8 ms·
*.ycombinator.com Terms of Use
- crazypython 5y agoTheir old terms of use: "When you click on a link, our server will send you the corresponding page." I wonder what changed and made them add the new terms of use. [0]: http://web.archive.org/web/20141020194316/https://www.ycombinator.com/legal http://web.archive.org/web/20141020194316/https://www.ycombi...
- quickthrowman 5y ago> I wonder what changed and made them add the new terms of use. Probably a lawsuit, mandatory arbitration avoids lawsuits. I’m just guessing, I have no concrete info.
- nevir 5y ago> I wonder what changed and made them add the new terms of use. CCPA's April enforcement deadline, most likely.
- amznthrwaway 5y agoMaybe it’s related to their decision to turn YCombinator into a “safe space” for very specific people; or the way YC takes steps to silence some voices while hiding the fact that they’re silenced. These are deliberate decisions that cause the site to work very differently than naive people envision it from working. I’m not crazy enough to sue over that shit; but somebody might be.
- dang 5y agoIt's hard to tell what these dark insinuations refer to, but there's nothing (that I'm aware of) that hasn't been fully explained many times—nor are there any questions we don't answer. If you're talking about shadowbanning, for example, there's plenty of explanation at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23686672 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23686672 and the links back from there.
- amznthrwaway 5y agoI have multiple accounts that you (or somebody) hell-banned, with real genuine content, and the described process was not followed. Thank you for, once again, proving that you’re a low integrity individual.
- dang 5y agoIf you're going to make a claim like that, you should supply links so readers can make up their own minds. When people don't do that, it's usually because the real story is rather different than they're making out. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20%22make%20up%20their%20own%20minds%22%20link&sort=byDate&type=story&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... I may be mistaken, but I believe that with your previous accounts that we were aware of, the "real genuine content" was pretty trollish. When users keep creating accounts like that, we stop telling them that we're banning them, because they know perfectly well what they're doing, as do we. This is all explained at the links I mentioned upthread. We do make mistakes, and when we find out about them, we apologize and try to correct things. But shadowbanning accounts that are innocently posting "real genuine content" isn't anything we normally do.
- dec0dedab0de 5y agoI don't agree with the post you're replying to, but before you took over it was much more common to be shadow banned for a silly reason. For example my first account, which admittedly didn't have top quality content, hardly did anything worthy of a ban by today's standards. https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=d3c0d3dab0d3 https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=d3c0d3dab0d3
- dang 5y agoFor sure, the site worked differently prior to 2014. I'm talking about how we've operated since then. 7 years is an internet eternity! Though I suppose I should be thankful that people are still talking about things that happened in 2013 because it means they still care. HN was moderated differently in the early years because pg was running it in whatever hours he could eke out between running YC and having small children. That was a totally different situation than now. It's a miracle the site stayed up at all. It's not clear why that account was banned, unless it was related to other accounts that did bad things? (You don't have to answer that.) In any case, I've unbanned it now and restored the affected posts, in case that's helpful.
- RuffleGordon 5y agoCan someone explain the legalese. I'm having a hard time deciphering it
- asdfasgasdgasdg 5y agoWhich part specifically is confusing you? Like, it's a long TOU, so I don't think anyone's gonna write down the whole explanation here, but let's pick one paragraph: > Commercial Use: Unless otherwise expressly authorized herein or in the Site, you agree not to display, distribute, license, perform, publish, reproduce, duplicate, copy, create derivative works from, modify, sell, resell, exploit, transfer or upload for any commercial purposes, any portion of the Site, use of the Site, or access to the Site. The buying, exchanging, selling and/or promotion (commercial or otherwise) of upvotes, comments, submissions, accounts (or any aspect of your account or any other account), karma, and/or content is strictly prohibited, constitutes a material breach of these Terms of Use, and could result in legal liability. This means: don't use the content of the site to make derivative works to make money, otherwise we might sue you. It's mostly straightforward stuff like that. If there's a specific part that you're having trouble with, I'm happy to have a crack at explaining it.
- brighton36 5y agoWhy anyone has the authority to compel public expectations based on the arrangement of bits.
- asdfasgasdgasdg 5y agoNot to get too reductive or anything, but the reasons are very similar to why people have the authority to compel public expectations based on the arrangement of atoms (e.g. you aren't allowed to stab me, etc.). Namely: those with the power to enforce those rules think it's a good idea to do so, and the public continues to support that configuration of the legal system.
- brighton36 5y ago
- brighton36 5y ago'Intellectual property' is mostly just postmodern nonsense...
- opnitro 5y agoI'm not sure postmodern is the right word to use here? It's pretty standard liberalism in terms of creating/enforcing property rights over things.
- brighton36 5y agoInformation is not property. That's the postmodern nonsense. Property takes up space. These are mostly thoughts being controlled under the rubric of property
- reom_tobit 5y agoWhether or not you agree with the notion of intellectual property. It isn’t a postmodern concept. https://txpatentattorney.com/blog/the-history-of-intellectual-property/ https://txpatentattorney.com/blog/the-history-of-intellectua...
- brighton36 5y agoYou'll notice though, that the term 'intellectual property' wasn't invented until the (roughly) mid 20th century. After which time, copyright and patent law were affixed to this construction. There was no intellectual property, prior. I would politely suggest that this piece is a post-hoc justification, based on the ignorance of this arrangement. (Because the author, like all humans, is morally ambiguous. Intellectual property was an assumption going into this piece) Copy rights, are not property. Patents are monopoly licenses.
- CheezeIt 5y agoMaybe it’s modern nonsense.
- fatsdomino001 5y agoWhat’s the best practice for making a Terms & Conditions or Privacy Policy page these days? Eg if you start up a social network like hackernews
- Dma54rhs 5y agoLawyer obviously is the best practice.
- paxys 5y agoWho will copy paste it from another site..
- fatsdomino001 5y agoIs there a specific kind of lawyer that is best suited for this work?
- mimixco 5y agoWe run our SaaS on Digital Ocean's backend and their TOS says that anything we allow onto their boxes has to comply, so that means our customers have to comply with DO's TOS. To handle this, we link to theirs in place of a custom one.
- fatsdomino001 5y agoI like this. I imagine it’s roughly similar eg using heroku?
- mimixco 5y agoIt might be. Worth checking into their TOS to see if your customers must comply. I'd say, "probably."
- eganist 5y agoThe first meaningful Terms of Use seems to have gone live Feb 17, 2017. After that, January 1, 2020, and then January 15, 2021. Pre-2017: http://web.archive.org/web/20161229045611/http://www.ycombinator.com/legal/ http://web.archive.org/web/20161229045611/http://www.ycombin... 2017: http://web.archive.org/web/20170303015020/http://www.ycombinator.com/legal/ http://web.archive.org/web/20170303015020/http://www.ycombin... 2020: http://web.archive.org/web/20200130013739/https://www.ycombinator.com/legal/ http://web.archive.org/web/20200130013739/https://www.ycombi... 2021: http://web.archive.org/web/20210301143626/http://www.ycombinator.com/legal/ http://web.archive.org/web/20210301143626/http://www.ycombin... (current linked) I'm still doing diffs. Edit: 2021 (left) v. 2020 (right) diff: https://imgur.com/a/8LKXKNs https://imgur.com/a/8LKXKNs 2020 (left) v. 2017 (right): Privacy policy was significantly reworked, not the biggest surprise considering CCPA, but n++ is choking on the compare. Some interesting TOU changes though: https://imgur.com/a/q4zzm8G https://imgur.com/a/q4zzm8G
- alexeldeib 5y agoThis comment made me notice a small typo in the 2017 version fixed in 2020 > h. Future Changes to Arbitration Agreemen Someone forgot to dot their Is and cross their Ts :)
- dooglius 5y agoUnless it's changed, I remember that there's no agree checkbox on the sign-ups page. How enforceable is this?
- soarfourmore 5y agoStrange that it mentions CCPA but not GDPR. Is HackerNews GDPR compliant? What are they tracking/storing?
- marcinzm 5y agoI'm guessing being a US organization they don't care about GDPR just as they don't care about adhering to Chinese internet standard laws.
- yreg 5y agoIf you serve EU customers, you have to comply with GDPR no matter the jurisdiction you are based in. Unless you are prepared to completely sever business ties with Europe.
- AlexandrB 5y agoWhat business ties exist in this case? There's no product being sold nor any ads.
- yreg 5y agoY Combinator's main business is seeding thousands of private companies many of which do their business in Europe.
- tzs 5y agoAccording to Article 3 of GDPR, it applies to processing if any of three conditions are met: 1. Processing that takes place in the context of processors and controllers that are in the Union, regardless of whether or not the processing itself takes place in the Union. 2. Processing the data of subjects who are in the Union by controllers or processors who are not in the Union if the processing is related to offering goods or services to such subjects in the Union or the processing is related to monitoring the behavior of such subjects that takes place in the Union. 3. Processing of personal data by a controller not established in the Union, but in a place where Member State law applies by virtue of public international law. If none of those cover an entity, that entity's processing is not covered by GDPR. #2 would probably be the only relevant one for HN. Is HN offering goods or services to subjects in the Union? Sure, people in the Union can access HN and even make accounts. But that might not be enough. One of the recitals for Article 3 elaborates: > In order to determine whether such a controller or processor is offering goods or services to data subjects who are in the Union, it should be ascertained whether it is apparent that the controller or processor envisages offering services to data subjects in one or more Member States in the Union. Whereas the mere accessibility of the controller’s, processor’s or an intermediary’s website in the Union, of an email address or of other contact details, or the use of a language generally used in the third country where the controller is established, is insufficient to ascertain such intention, factors such as the use of a language or a currency generally used in one or more Member States with the possibility of ordering goods and services in that other language, or the mentioning of customers or users who are in the Union, may make it apparent that the controller envisages offering goods or services to data subjects in the Union. Does HN envisage offering services in the Union, or is it simply a site that happens to work when accessed from the Union but was not envisaged to do so? Another recital elaborates on the monitoring of behavior of subjects in the Union: > In order to determine whether a processing activity can be considered to monitor the behaviour of data subjects, it should be ascertained whether natural persons are tracked on the internet including potential subsequent use of personal data processing techniques which consist of profiling a natural person, particularly in order to take decisions concerning her or him or for analysing or predicting her or his personal preferences, behaviours and attitudes. HN seems to collect minimal data. It might not rise to the level of monitoring that would be needed to count as monitoring behaviour.
- rcMgD2BwE72F 5y agoDo they comply with GDPR now? Here's what HN admins were responding last yeat to requests to have your account deleted (article 17 of the GDPR): >Our understanding based on the analysis done by YC's legal team is that Hacker News does not fall under the GDPR, so for the time being we're sticking with the approach of not deleting account histories wholesale but helping with privacy concerns in any other way we can. The problem with deleting entire histories is that it guts the threads the account had participated in, which is unfair to the other users who posted.
- drdaeman 5y ago> You agree to not use the Site to: [...] > advertise or offer to sell or buy any goods or services for any business purpose that is not specifically authorized; Heh. I'd say this part is disconnected from reality. A very significant number of posts and comments recommend aka advertise (in one way or another) various goods or services. Typically third-party goods or services ("I use this"), sometimes first-party ("we made this"). And this is what brings huge value to the website. I get it, ToS are about spam, but it's probably impossible to discern good and bad advertising in legal terms.
- eganist 5y agoSpecific authorization is probably fulfilled here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html > Please don't use HN primarily for promotion. It's ok to post your own stuff occasionally, but the primary use of the site should be for curiosity. Emphasis mine. --- Edit: It gets more interesting with the WhoIsHiring threads. I haven't seen specific authorizations for them, but considering HN staff have commented in said threads in the past (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26306206 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26306206), this may also be specifically authorized. (I don't know who owns WhoIsHiring)
- MattGaiser 5y agoWhoIsHiring is a Hacker News bot. Y Combinator created it, so advertising there would plausibly count as explicit authorization.
- rincebrain 5y agoGiven the link to WhoIsHiring posts on https://news.ycombinator.com/lists https://news.ycombinator.com/lists , I'm going to guess they qualify as not unauthorized at this point.
- smnrchrds 5y agoThey allow only California residents to delete their personal information, and they may require proof of residency to initiate a deletion. I am disappointed.
- dang 5y agoI don't speak legalese, but I can tell you what the actual practice is. For YC data (e.g. applications to YC, participation in Startup School, Work at a Startup, and so on), we delete people's data when they ask us to. For HN data, it's more complicated—we try not to delete posts that got replies, because that's unfair to the commenters who replied, and so on. But we have a lot of tricks to help people in more precise ways than wholesale deletion, and we help people with such requests every day. This is in HN's FAQ: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html. There's more explanation at these links from yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26962860 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26962860 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26959559 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26959559 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26959675 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26959675
- modsmustgo 5y agoWhat defines a "criminal enterprise"? Like any corporation that has ever committed a crime?