
Ask HN: Deleting HN comments - dewiz
How’s that one cannot delete old comments? Wouldn’t it be more user friendly and privacy aware, allowing users to own their data?
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ColinWright
There are web crawlers that retrieve the data and store it, then making it
available to everyone. Once it's here it's in the world, and removing it only
from here is pretty much irrelevant.

As the web currently stands, if you put something on it you have already lost
control, so framing the question as one of "owning your own data" is
misleading.

I've up-voted the question because I believe it's important and should see a
discussion of how future systems might be able to handle this, not because I
agree with the implicit sentiment. Personally it would be fascinating to see a
real world implementation of the "Oubliette" as given in Hannu Rajaniemi's
novel "The Quantum Thief."

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dewiz
I disagree with most of your answer, eg most crawlers discard old data in
favor of the latest snapshot, but thanks for taking the time to provide your
PoV and inviting to a discussion. Even if some piece of data remains around,
one should be in control of his/her contributions and be allowed to delete,
that’s far from irrelevant or misleading.

~~~
thx4allthestuff
When you say that "one should be in control of his/her contributions"... you
realize that you are "publishing" these contributions, right?

I understand where you're coming from in wanting that control, but I would
encourage anyone who feels that they should be in control of what they put on
the internet to meditate on the word "publish."

You would laugh at Stephen King if he suddenly demanded that everyone return
their copies of the Dark Tower, right? At one point he made the decision to
"pull the trigger" so to speak, and publish that work. Like any trigger with
lasting consequences, once you pull it, they are there.

~~~
toomuchtodo
Publishing something online doesn’t revoke your copyright rights of that
content, especially if you weren’t asked to grant a non-exclusively license
for posting it.

~~~
thx4allthestuff
Sure, but let’s remember that copyright enforcement requires work. Are you
going to be the one who goes from car to car, peeling off illegal images of
Calvin and Hobbes? Out of the kindness of your heart? How’s that battle going
to work out for you?

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DoreenMichele
Some random, not organized thoughts on the issue:

On HN, you have two hours in which to edit your comment or even delete it if
no one has replied to it. If you aren't sure you want it to remain on the
permanent record, you can remove it at that time.

People who think they can erase what they said at will tend to behave poorly.
People who think they can change handles with impunity and fool everyone tend
to behave poorly. They think they can get away with it.

There are valuable things said in comments that people often want to look back
up.

Having a record helps prevent he-said-she-said style of arguments. People tend
to remember things differently from what actually happened. A written record
can show who actually said what.

If you say it once and someone is stalking you, they will remember it or even
keep a record of it. If there is no record of your remarks for you to
reference, you may well forget that x, y and z is out there.

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aaron695
> Wouldn’t it be more user friendly and privacy aware, allowing users to own
> their data?

Yes. It's a huge glaring oversight that a community so IT focused and that
often complains about "Facebook" and privacy can't even see when it's
happening.

But HN is not a utility like Facebook or Youtube, so you can argue, their
site, their rules.

But the irony is what is annoying. The idea of dogfooding privacy and digital
rights seems lost on HN.

PS Getting Shadowed banned will help stop getting yourself indexed at least.

PPS And the argument other sites might index HN anyway so it's ok to do is so
flawed it's delusional.

PPPS The argument that the old info is of value is also "horder" style
delusional. We need to stop this idea if absolutely everything is not kept (at
the cost of privacy) it matters.

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megamindbrian2
Thank you for the pleasantries gentleman. You've all responded in way to avoid
any risk of possibly wanting to delete your comments in the future. How very
diplomatic.

