
Ask HN: Will HN allow account and comment deletions? - _hyn3
Ask HN: With the GDPR coming, the &#x27;right to be forgotten&#x27;, and the FB privacy flare-up, will HN ever allow comment and account deletions?
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matte_black
Honestly, this should never be allowed.

It’s archaeology-hostile. It pisses me off to no end when I am searching for
information on reddit and come across people replying to deleted posts by some
paranoid user who wishes comments were more ephemeral like Snapchat.

This is what the next dark age of mankind will be like, people from the future
looking for historical information and finding nothing but deleted or decayed
data.

Here’s a tip: if you don’t want something to be up for all time, don’t even
bother posting it. Keep it to your self. There are a lot of damning things and
incidents that could end people’s careers and reputations that I’ve never
posted about because I do not want the permanent liability.

I feel like the art of staying anonymous has been lost on people. It’s not
that hard.

~~~
DoreenMichele
_Honestly, this should never be allowed._

I wouldn't go that far, though I am generally sympathetic to your overarching
argument.

I wouldn't go that far in part because I'm a woman and women seem to attract
stalkers a lot more than men. I was a homemaker for a long time and had a very
private life. Trying to figure out how to interact effectively in the public
sphere has been a struggle for me.

Part of that is me. Part of that is other people. People react differently to
a woman than to a man.

So, on the one hand, I needed to figure out what I was simply doing wrong. On
the other hand, I needed to figure out how to effectively navigate a situation
that can, at times, be actively hostile and dangerous, even if I am not doing
anything wrong. Those two things confound each other and I don't know of any
good sources of instruction.

This has helped make me very aware that sometimes people get into real trouble
and need extraordinary measures to help extract them from the mess.

I think those extraordinary measures should be made available at times. But I
also think it should not be the default solution.

I generally agree with you that there are other approaches that we need to be
pursuing that are more nuanced and that try to balance different concerns. I
think gutting the value of a forum so that people can remove all their content
at will on a whim can readily go bad places. I am not crazy about it as a
policy/law.

~~~
throwaway4719
> I think gutting the value of a forum so that people can remove all their
> content at will on a whim can readily go bad places.

Thankfully, there's a really easy solution that HN today will not consider/is
not taking seriously enough: Just change the goddamn displayed username for
each comment to "<deleted>" or whatever.

1) this kind of (seemingly; it's all a black box in reality though) naval-
gazing-based decision making is exactly why the GDPR makes sense. We can't run
our lives on the whims of a few random people.

2) Does YCombinator tell us all of this stuff when we sign up to HN? No. We
have to find it out by ourselves. When we e-mail them to ask them to delete
our contributions, since there's no delete button, they just say "sorry, we
can't do that".

This kind of stuff is what the GDPR is good for.

~~~
matte_black
GDPR is one of the reasons I’m hoping for the collapse of the EU.

If a US company has no physical presence in Europe I see no reason why they
should comply with their bullshit.

And under a Trump administration... good luck.

~~~
jakeogh
I bet Poland and Hungry are next to leave. It's a sad, predictable situation,
take away the people's ability to check their own government, it's almost a
law of physics that next to go is free speech (now), and then... history
repeats. The BREXIT vote shows they know, but it's to be seen if the British
can turn this one around.

------
kgwxd
I've been emailing them about it once a year for 3 years, they keep saying
they're working on it. Last month, they supposedly put me on a mailing list to
be contacted when the feature is available.

I'd be fine with just being able to change my user name, or leaving my
comments with a "[Deleted]" user name in place of my original like reddit.

------
et-al
This makes me a bit nostalgic for the older days when you just assumed you
were chatting with a bunch of other weirdos online, so everyone went by
aliases. And if you ever tired of your old identity, you'd shed that old
screenname, sign up with a different one, and maybe never mention the past.

Facebook changed everything by encouraging people to match their online
accounts to real names, supply photos of themselves, and their family tree.
Usernames became actual people. And all of a sudden, anonymity was lost.

And now people want to be forgotten again. I shake my head at the heavy-handed
way of mass deleting comments. It’s understandable for Facebook where the
person and account are closely tied, but for sites like HN, I hope we keep the
shared knowledge, but just scrub out the name.

~~~
dvfjsdhgfv
> Facebook changed everything by encouraging people to match their online
> accounts to real names

s/encouraging/requiring/

~~~
goshx
You can still create an account with a fake name if you like. They don't have
anything to enforce it.

~~~
WorldMaker
They enforce it when reported. Who cares to report it, though?

------
the-dude
I have been partially doxed here and HN refuses to remove the comment.

~~~
jacquesm
If you are trying to be anonymous you really should try harder, it took me
less than a minute to get your home address. For starters you should probably
remove any identifying information from your profile.

~~~
drewmol
>If you are trying to be anonymous you really should try harder, it took me
less than a minute to get your home address.

It may be insightful for others if you divulge your methods.

~~~
jacquesm
When you have more than 50K HN Karma an extra toolbox opens up next to the
usernames, one of those is 'autodoxx' (clearly a weak pun on autodocs).

You click the link and it will automatically query google, various Whois tools
and other lookup services to get a fix on the user, the end result is a nice
little one-page mash-up listing all the domains you own, a bunch of recent
photographs, your political leanings, your sexual preferences, your last three
known addresses, any children you have and where they go to school, your
present location on a google maps page (it moves when you do, it's near real-
time, maybe a minute or two delayed), your current employer and an estimate of
your bank balance and some possible avenues for blackmail.

All this powered by the friendly AI of some HN start-ups that want to show off
their technology, and blessed by the Holy Trinity of online surveillance:
Peter Thiel, Eric Schmidt and Mark Zuckerberg. This _is_ Hacker News after
all.

~~~
Tomminn
I love how much I can't tell if you're serious.

~~~
jacquesm
49822 to go.

~~~
the-dude
Your knowledge base is out of sync.

~~~
jacquesm
HN doesn't support programmatic content or I would have been happy to make it
real time.

~~~
the-dude
This is strange, there was another, very very similar comment here from
another user, which disappeared after about 10-15 minutes.

Then 15 minutes later, this comment appears, with only a slight variation in
wording.

I am starting to doubt myself. Eerie.

~~~
grzm
I removed it for a couple of reasons: I try to keep my posts substantive
(though I have been known to slip) because I strongly value that aspect of HN.
And in particular I don't like to feed conspiracy theories, even when it's
clear they're in jest. 'jacquesm's post upthread overwhelmed my usual caution,
which led to a moment of weakness that I tried to correct.

Apologies if it may have (hopefully only temporarily) contributed even in its
removal!

~~~
et-al
> _I try to keep my posts substantive because I strongly value that aspect of
> HN_

Thanks for trying. I've been noticing more reddit-like comments lately and
it's tiring since it worsens the signal:noise ratio here.

~~~
drewmol
Same. For the record, I did not intend to trigger a sarcastawar. Was hoping
for: I went profile --> domain --> whois, validated against redfin/zillow /
county court records... --> traded to equifax for salary history or similar

------
legohead
It would be appreciated. I've recently been removing all history for my main
alias (of which I don't use on HN for this very reason) from the internet.

~~~
FrankBooth
Is there a nice summary of how to do this available? Or, if not, would you
mind posting a few pointers?

~~~
legohead
It's nothing fancy. I'm simply deleting all my comments/posts on reddit and
other forums I've participated in, manually. Of course, you can reach out to
the admins and ask them to delete your data, but they may not be responsive...

One thing I haven't got to yet, and am not sure how to even approach, is
removing my old Usenet posts, which you can find on Google Groups (from
1995!).

I still comment on reddit and such, as I like to help people. I just come back
later and remove the comments.

~~~
Sharparam
> I still comment on reddit and such, as I like to help people. I just come
> back later and remove the comments.

May I ask why? There are few things more frustrating than arriving in a help
thread from search results and finding that the answer has been deleted.

~~~
legohead
That's fair, and I understand that pain.

It's a couple things. I may actually be wrong, and don't want to leave my
stupidity open on the internet for all to see. And secondly, for those who
figure out my alias in real life and snoop me up on the internet and find
things out about me that I'd prefer to keep private (things I am interested
in, activities I partake in, etc).

~~~
et-al
Why not just create a new account every few weeks? It's trivially simple on
reddit and HN, and they offer you some degree of anonymity unlike Facebook.

Like Sharparam, reddit search results can be fruitless because of all the
deleted answers. Imagine if StackOverflow was like that.

~~~
stagbeetle
I tried doing this, but many subreddits have a restriction against account
ages. I frequently find myself being unable to post (or I am, but my posts are
in the "shadows" with no notice), without getting an AutoMod telling me:

1). Your karma is too low

2). Your account is too young

3). You haven't been subscribed long enough

It's always a turn off when you've written a long and properly sourced info
dump, but then the automod deletes it and you have to go fish it out of ceddit
et al. And then asking admins to make an exception is always as fun as getting
your license renewed. So I do what the OG does: Keep a couple of accounts
dedicated to each subject-matter, and delete my posts routinely.

If what I post is important enough, it'll propagate. If it doesn't, it dies.
That's not the reason I do it, however. It's a boycott against Reddit as the
world's discussion platform. Good luck figuring out the answers to those
really important questions or why all the commentators are applauding
[deleted] ;)

~~~
et-al
Yeah those are good points.

It is a pity Reddit has become the go-to discussion platform because you have
one identity tied across multiple interests (unless you happen to create
specialised accounts). It's also plagued with the eternal September because
users easily hop between subreddits. As such, few people bother reading the
FAQ or searching before asking a question.

------
jacquesm
You might be able to but there are many copies of HN comments and databases
floating around so even if HN did this properly likely there would still be
other copies that you could not touch.

------
zombieprocesses
Also, will the deletions be logical or physical. Will they be shallow or deep?
Keep in mind that there are many types of "deletion".

Logical deletions would be just marking the user/comment as deleted ( updating
a column in a table ) while keeping the data internally. Physical deletions
would mean they remove the data on their servers.

Then the next question is whether the deletions are shallow ( superficial ) or
deep ( complete ). For example, they can just do a shallow delete of the
account/user on their front-end servers. But that leaves back-end servers,
disaster recovery servers, staging servers, storage tape long term backups and
also log backups.

Even if data is deleted on all live servers, database and log backups stored
on tape and sent off to storage facilities still have your data.

Deleting your account/comment isn't as simple as people generally think.

------
mancerayder
You can get individual comments deleted if you ask the moderator nicely.

I think at the very least a 'hide' feature for a comment would be useful.
Presumably you don't want 'anonymous' comments created either so you'd need to
hide the entire comment from the public and not just the username.

Sometimes one accidentally leaks personal information, and in this day and age
privacy matters (or should).

------
eksemplar
The GDPR isn’t a magic shield though. It’s designed to regulate privacy data,
which is tied to European citizens, in systems designed to keep such data.

HN isn’t such a system because HN isn’t build to keep any privacy information.
It’ll be interesting to see how stuff like chosing your real name as a
username plays out in the courts, but as it stands right now, HN won’t have to
delete your data because of the GDPR.

------
agotterer
Previous HN thread -
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16661323](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16661323)

~~~
zaroth
I read the whole thing and all I came away with is that basically no one has a
fucking clue if it applies, if it does apply technically does it even matter,
and if it does matter how it’s supposed to work without fucking up the site.

Yay GDPR!

~~~
x0x0
Most of the deletion requirement for a user could probably be satisfied by
removing the username from the posts. And not just for display, but in the db.
If the data can't be recalled for a user, then (by my reading) that clears the
GDPR requirement.

~~~
mattmanser
Comments have personally identifiable information in too, it really doesn't
sound like it's enough.

~~~
x0x0
how many comments list their own name? Very very few.

Other comments may refer to you but you have no gdpr privacy rights over that.

------
the-dude
Thread has been buried from about 2300 CET.

