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Ask HN: Will HN allow account and comment deletions?
Ask HN: With the GDPR coming, the 'right to be forgotten', and the FB privacy flare-up, will HN ever allow comment and account deletions?
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
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- agotterer 9y agoPrevious HN thread - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16661323 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16661323
- zaroth 9y agoI 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 9y agoMost 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 9y agoComments have personally identifiable information in too, it really doesn't sound like it's enough.
- x0x0 9y agohow many comments list their own name? Very very few. Other comments may refer to you but you have no gdpr privacy rights over that.
- throwaway4719 9y agoI assume you were being sarcastic, but in this aspect, I actually think the GDPR is great. At least for Europeans. (The fact that people will find a way of disagreeing about pretty much anything online is a whole other matter.)
- stagbeetle 9y ago> I read the whole thing and all I came away with is that basically no one has a fucking clue Careful! You may be onto something here.
- grzm 9y agoThanks for posting this. Also note that it's very recent (4 days ago).
- throwaway4719 9y agoI posted that (I'm vgf). My account was rate-limited and the post was very clearly artificially pushed to the second page, then the third. Just minutes before that it had started to climb up the front page relatively quickly.
- throwaway413 9y agoWhat’s the point of your throwaway now?
- throwaway4719 9y agoTo be able to post at all. I've given up on the vgf handle. And on HN as well, to be honest.
- dang 9y agoYour account was rate limited before you posted that, and the submission dropped in rank because it set off the flamewar detector. Moderators didn't touch it. You have a long history of—among other things—breaking the HN guidelines, ignoring our requests and warnings to stop, getting banned, creating new accounts, and posting false statements about HN moderation. I mention that because readers have a right to hear true statements about this and not just the false ones. I don't mind being criticized for mistakes we actually make—it's good to be, so we can correct them—but spreading outright lies destroys this community by undermining its confidence in the site. That's not ok. Since you obviously don't want to use HN as intended, I've banned several of your accounts.
- legohead 9y agoIt 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 9y agoIs there a nice summary of how to do this available? Or, if not, would you mind posting a few pointers?
- legohead 9y agoIt'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 9y ago> 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 9y agoThat'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).
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- kgwxd 9y agoI'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.
- the-dude 9y agoI have been partially doxed here and HN refuses to remove the comment.
- ovao 9y agoFor those who are as confused as I was, "doxing" is the practice of researching and broadcasting private or identifiable information about an individual or organization.
- jacquesm 9y agoIf 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.
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- drewmol 9y ago>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.
- icedchai 9y agoThe "methods" are pretty simple: view a profile, look at the web site mentioned there, google some of the info. Most people should simply use different usernames on different sites.
- et-al 9y agoIf a person has a personal domain registered, a whois search may offer up information (which may or may not be accurate). Most registrars will now hide your info for an additional fee.
- drewmol 9y ago
- jacquesm 9y agoYou 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.
- mancerayder 9y agoYou 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).
- zombieprocesses 9y agoAlso, 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.
- et-al 9y agoThis 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 9y ago> Facebook changed everything by encouraging people to match their online accounts to real names s/encouraging/requiring/
- goshx 9y agoYou can still create an account with a fake name if you like. They don't have anything to enforce it.
- WorldMaker 9y agoThey enforce it when reported. Who cares to report it, though?
- the-dude 9y ago> Facebook changed everything by encouraging people to match their online accounts to real names Recent revelations shed a whole new light on this 'encouragement'.
- matte_black 9y agoHonestly, 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.
- existencebox 9y agoI couldn't agree more. What's frustrating is that we seem to be getting the worst of both worlds too; privacy in the face of archeology and public memory, but complete lack thereof in the face of nation states and many companies. (yes yes "gdpr will solve this" that's another long and contentious discussion that I'm putting off for now.) As et-al said in a sister comment, in "ye-olde-internet" pseudonyms and some degree of anonymity was de-facto. When the real-names policies first started coming out, there was real pushback. Nowadays I see much more sentiment towards having some central authorities to protect users, and it worries me as, among other things, a loss of agency and empowerment to protect onesself. (do not read this to say that there are spaces regulation isn't important; but pushing the line too far and normalizing a lack of awareness and ownership over your situation is a real risk if the pendulum swings too far)
- rwhitman 9y agoIsn't the entire history of communication archeology-hostile?
- matte_black 9y agoYes, but the internet is not purely communication, it's also a store of knowledge. You can find a lot of good information from threads and discussions people have had in the past. Also, even records of mundane communication people had throughout thousands of years in the past is of great value to archaeologists in learning about how people lived their lives and how different events affected them. Since we live in a time where we have the privilege of rediscovering the past in greater detail than ever, we should have the introspection to be mindful of what we are leaving for our future as well.
- eksemplar 9y agoThe 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.
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- the-dude 9y agoThread has been buried from about 2300 CET.