4 ms·

And it’s utterly useless, because your username and all comments get THE SAME random user ID. So once someone identifies that ID as you, it does nothing. When

And it’s utterly useless, because your username and all comments get THE SAME random user ID. So once someone identifies that ID as you, it does nothing. When I asked dang to do better after me and my family got death threats online, dang told me “tough luck” To this day thousands of my comments from my old username are on this site and trivially east to link to my real name. (Links to my website, etc)

altairprime 2mo ago
My first BBS handle was my full real name, and I barely managed to purge myself from DejaNews before Google bought it, so I empathize. The modern internet has been a severe learning experience and, given how many replicas of HN exist, the cat is well out of the bag. Teach others to be more careful, as I do.
- testing22321 2mo ago
  100% In 2012 when I started commenting here I had no idea it would lead to death threats and I’d have a two year old daughter.
  - vlovich123 2mo ago
    What kind of topics/comments did you make that got you death threats? Really want to make sure I stay away from such topics.
    - altairprime 2mo ago
      I've gotten several death threats for saying, at one point, that Destiny 2 year 1 was enjoyable because it pivoted the game away from loot-box gambling and FOMO addiction-driven player hours. No topic is truly safe from other sociopaths getting their jollies from writing anonymous hatemail. Yeah, sociopathy makes it difficult to feel something, I empathize — but that's no excuse for them abusing their people-toys. Imagine Sid as an adult on the Internet if he'd never been scared straight: it doesn't matter what topics you play with to a Sid, they're adaptable and will find ways to issue death threats for personal pleasure, on whatever topics they find in the sandbox. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kjKuMCJqdW4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kjKuMCJqdW4
    - testing22321 2mo ago
      I don’t want to doxx myself. There is a 100+ page forum thread of people betting on when I’m going to die. Redditors have commented in public “I wish he did die”, etc etc
      - cindyllm 2mo ago
        [dead]
tomhow 2mo ago
> dang told me “tough luck” He (nor I) would never write that or anything like it. What we always say is that we aim to find a compromise between a user's wish for their entire history to be erased and the rest of the community's expectation that when they participate in discussion threads, those threads will persist unadulterated into the future. We are always willing to redact PII and do other things to prevent people's real identities from being recognized from their HN activity. We help people with requests like this all the time. Edit: Now I can see the email in question, I can confirm that dang did not write “tough luck”. We were, and still are, happy to work with this user to redact material that reveals their identity or location from their old comments.
- testing22321 2mo ago
  Dang said exactly that. What’s your email, I’ll forward it. Changing my username to something random doesn’t help, because it’s trivial to find a comment or two that make it clear that random user ID is me, and then you can see all my comments. There are two much better approaches. 1. Make every single comment of mine a new random user if so they’re all separate. 2. Make the user id of everyone who has ever asked for deletion ”deleted-user” so my comments are lost in the sea. Either of those approaches would make it impossible to find all my old comments and know they all belong to the real me in the real world. Please help. Death threats are not fun, especially when you have a 2 year old daughter. There is a 100+ page forum thread of people betting on when I (real name, real person) am going to die. Just saying that somewhat Doxxes me.
  - tomhow 2mo ago
    My email is the same as Dan's. hn@ycombinator.com. Yes you can forward it and I'll read it straight away. We can't necessarily do the exact things you've asked, because it makes all the discussion threads you participated in incoherent. We can take reasonable steps to disassociate personally-identifying comments from others. > Please help. Death threats are not fun, especially when you have a 2 year old daughter. There is a 100+ page forum thread of people betting on when I (real name, real person) am going to die. Just saying that somewhat Doxxes me. This sounds terrible, and of course we don't want anything like that for you. It's just not clear (and I still haven't received an email from you so I can't look into the details of the case) how the actions you're specifying that we need to take on HN will fix this issue on some other website. I don't know any details other than the limited information you're sharing here. I can't find any emails about this matter linked to the username you're commenting from here.

altairprime 2mo ago

My first BBS handle was my full real name, and I barely managed to purge myself from DejaNews before Google bought it, so I empathize. The modern internet has been a severe learning experience and, given how many replicas of HN exist, the cat is well out of the bag. Teach others to be more careful, as I do.

testing22321 2mo ago
100% In 2012 when I started commenting here I had no idea it would lead to death threats and I’d have a two year old daughter.
- vlovich123 2mo ago
  What kind of topics/comments did you make that got you death threats? Really want to make sure I stay away from such topics.
  - altairprime 2mo ago
    I've gotten several death threats for saying, at one point, that Destiny 2 year 1 was enjoyable because it pivoted the game away from loot-box gambling and FOMO addiction-driven player hours. No topic is truly safe from other sociopaths getting their jollies from writing anonymous hatemail. Yeah, sociopathy makes it difficult to feel something, I empathize — but that's no excuse for them abusing their people-toys. Imagine Sid as an adult on the Internet if he'd never been scared straight: it doesn't matter what topics you play with to a Sid, they're adaptable and will find ways to issue death threats for personal pleasure, on whatever topics they find in the sandbox. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kjKuMCJqdW4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kjKuMCJqdW4
  - testing22321 2mo ago
    I don’t want to doxx myself. There is a 100+ page forum thread of people betting on when I’m going to die. Redditors have commented in public “I wish he did die”, etc etc
    - cindyllm 2mo ago
      [dead]

tomhow 2mo ago

> dang told me “tough luck” He (nor I) would never write that or anything like it. What we always say is that we aim to find a compromise between a user's wish for their entire history to be erased and the rest of the community's expectation that when they participate in discussion threads, those threads will persist unadulterated into the future. We are always willing to redact PII and do other things to prevent people's real identities from being recognized from their HN activity. We help people with requests like this all the time. Edit: Now I can see the email in question, I can confirm that dang did not write “tough luck”. We were, and still are, happy to work with this user to redact material that reveals their identity or location from their old comments.

testing22321 2mo ago
Dang said exactly that. What’s your email, I’ll forward it. Changing my username to something random doesn’t help, because it’s trivial to find a comment or two that make it clear that random user ID is me, and then you can see all my comments. There are two much better approaches. 1. Make every single comment of mine a new random user if so they’re all separate. 2. Make the user id of everyone who has ever asked for deletion ”deleted-user” so my comments are lost in the sea. Either of those approaches would make it impossible to find all my old comments and know they all belong to the real me in the real world. Please help. Death threats are not fun, especially when you have a 2 year old daughter. There is a 100+ page forum thread of people betting on when I (real name, real person) am going to die. Just saying that somewhat Doxxes me.
- tomhow 2mo ago
  My email is the same as Dan's. hn@ycombinator.com. Yes you can forward it and I'll read it straight away. We can't necessarily do the exact things you've asked, because it makes all the discussion threads you participated in incoherent. We can take reasonable steps to disassociate personally-identifying comments from others. > Please help. Death threats are not fun, especially when you have a 2 year old daughter. There is a 100+ page forum thread of people betting on when I (real name, real person) am going to die. Just saying that somewhat Doxxes me. This sounds terrible, and of course we don't want anything like that for you. It's just not clear (and I still haven't received an email from you so I can't look into the details of the case) how the actions you're specifying that we need to take on HN will fix this issue on some other website. I don't know any details other than the limited information you're sharing here. I can't find any emails about this matter linked to the username you're commenting from here.