4 ms·

C'mon dude, 2017 was a totally different age where commanding your own bot army was as American as apple pie. Nice job, dang and friends.

dang 6y ago
I've personally helped over a thousand HN users with these sorts of requests. If you know how we can do a better job of that, I'd love to hear about it.
- arkitaip 6y ago
  What do you mean, these sorts of requests? If you mean deleting ownership data as is the case here - that's incredibly problematic and erodes trust in the site and you as a moderator.
  - dang 6y ago
    Privacy-related requests. Because we don't delete entire account histories [1, 2], we do other things to help. That might include randomizing a username or otherwise renaming the account, deleting or redacting sensitive information, reassigning particular posts to random usernames, and more. We try to find a fair balance between the different interests involved; individuals' need for protection, other commenters' interest in having the context of their comments preserved, the community interest in preserving its archive, and so on. I don't know what you mean by "incredibly problematic" etc., but if you think we should send such users away without recourse, that's an extreme position which a large proportion of the community would disagree with you about, especially as the pendulum of opinion has been swinging in the pro-privacy direction for years now. People frequently flame us for not doing more to delete history. Just to repeat what I've already said a couple times today, we don't make any distinction between users who make these sorts of requests. We try our best to be as consistent as possible, and whether they're a YC founder or not doesn't enter into it. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6813226 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6813226

dang 6y ago

I've personally helped over a thousand HN users with these sorts of requests. If you know how we can do a better job of that, I'd love to hear about it.

arkitaip 6y ago
What do you mean, these sorts of requests? If you mean deleting ownership data as is the case here - that's incredibly problematic and erodes trust in the site and you as a moderator.
- dang 6y ago
  Privacy-related requests. Because we don't delete entire account histories [1, 2], we do other things to help. That might include randomizing a username or otherwise renaming the account, deleting or redacting sensitive information, reassigning particular posts to random usernames, and more. We try to find a fair balance between the different interests involved; individuals' need for protection, other commenters' interest in having the context of their comments preserved, the community interest in preserving its archive, and so on. I don't know what you mean by "incredibly problematic" etc., but if you think we should send such users away without recourse, that's an extreme position which a large proportion of the community would disagree with you about, especially as the pendulum of opinion has been swinging in the pro-privacy direction for years now. People frequently flame us for not doing more to delete history. Just to repeat what I've already said a couple times today, we don't make any distinction between users who make these sorts of requests. We try our best to be as consistent as possible, and whether they're a YC founder or not doesn't enter into it. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6813226 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6813226