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It's not really clear to me HN comments are even covered under GDPR's right to deletion. The GDPR doesn't guarantee wholesale deletion of every bit of informati
by arp242 3y ago
It's not really clear to me HN comments are even covered under GDPR's right to deletion. The GDPR doesn't guarantee wholesale deletion of every bit of information you've posted on the internet (by that standard you can also demand some open source project scrubs your name and email from the git history, and all comments on the issue tracker/PR reviews).
Accounts can be renamed, and specific comments can be deleted, which seems to cover GDPR in my reading of it.
- crote 3y agoThe largest tech website and discussion platform in The Netherlands, tweakers.net, uses a similar approach. They restrict the time a message can be edited, and after the timer expires you can't delete it anymore. They do allow you to delete your account but your messages will still remain with a numeric "Anonymous User #1234" identifier. Such an approach is justified using the exceptions under Article 17.3.A, which states that "[The right to erasure] shall not apply to the extent that processing is necessary for exercising the right of freedom of expression and information". They argue that deleting comments has a significant negative impact on the discussion as a whole, and it would be a violation of the other users' freedom of expression. I'm not sure I completely agree with this interpretation, but as far as I am aware it hasn't been tested in court yet so who knows.
- ReflectedImage 3y agoYes but of course you must go through every comment the user made and check for personally identifying information and remove it.