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Unfortunate, given the recent reports of social media accounts being inspected by customs agents. Something you said years ago (and, hypothetically, no longer b

Unfortunate, given the recent reports of social media accounts being inspected by customs agents. Something you said years ago (and, hypothetically, no longer believe in) might get you in trouble and you have no way of purging that record. It ultimately will have a chilling effect on what you can say on the site.

reaperducer 7y ago
Unfortunate, given the recent reports of social media accounts being inspected by customs agents. And bosses. And landlords. And insurance companies. And credit reporting agencies. And police departments. And schools. And...
- journalctl 7y ago
  It’s fine. You just have to make sure you never say anything that could ever possibly be misinterpreted or used against you by anyone ever for the rest of your or your children’s lives. How hard could that be?
  - reaperducer 7y ago
    or your children’s lives That's the even scarier part. There was a NASCAR driver a couple of years ago who lost his sponsorship because of something his father said before the driver was even born.
    - gregknicholson 7y ago
      The sponsors are a business out to make money, not to make sound ethical decisions. The way capitalism is supposed to work is that consumers (the capitalist synonym for “people”) avoid companies they don't like for whatever reason. The problem is this assumes consumers are reasonable. The sponsor has little to gain by doing the ethically correct but publicly outrageous thing and standing by the innocent person, because there are more people in the angry mob than there are who would reward the sponsor for their sound ethics.
      - dragonwriter 7y ago
        > The way capitalism is supposed to work is that consumers (the capitalist synonym for “people”) “Consumer” isn't a synonym for people in capitalism, it's an economic role that all people assume in capitalism, but not in all interactions. (“Laborer” and “capitalist” are similar, though slightly less universal, roles; because they are less universal, the degree to which one tends to assume them also define economic classes in capitalism.)
    - somecontext 7y ago
      > There was a NASCAR driver a couple of years ago who lost his sponsorship because of something his father said before the driver was even born. In case anyone was curious, this appears to be referring to Conor Daly, as described in the following article: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/24/sports/autoracing/conor-daly-nascar-racial-slur.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/24/sports/autoracing/conor-d...
  - el_dev_hell 7y ago
    I read this as /s but it looks like: a) I'm wrong and this is literal b) The crowd is wrong
    - journalctl 7y ago
      I was being mildly sarcastic to make a point, which is: telling people to police their speech and to make sure they don’t say anything they might regret isn’t a workable solution, because it’s impossible to predict the future. And in the court of public opinion, it doesn’t matter if you’ve since changed your mind five, ten, 20, 30+ years later, people will still judge you for the tiniest sin. "Be careful what you say" is a lazy cop-out, honestly.
      - 4ec0755f5522 7y ago
        Also, laws change, governments change, social mores change. What is safe or acceptable to say today may not be so years from now.
  - 9nGQluzmnq3M 7y ago
    If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him. - Cardinal Richelieu (supposedly)
  - JohnFen 7y ago
    > How hard could that be? I do three things that make it pretty easy: I avoid nearly all social media in the first place; when I do interact online (such as here), I always use a pseudonym; and if any company or governmental body asks for my social media credentials, I tell them I don't have any (which happens to be 99% true).
- Throw_Away_4382 7y ago
  Just don't use your real name.
polskibus 7y ago
How does this work wrt GDPR?
- peterwwillis 7y ago
  IANAL, but: if you are an entity that provides free services to citizens of the EU, and you process PII (e-mail address), you are subject to the GDPR's rules. "Monitoring" is also a qualifier for whether the rules apply, so it could be HN will simply say this disqualifies them, and require someone to take them to court (which YC can afford). But HN does install cookies on your computer, so I think you could still win such a case. https://ec.europa.eu/info/law/law-topic/data-protection/reform/rules-business-and-organisations/application-regulation/who-does-data-protection-law-apply_en https://ec.europa.eu/info/law/law-topic/data-protection/refo...
  - msla 7y ago
    > IANAL, but: if you are an entity that provides free services to citizens of the EU, and you process PII (e-mail address), you are subject to the GDPR's rules. Only to the extent the EU can hurt you. Do you think every company is subject to US law?
comboy 7y ago
Everything you write here will be saved whether it is stored or HN servers or not. That's just the reality. Some rulings may stop wayback machine but then there still will be tons of archivers accessible through dark web. Text is really cheap to store and that's moderated text where somebody else is already taking care of it not being just a bunch of random characters or somebody's else encrypted backup. It's just that regulations and our culture haven't yet fully catch up.
msla 7y ago
The only solution is to not use accounts which can be easily tracked back to you, and not post information which can be easily tracked back, either. Which used to be common practice. When and why did this change? With Facebook demanding that people link their offline social circle into its virtual one? Well, you can go back to Usenet, and say that "respectable" people weren't pseudonymous there by and large, but that, one, wasn't universal, and, two, wasn't the practice of the 1990s Web fora which postdated Usenet's high period but predated Facebook. There weren't too many real names on high-period Slashdot, for example.

reaperducer 7y ago

Unfortunate, given the recent reports of social media accounts being inspected by customs agents. And bosses. And landlords. And insurance companies. And credit reporting agencies. And police departments. And schools. And...

journalctl 7y ago
It’s fine. You just have to make sure you never say anything that could ever possibly be misinterpreted or used against you by anyone ever for the rest of your or your children’s lives. How hard could that be?
- reaperducer 7y ago
  or your children’s lives That's the even scarier part. There was a NASCAR driver a couple of years ago who lost his sponsorship because of something his father said before the driver was even born.
  - gregknicholson 7y ago
    The sponsors are a business out to make money, not to make sound ethical decisions. The way capitalism is supposed to work is that consumers (the capitalist synonym for “people”) avoid companies they don't like for whatever reason. The problem is this assumes consumers are reasonable. The sponsor has little to gain by doing the ethically correct but publicly outrageous thing and standing by the innocent person, because there are more people in the angry mob than there are who would reward the sponsor for their sound ethics.
    - dragonwriter 7y ago
      > The way capitalism is supposed to work is that consumers (the capitalist synonym for “people”) “Consumer” isn't a synonym for people in capitalism, it's an economic role that all people assume in capitalism, but not in all interactions. (“Laborer” and “capitalist” are similar, though slightly less universal, roles; because they are less universal, the degree to which one tends to assume them also define economic classes in capitalism.)
  - somecontext 7y ago
    > There was a NASCAR driver a couple of years ago who lost his sponsorship because of something his father said before the driver was even born. In case anyone was curious, this appears to be referring to Conor Daly, as described in the following article: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/24/sports/autoracing/conor-daly-nascar-racial-slur.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/24/sports/autoracing/conor-d...
- el_dev_hell 7y ago
  I read this as /s but it looks like: a) I'm wrong and this is literal b) The crowd is wrong
  - journalctl 7y ago
    I was being mildly sarcastic to make a point, which is: telling people to police their speech and to make sure they don’t say anything they might regret isn’t a workable solution, because it’s impossible to predict the future. And in the court of public opinion, it doesn’t matter if you’ve since changed your mind five, ten, 20, 30+ years later, people will still judge you for the tiniest sin. "Be careful what you say" is a lazy cop-out, honestly.
    - 4ec0755f5522 7y ago
      Also, laws change, governments change, social mores change. What is safe or acceptable to say today may not be so years from now.
- 9nGQluzmnq3M 7y ago
  If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him. - Cardinal Richelieu (supposedly)
- JohnFen 7y ago
  > How hard could that be? I do three things that make it pretty easy: I avoid nearly all social media in the first place; when I do interact online (such as here), I always use a pseudonym; and if any company or governmental body asks for my social media credentials, I tell them I don't have any (which happens to be 99% true).
Throw_Away_4382 7y ago
Just don't use your real name.

polskibus 7y ago

How does this work wrt GDPR?

peterwwillis 7y ago
IANAL, but: if you are an entity that provides free services to citizens of the EU, and you process PII (e-mail address), you are subject to the GDPR's rules. "Monitoring" is also a qualifier for whether the rules apply, so it could be HN will simply say this disqualifies them, and require someone to take them to court (which YC can afford). But HN does install cookies on your computer, so I think you could still win such a case. https://ec.europa.eu/info/law/law-topic/data-protection/reform/rules-business-and-organisations/application-regulation/who-does-data-protection-law-apply_en https://ec.europa.eu/info/law/law-topic/data-protection/refo...
- msla 7y ago
  > IANAL, but: if you are an entity that provides free services to citizens of the EU, and you process PII (e-mail address), you are subject to the GDPR's rules. Only to the extent the EU can hurt you. Do you think every company is subject to US law?

comboy 7y ago

Everything you write here will be saved whether it is stored or HN servers or not. That's just the reality. Some rulings may stop wayback machine but then there still will be tons of archivers accessible through dark web. Text is really cheap to store and that's moderated text where somebody else is already taking care of it not being just a bunch of random characters or somebody's else encrypted backup. It's just that regulations and our culture haven't yet fully catch up.

msla 7y ago

The only solution is to not use accounts which can be easily tracked back to you, and not post information which can be easily tracked back, either. Which used to be common practice. When and why did this change? With Facebook demanding that people link their offline social circle into its virtual one? Well, you can go back to Usenet, and say that "respectable" people weren't pseudonymous there by and large, but that, one, wasn't universal, and, two, wasn't the practice of the 1990s Web fora which postdated Usenet's high period but predated Facebook. There weren't too many real names on high-period Slashdot, for example.