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I wish we could petition y-combinator to allow them to allow a member to delete their Hacker News account and comments. This year for spring cleaning. I delete

I wish we could petition y-combinator to allow them to allow a member to delete their Hacker News account and comments. This year for spring cleaning. I deleted facebook, twitter, disqus, and thousands of comments I left on websites from over a decade ago. No archiving, just permanent deletion. It was the the most beautiful feeling. I felt free. Like a new person. Like there wasn't a part of me roaming around on the internet building up dust anymore. I know space is cheap and startups love data but we should study what all that does to a person emotionally. IF {Google Glass was suppose to keep us connected /BUT/ Google glass failed because we felt too connected /BECAUSE OF/ a human emotional desire to be left alone and let the mind relax.} THEN {Permanently archiving all your content is suppose to be a feature /BUT/ people are deleting their content /BECAUSE OF/ a human emotional desire to start over, clean up, and not leave things strewn about} That being said I really wish the Hacker News team would add a "DELETE ACCOUNT and all comments" feature. It's ironic that Y-Combinator's hacker news team stands up for so many positive internet movements yet feel that they can permanently keep all the content I generated. It is MY content after all. Do they own the copyright to MY words? The excuse has always been "it's a part of the public dialog". Everything is. Facebook, Twitter, & Disqus are also part of the public dialog. And they let me delete myself off of their services.

nkurz 10y ago
It's ironic that Y-Combinator's hacker news team stands up for so many positive internet movements yet feel that they can permanently keep all the content I generated. It is MY content after all. Do they own the copyright to MY words? The excuse has always been "it's a part of the public dialog". Am I understanding correctly that you asked (politely) by email to hn@ycombinator.com and they refused because "it's a part of the public dialog"? If so, I'm surprised and sympathetic. That response seems out of keeping with their generally accommodating approach.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- grzm 10y ago
  For reference, here's 'pg on the topic. It's from a while back, but as I understand it, it's still HN policy. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6813226 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6813226
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
remx 10y ago
Be careful of the Streisand Effect[0]. If you're scrubbing, we are looking! [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect
- ChrisNorstrom 10y ago
  I did't delete all my accounts because I've said something wrong. For the same reason people don't spring clean their home because they're getting rid of murder evidence. It's all about getting rid of the feeling that you and your thoughts from 20 years ago are all over the place. Little pieces of you are everywhere all over the internet. There's a dread that a user feels when they realize they don't remember what they said or who they were 10 years ago, but the whole internet does.
  - remx 10y ago
    That you've said something wrong is not always grounds for deletion > Little pieces of you are everywhere all over the internet This is why it's important to choose random nyms not attached to your main identity in any way, and to strive for anonymity. On HN, create a throwaway account and run your posts through something like anonymouth[0] if you're concerned with correlation attacks, or having your stylometric patterns uncovered... [0] https://github.com/psal/anonymouth https://github.com/psal/anonymouth
saurik 10y ago
If it makes you feel any better, I am pro Hacker News not allowing you to delete content and also extremely against Twitter letting you delete content. You saying something to me should be just as much a belonging of me as it is of you. Imagine a world where you could just arbitrarily retract all the emails you ever sent me, all the text messages you ever sent me, and all the letters you ever mailed me, just because you decided you wanted a "clean slate". (And while I am going to mention in passing that way way too often I see people be extremely mean to other people and then use content deletion to gaslight others into thinking "this user isn't so bad and I can't find any evidence of your assertions otherwise", I am going to give you the benefit of the doubt here and only want to mention this at all as my comment feels incomplete as an essay without this.) As for your copyright, the terms of service on websites deal with this, making certain that the content you provide is licensed to them (it has to be, or they wouldn't even be able to distribute it at all), and can spell out altered terms to avoid the problem of someone insisting their comments be deleted later. Further, even without extra clauses, I would argue for copyright purposes the "work" is the conversation, not your words, and so any lack of clear ownership should either argue for the entire conversation to be deleted due to one objector (which I think might be more likely by law, and what the terms of service are dealing with) or none of it to be able to be deleted until everyone agrees (which seems more clearly correct and what the terms should state if deletion is to be allowed); I can't come up with a scenario where it seems OK for you to delete just your part unilaterally. You decided to go to a public forum and contribute to a public conversation. The fact that you said something meant that some people replied to you and others upvoted you instead of saying the same thing, making your comments load bearing and structural. You going back later and deleting what you said changes the context of what I said. For a great (related, though slightly different) example, seek out the account on reddit whose name was something like "edited_to_make_you_look_dumb", which would later edit what they said to make all people who responded to it look really dumb. The two hour window on Hacker News feels about perfect to me, giving time to fix typos, make minor structure and formatting fixes, and even delete things while other people still have time to react and adjust, but then locking the content in for the later record when the content becomes part of the archives. When you go on a redact and purge, you are destroying something that not just that you created, but something that tons of other people took part in, and you are individually revising the historical record. One may as well argue "I also want everything I said in public comment at last week's City Council meeting redacted from the minutes and I want everything I said at last week's trial redacted from the transcript". This is how you should treat saying something in public as part of a public dialog: you said something in public, and now are part of the public record. Again: if you weren't prepared to say something in public, don't say it in public. And honestly, I would much rather you not contribute to a conversation if you are going to come around later asking for your part to be deleted. It is as if we are going to paint a mural together, but for some reason every five years you go around finding all the murals you helped with and take back all your paint. If you hadn't have been there at all, someone else might have helped more, and it isn't at all clear our mural would be drastically worse off: but you removing your paint destroys the mural and invalidates all of the work of everyone else involved. It wasn't "your paint", it was "our mural", and you shouldn't get to unilaterally alter it :/.

nkurz 10y ago

It's ironic that Y-Combinator's hacker news team stands up for so many positive internet movements yet feel that they can permanently keep all the content I generated. It is MY content after all. Do they own the copyright to MY words? The excuse has always been "it's a part of the public dialog". Am I understanding correctly that you asked (politely) by email to hn@ycombinator.com and they refused because "it's a part of the public dialog"? If so, I'm surprised and sympathetic. That response seems out of keeping with their generally accommodating approach.

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
grzm 10y ago
For reference, here's 'pg on the topic. It's from a while back, but as I understand it, it's still HN policy. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6813226 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6813226
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]

remx 10y ago

Be careful of the Streisand Effect[0]. If you're scrubbing, we are looking! [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect

ChrisNorstrom 10y ago
I did't delete all my accounts because I've said something wrong. For the same reason people don't spring clean their home because they're getting rid of murder evidence. It's all about getting rid of the feeling that you and your thoughts from 20 years ago are all over the place. Little pieces of you are everywhere all over the internet. There's a dread that a user feels when they realize they don't remember what they said or who they were 10 years ago, but the whole internet does.
- remx 10y ago
  That you've said something wrong is not always grounds for deletion > Little pieces of you are everywhere all over the internet This is why it's important to choose random nyms not attached to your main identity in any way, and to strive for anonymity. On HN, create a throwaway account and run your posts through something like anonymouth[0] if you're concerned with correlation attacks, or having your stylometric patterns uncovered... [0] https://github.com/psal/anonymouth https://github.com/psal/anonymouth

saurik 10y ago

If it makes you feel any better, I am pro Hacker News not allowing you to delete content and also extremely against Twitter letting you delete content. You saying something to me should be just as much a belonging of me as it is of you. Imagine a world where you could just arbitrarily retract all the emails you ever sent me, all the text messages you ever sent me, and all the letters you ever mailed me, just because you decided you wanted a "clean slate". (And while I am going to mention in passing that way way too often I see people be extremely mean to other people and then use content deletion to gaslight others into thinking "this user isn't so bad and I can't find any evidence of your assertions otherwise", I am going to give you the benefit of the doubt here and only want to mention this at all as my comment feels incomplete as an essay without this.) As for your copyright, the terms of service on websites deal with this, making certain that the content you provide is licensed to them (it has to be, or they wouldn't even be able to distribute it at all), and can spell out altered terms to avoid the problem of someone insisting their comments be deleted later. Further, even without extra clauses, I would argue for copyright purposes the "work" is the conversation, not your words, and so any lack of clear ownership should either argue for the entire conversation to be deleted due to one objector (which I think might be more likely by law, and what the terms of service are dealing with) or none of it to be able to be deleted until everyone agrees (which seems more clearly correct and what the terms should state if deletion is to be allowed); I can't come up with a scenario where it seems OK for you to delete just your part unilaterally. You decided to go to a public forum and contribute to a public conversation. The fact that you said something meant that some people replied to you and others upvoted you instead of saying the same thing, making your comments load bearing and structural. You going back later and deleting what you said changes the context of what I said. For a great (related, though slightly different) example, seek out the account on reddit whose name was something like "edited_to_make_you_look_dumb", which would later edit what they said to make all people who responded to it look really dumb. The two hour window on Hacker News feels about perfect to me, giving time to fix typos, make minor structure and formatting fixes, and even delete things while other people still have time to react and adjust, but then locking the content in for the later record when the content becomes part of the archives. When you go on a redact and purge, you are destroying something that not just that you created, but something that tons of other people took part in, and you are individually revising the historical record. One may as well argue "I also want everything I said in public comment at last week's City Council meeting redacted from the minutes and I want everything I said at last week's trial redacted from the transcript". This is how you should treat saying something in public as part of a public dialog: you said something in public, and now are part of the public record. Again: if you weren't prepared to say something in public, don't say it in public. And honestly, I would much rather you not contribute to a conversation if you are going to come around later asking for your part to be deleted. It is as if we are going to paint a mural together, but for some reason every five years you go around finding all the murals you helped with and take back all your paint. If you hadn't have been there at all, someone else might have helped more, and it isn't at all clear our mural would be drastically worse off: but you removing your paint destroys the mural and invalidates all of the work of everyone else involved. It wasn't "your paint", it was "our mural", and you shouldn't get to unilaterally alter it :/.