also:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window)

~~~
dragonwriter
Mega Nazis, if they should come to exist, are going to seek to hunt people
down whether or not anti-Nazis have done so first.

If you are concerned about Mega Nazis, hoping you can convince them to be
tolerant Mega Nazis by the example of tolerant anti-Nazis is...not likely to
be an effective approach.

------
frank2
Ten years ago one of the most prolific and valuable participants of
lesswrong.com used a script to delete all his writings from the site. A few
days or weeks later, he reconsidered and gave the site permission to restore
them, explaining that he was angry when he ran the script, but as you might
expect if you've spent time adminning a computer, no one wanted to spend the
considerable technical effort required to effect a restoration. Since then I
have experienced non-negligible amounts of pain after following one of my
bookmarks or a search-engine hit only to end up at a stub that was one of his
former posts or comments.

>you should be upset that this platform/network is . . . not allowing you the
rights and benefits to delete and control your own content.

 _I_ would be upset if a significant fraction of the more than 558 bookmarks
into news.ycombinator.com I have accumulated over the past 10 years stopped
working because of a change in HN that caused a large increase in the rate of
deletion of old comments. In particular, I worry about users who would use a
script to mass-delete all of their comments here. (I arrived at the figure of
558 by actual counting: in a directory containing only bookmarks manually
created by me, I grepped for "news.ycombinator.com" and for an abbreviation
for HN that I use when I'm too lazy to copy and paste the url.)

The fact that it is hard or impossible for a prolific contributor to mass-
delete his contributions is a significant part of the reason I chose spend as
much of time as I have reading here -- and _searching_ here: with Google
Search becoming increasingly useless, an increasing fraction of my searches
are searches of HN using Algolia.

I am of course okay with the site's starting displaying a strongly worded
warning on the sign-up page.

ADDED. 13.3% of my searches of the internet since the start of this year have
been searches of HN using Algolia. One painfully precise detail: I am counting
only those of my searches that originated (in code I wrote) in Emacs, but that
is the majority of my searches, and I have no reason to believe that they
materially differ from the rest of the searches (which originated by my typing
into the location bar of my browser).

------
balfirevic
> I have deleted Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and reddit accounts my life has
> dramatically improved.

How would your life be better if you were able to delete your account here as
opposed simply not ever using it again?

> I wonder if you knew nothing is deletable here

That's not entirely true, but it is true that you can't just bulk delete every
comment you made - and thankfully so, because reading discussions with bunch
of deleted comments that have replies would make this place a lot worse.

------
slowdog
While I'm pro right to be forgotten, and do believe HN should allow an account
delete.

But HN's ethos is to inspire discussion and readability of it. Lack of a
delete seems to be by design so that conversations are always readable.

You can see the spirit of that in their guidelines[0] such as "Comments should
get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive".

You can further see that in the design in how they handle deletes [1], where
once "archived" things are permanent

[0]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

[1] [https://github.com/minimaxir/hacker-news-
undocumented#editde...](https://github.com/minimaxir/hacker-news-
undocumented#editdelete-time-limits)

~~~
rubidium
@dang A suggestion that occurs to me based on this would be deleting accounts
but not comments. Essentially all comments remain but are attributed to
“anon_1” or something like that.

~~~
dang
We do that by randomizing account names. We have other tricks too—for example,
sometimes people are just concerned about their comments in one thread, and we
can snap those off and reassign them to a random username, which lets them
keep their primary account.

We wouldn't reassign every anonymized account the same username, though,
because that would make discussions hard to follow when there is more than one
such account in the thread. That's especially important because the number of
these requests builds up over time, and users never ask for their accounts to
be renamed back (though one did!), so such an approach would act as a slow
erosion in the threads.

~~~
ta17711771
And people say HN isn't making new features...you guys have the coolest mod
techniques around.

------
Santosh83
So, they allow changing your handle to a random string, they delete selected
posts if they don't break big threads, and they redact select info (like PII)
from your posts, all of which upon request, and on a case-by-case basis.

To me, it seems reasonable enough actually, although the process could have
less friction, i.e., instead of requiring an email conversation, just have
buttons for edit/delete after their window has passed that the mods then
review and get back to you for further clarifications or simply allow your
edit/delete request.

------
CM30
Not really. Most internet forums stopped you deleting comments, posts or your
account iun general. In 99% of ones I've come across, there's a time limit on
editing a post, normal members don't have the right to delete their content,
and accounts can't be removed.

And to be honest, I don't expect any different. What do you expect to happen
if someone deletes their post on a site like this? If it's standalone I guess
it'd be fine, but if there are replies (or it's the whole thread), then what?
Do you remove a whole bunch of random people's replies as well? What if those
people don't want their content removed but you do?

Forums are very much a collaborative effort, not an individual one, and I feel
the interests of the community outweigh that of any one member here.

------
9nGQluzmnq3M
You can mail the mods to "anonymize" your account by changing the username to
a random-ish string.

I still suspect that HN is not compliant with CCPA (the Californian GDPR)
though, specifically that you can "request a business to delete any personal
information about a consumer collected from that consumer".

~~~
austinheap
CCPA applies to CA orgs with a massive bottom line. HN assuredly doesn’t fall
within CCPA’s crosshairs.

------
greggman3
AFAIK you're not able to delete your stack overflow / stack exchange posts
either. The site basically says anything you post is CC-BY-SA 4.0 so once you
post it it's effectively available for everyone forever.

You can delete your account but your posts will not disappear. Maybe HN should
add the same terms so you know your posts can't be deleted.

As for deleting your account that's annoying. My solution for at least not
using an account is setting minaway to 9999999999 and the turning on
noprocrast. suddenly my account is unusable.

Maybe a simple solution for HN is they could follow S.E. and when you delete
your account they just change the username to user-<number>

------
apl002
Agreed. I should be able to remove comments and posts ive made. Pretty weak
for a site that primarily caters to devs

~~~
grugagag
You’re missing the point of HN

------
istorical
The main reason I support allowing deletion of content is that for individuals
in abusive households or citizens of certain governments, if they posted
something in the past that was dangerous to their health or life, they should
be able to delete it to ensure they are not harmed by a parent or spouse who
may be in a position of power over them and may be abusing them, or in the
case of a government it may target them for something they said in the past.

~~~
dang
We've helped many such users, and I don't believe that anyone who has
contacted us in such a situation has ever been unhappy with the result. It is
true that they have to contact us, which isn't great, but I don't know of a
better way.

~~~
istorical
perhaps it would be a good idea to make it more visible / obvious to people
that they would have that option? many of the people who are in vulnerable
situations, may already be feeling powerless or have learned helplessness and
may not even think to reach out via email. that seems like something someone
who is normally quite empowered might think to try, but if one thinks of large
internet companies like google or facebook, the idea of emailing to get a
human being to help you seems impossible so people might not even think to try
with HN in this age of algorithmic support.

------
AnonC
I’m with you on this, and don’t like the fact that delete windows for comments
and posts is quite short and that accounts (along with content) cannot be
deleted. This is why I never put any personal or demographic details in my
comments here.

HN is also not a platform that changes much over long periods of time (in UI,
UX or policies). So don’t keep your hopes up on this one being dealt with as
you’d like it to be. HN the platform does not keep up with the times as much
as you’d expect it to be for a platform with deep pockets behind it (don’t
bring up Facebook in comparison; that’s a downright malicious platform). “The
right to be forgotten” is a stranger here.

I’ve seen in past discussions that HN wants to preserve conversations and
doesn’t want to delete content, especially if it means making threads
meaningless. Imagine deleting a reply to a comment based on a request that in
turn has replies from others beneath it. The people who posted those replies
may not want their content to be deleted. I’ve seen platforms deal with this
in different ways. Facebook deals with it by removing the entire comment
thread or subthread when the top comment is deleted. Reddit deals with it by
removing only that specific comment (marking it as deleted) and leaving
replies dangling without any context.

The other side of the coin is that HN is not a platform you or I own. So the
platform is well within its rights (up to legal limits) to do anything with
your content.

People must really understand that anything they put on the web is susceptible
to stay forever in corners they may not even be aware of. The content you post
may also be mirrored on the Internet Archive with time based snapshots without
your knowledge. The Internet Archive doesn’t have an easy way to request for
deletion (or even exclusion from being archived). If you send emails,
sometimes you get asked to provide more proof (like invoices for domain
registrations) even after you’ve provided evidence of ownership through other
means (without exposing personal information). Is the Internet Archive wrong
to copy content and make it difficult (or impossible) to remove it from its
databases? The answer depends on who you ask. You’d also find people who have
different views on how it ought to be on HN vs. Internet Archive.

What people and platforms cannot seem to agree on is what content truly
belongs to you in a way you can edit, delete and modify it as you please and
have that be the only version that everyone else sees.

~~~
monkpit
The typical way to preserve content upon account deletion is just to remove
the displayed username from the posts, but keep the content. I don’t see why
that couldn’t apply here also.

~~~
AnonC
The content itself might have specific signals or links to who that person is.
Those cases also deserve to be covered during deletion. For the sake of being
complete, even the content must be allowed to be deleted.

------
gdulli
My inability to remember everything I've posted on this account over the years
makes me consider it unsafe to tie to my real identity.

I've grown over the years. Since I can't review and delete anything that no
longer reflects who I am now, I've written HN off as a place to talk about
anything that might identify me.

~~~
dang
If this is something that would make a difference to you, you're welcome to
email hn@ycombinator.com. We can rename accounts, and we can delete or redact
sensitive info, including historical stuff that people are worried about. We
just need to do it in a more precise way than nuking entire histories.

~~~
gdulli
I appreciate that, but it goes so far against the self-service nature of every
other web site that it feels bizarre. It's an activity that I've never
associated with anything but full privacy.

If I knew of a specific recent thing I needed to delete and it was important,
then yes I'd take you up on that.

But if I have a set of comments in my history that I just don't want there
anymore, the last thing I want to do is email them to another person. It feels
weird enough to keep me from embarking on the project to sanitize my account.
It doesn't even feel like my account. Lacking freedom and control makes it
feel like it could only ever be a throwaway.

------
abfan1127
I too would be interested in a way to delete comments or accounts.

------
remram
I am not very versed in those legal matters but I imagine there is a whole
spectrum between Facebook (where all your content is personal and you should
be able to take it out as needed) and Stack Overflow or Wikipedia (where
taking out answered questions or articles when an author wants it doesn't make
sense). I wonder how this is regulated, especially in regions with "strong"
right to be forgotten e.g. Europe.

More than once I have stumbled on deleted Reddit comments that looked to have
something I was looking for. Maybe it's good that the right type of content is
posted in places with the right kind of deletion rules, but this should
definitely be advertised clearly (so people don't start Q/A type subreddits,
and conversely don't post personal info on HN).

------
grugagag
Im okay with that. One should assume a transparent community and remove any
hints to the real identity just in case. One can easily create a separate
email address for HN or just use one for this type of semi anonymous identity
on internet: HN, reddit, etc

------
yCombLinks
I think you should be able to unlink comments from your account, but I don't
support a blanket delete. Any old reddit thread is basically unreadable from
auto-deleted comments.

------
nootropicat
It definitely should be possible to at least anonymize some comments
(disconnect from the main account). Norms are changing so fast an innocent
joke made in 2015 could be enough to get someone cancelled, and the
retroactive norms are only getting stricter (I wonder what's acceptable today
that's going to be enough to cancel people in 2025?).

I imagine many people who posted under their real identity, or revealed it,
are now regretting it for this reason.

------
foobar_
HN should allow you to delete accounts at the very least.

~~~
grugagag
That but allow the history/comments?

If you no longer wish to access your account set up a new autogenerated
password then forget it.

~~~
manigandham
Usernames themselves can be linked and associated around the web, and they
chain all the posted comments to a single identity. Changing to [deleted] at
the very least provides better protection.

------
manigandham
The guidelines should be more visible when signing up but HN recommends
anonymous/throwaway if you have something sensitive to post.

Note that they usually have more than enough context to still link your
accounts and will ban both if they want to, but that's their prerogative. Be
careful with who you trust and what you put online, that's the best advice for
everything.

------
grugagag
Keep private and divulging information off this site. Also one can create a
throwaway for any info they dont want associated to their main accounts. Eg
bragging about stupid things they do or did at work, bragging about slacking,
about being lazy at work, about things that we normally shy away for saying
outloud IRL

------
uniqueid
I think I understand HN's philosophy (ie: this is the web; you can never
_really_ delete anything), but there are a few of my old comments I wish I
could hide. Does there exist no compromise that is simpler than emailing HN,
yet onerous enough to prevent HN from becoming a shifting pile of sand?

------
compscistd
It does seem odd you can’t delete your own content, but beyond that, I don’t
think any of our comments are worth paying for. Comments on HN feel a bit like
recorded discourse in a techie Roman Forum. No one invites you to participate
but people will remember what you say

------
manigandham
Idea: Add a "post anonymously" option for comments. HN can dynamically
generate a new account for each thread so all of your comments are linked to
the same identity for the same story. This account can then be accessed
through a special link shown only once.

~~~
ta17711771
There's no limit to throwaways, and recently, the Internet has decided that
"Anonymously" means "free to be a dickhead".

------
verelo
Just adding my advocacy for a delete option. Hacker news has been around for
long enough, it’s only reasonable that you give the content creators control
over that content. Did i even sign a TOS back then?

~~~
dang
The problem is that the content is a co-creation. Comments aren't atoms,
they're nodes in a tree that only make sense in connection with other
comments. A reasonable deletion policy needs to fit this domain, and that
makes it more complicated than "these are my posts and I'm taking them back
and going home". It's not that we don't care about users or don't want to
treat them fairly; not at all, and we go to great lengths to help.

pg wrote about this here:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6813226](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6813226).
I wrote more at
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23623717](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23623717)
and elsewhere in this thread.

~~~
verelo
While I agree that it breaks the conversation around others posts by allowing
deletion, at the end of the day this isn't unique to HN. If i delete myself on
Facebook, i delete myself, why does HN feel it's special in that it deserves
to maintain conversation integrity?

------
Seb-C
I am also upset and concerned that I cannot remove the posts I want. Having to
send to someone the content you don't want people to know anymore is wrong and
a huge psychological barrier.

~~~
dang
I can understand why that's upsetting and would be open to a better way. If
you read my other posts in this thread, and have a better idea of how to
achieve the balance I've written about, i.e. a way of achieving that balance
that would lower the psychological barrier and not involve doing wrong, I'd
like to know what it is.

~~~
Seb-C
Thanks for your answer.

If the concern is about threads, why not at least allow deletion of comments
that does not have answers?

I think in many cases instead of deleting, it would be nice to anonymize a
comment, so it does not show the user name and does not show in the comments
list of a profile either.

------
grugagag
Imagine some AI process reads all your comments and re-builds your digital
identity on the other end. As long as it is not tied to your real identity
you’re okay

------
thisistheend123
This has just disappeared of the front page!! Wow ....

~~~
wolfgang42
Things disappear off the front page all the time. When they do so suddenly
it’s usually because they tripped the flamewar detector, which notices heated
comment threads and pulls the post from the front page to avoid adding more
fuel to the fire. (The exact criteria are undisclosed, but afaik it looks at
things like comments per minute and comment-to-upvote ratios.)

------
ChuckMcM
Odd you used to be able to delete comments.

~~~
slowdog
You can assuming you do it within their timelimits:
[https://github.com/minimaxir/hacker-news-
undocumented#editde...](https://github.com/minimaxir/hacker-news-
undocumented#editdelete-time-limits)

~~~
ChuckMcM
Ah, okay. That is interesting, I don't suppose anyone has looked at the arc
source?

~~~
manigandham
To find what?

------
drenvuk
I'm not sure why you would put any information about yourself on a public
forum and expect it to not be permanent. Do people actually have that
assumption? I fully believe that everything said here and anywhere else on the
internet is being slurped up by some random guy/org's bots.

That's not paranoia btw, believing otherwise would be incredibly naive. So no,
I am not upset and I don't think I should be upset. I think you are the one
with unrealistic expectations. If it's on the internet it is permanent, gdpr
be damned.

------
imheretolearn
Is there a publicly available link as to what PII is collected/logged/stored
by HN and for how long?

~~~
austinheap
HN is not a scoped platform with a compliance control on PII.

------
jimthrow
My solution is to get a new account every now and then

------
Markoff
Wouldn't this be illegal for EU residents due to GDPR?

though even if they respond emails and help you I'm pretty sure they break EU
laws without informing you about rules in advance with clear information about
DPO, data processor/controller etc

------
eloisius
Wouldn't this be a major problem for GDPR compliance?

~~~
slowdog
I am not a lawyer, but GDPR compliance looks like it doesn't quite apply due
to not necessarily being targeted at European citizens
[https://gdpr.eu/companies-outside-of-europe/](https://gdpr.eu/companies-
outside-of-europe/)

~~~
eloisius
I haven't dove into it since the initial panic around how far it would reach,
and the work I've done at work to accommodate it at work, but my understanding
was that just by providing the service to EU citizens (i.e. you haven't IP
banned the entire euro region) you are liable to face penalties. I'm probably
just talking about of my ass though. IANAL

~~~
ta17711771
No Euro presence, good luck enforcing.

~~~
eloisius
Unless you happen to travel within the EU, or live in a country that has an
extradition treaty with EU members, right?

~~~
ta17711771
GDPR is extradition worthy to the US? Doubt it.

------
chadlavi
There's a lot of bad shit going on in the world. I really don't have room to
care about this.

------
RivieraKid
Yes, this bothers me too.

HN should allow this for a small fee as a compromise between the conflicting
interests of comment authors and readers. The fee would limit the number of
[deleted] comments but when someone really wants to have their comments
removed, they would be able to.

~~~
adtac
that's just a lot of words to say HN should hold data as ransom

------
rshnotsecure
If you see this post before the inbound bots come and give it a -4 downvote,
M5 Hosting controls this.

It's a front company. They have something like 30 names, only 7 employees who
can be inferred every really worked at the company + are real humans.

Also, try finding the verified account on Twitter for Hacker News. You can't
:)

The idea that this platform, full of comments and small stories from some of
the best sysadmins in the world, it not a high value target...is somewhat
naive.

~~~
dang
This is the fourth time you've brought this up, and it's frankly starting to
get weird. I answered this in detail a few days ago:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23554341](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23554341)
— to the extent that it's possible to answer anything so ill-specified.

~~~
rshnotsecure
Again, I just saw your reply from earlier, after I made this post. I am
reading and thinking now. I've also promised to make no further comments,
except maybe reasonable questions in a limited follow up, and then drop it.

That being said, if you didn't see my earlier reply to your earlier comment,
no worries as I definitely made that oversight previously myself.

Look I think in technology today, we should take suspicion as a positive trait
(which it most certainly isn't always). Asking questions of who controls what,
who is in charge, what is that person like/what can we assume their
motivations are, is to be applauded. That being said, I know this must stress
you out only more on top of all the work you do. That is extremely fair and
tbh I would be resentful.

I could be wrong about all this. But even if I am, I ask that you imagine the
positive consequences. Perhaps others elsewhere will question suspicious
things they have seen. Hopefully they will be respectful and seek a path of
investigation that while willing to "blame and shame", which does sometimes
happen, use those powers sparingly, and only with some level of consensus.

EDIT: Also just upvoted you as show of good faith :)

