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hacker news is a goldmine since you can't delete comments nor even delete your account. this site is a privacy nightmare, in a world where everyone is excited t

by bibimsz 7mo ago

hacker news is a goldmine since you can't delete comments nor even delete your account. this site is a privacy nightmare, in a world where everyone is excited to cancel and dox for unpopular opinions (on this site that means anything to the right of bernie sanders).

BenjiWiebe 7mo ago
Feel free to not post on here, if you're concerned about privacy.
b112 7mo ago
Have you read the FAQ? HN won't hang you out to dry.
- lysace 7mo ago
  They will offer to rename your account name to something random. They will not delete all your comments. They might agree to delete a very small number of comments. That does not help much in the profile-building/AI perspective. They should be transparent about this upfront, on the signup page, but I suppose that would hurt conversation stats. Cliché but true: On HN we are the product.
  - toomuchtodo 7mo ago
    I ingest, process, and archive the HN firehose. I know others do as well. Regardless of how one feels, once you put something on the Internet, any hope of control of that info is gone forever. Act accordingly. They are kind enough to make changes within some forum integrity tolerances, even though those changes are likely to help very little from an opsec perspective. Edit: my use case is building a graph for archiving every link ever posted on HN (posts and comments), if that’s relevant. The contents of HN comments have little value to me for my workflow, nor do I profile users.
    - lysace 7mo ago
      [flagged]
      - toomuchtodo 7mo ago
        That’s a shame, I don’t have any feelings about you and wish you well regardless.
        TimorousBestie 7mo ago
        [flagged]
        deleted 7mo ago
        [deleted]
        toomuchtodo 7mo ago
        You mispronounced genuinely polite. It is free to be so. Is that not allowed here when someone doesn’t have strong feelings? If you care here about here, you care too much imho, find something that matters to care about.
        TimorousBestie 7mo ago
        It's not polite to be condescending.
        toomuchtodo 7mo ago
        My comment was genuine. It is a genuine shame someone states they despise me with little additional context, and as I said, it doesn’t bother me and I do wish them well. Where was the condescending? Am I supposed to have strong feelings? Am I supposed to lash out? No, all unnecessary. “Be conservative in what you do, be liberal in what you accept from others". They are simply at a different point in their journey than I am. How else would you politely respond to someone who comments only “I know. I despise you”?
SilentM68 7mo ago
Correct!
raw_anon_1111 7mo ago
It could be worse, I have arguments from the 90s when I was on comp.sys.msc.advocacy
nunez 7mo ago
I actually appreciate this. I definitely panicked that one time I posted something spicy about a past employer using this handle and couldn't remove it, but forcing that accountability makes me think about what I say and whether it's worth posting it for everyone to see forever.

by bibimsz 7mo ago

BenjiWiebe 7mo ago

Feel free to not post on here, if you're concerned about privacy.

b112 7mo ago

Have you read the FAQ? HN won't hang you out to dry.

lysace 7mo ago
They will offer to rename your account name to something random. They will not delete all your comments. They might agree to delete a very small number of comments. That does not help much in the profile-building/AI perspective. They should be transparent about this upfront, on the signup page, but I suppose that would hurt conversation stats. Cliché but true: On HN we are the product.
- toomuchtodo 7mo ago
  I ingest, process, and archive the HN firehose. I know others do as well. Regardless of how one feels, once you put something on the Internet, any hope of control of that info is gone forever. Act accordingly. They are kind enough to make changes within some forum integrity tolerances, even though those changes are likely to help very little from an opsec perspective. Edit: my use case is building a graph for archiving every link ever posted on HN (posts and comments), if that’s relevant. The contents of HN comments have little value to me for my workflow, nor do I profile users.
  - lysace 7mo ago
    [flagged]
    - toomuchtodo 7mo ago
      That’s a shame, I don’t have any feelings about you and wish you well regardless.
      - TimorousBestie 7mo ago
        [flagged]
        deleted 7mo ago
        [deleted]
        toomuchtodo 7mo ago
        You mispronounced genuinely polite. It is free to be so. Is that not allowed here when someone doesn’t have strong feelings? If you care here about here, you care too much imho, find something that matters to care about.
        TimorousBestie 7mo ago
        It's not polite to be condescending.
        toomuchtodo 7mo ago
        My comment was genuine. It is a genuine shame someone states they despise me with little additional context, and as I said, it doesn’t bother me and I do wish them well. Where was the condescending? Am I supposed to have strong feelings? Am I supposed to lash out? No, all unnecessary. “Be conservative in what you do, be liberal in what you accept from others". They are simply at a different point in their journey than I am. How else would you politely respond to someone who comments only “I know. I despise you”?

SilentM68 7mo ago

Correct!

raw_anon_1111 7mo ago

It could be worse, I have arguments from the 90s when I was on comp.sys.msc.advocacy

nunez 7mo ago

I actually appreciate this. I definitely panicked that one time I posted something spicy about a past employer using this handle and couldn't remove it, but forcing that accountability makes me think about what I say and whether it's worth posting it for everyone to see forever.