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> I believe users should always be in control of their data Total control? Does the person who made this submission have the right to delete it even though by
by buro9 13y ago
> I believe users should always be in control of their data
Total control?
Does the person who made this submission have the right to delete it even though by doing so they delete your data?
Do other users have the right to delete your data?
Total control for you means denying someone else the right to delete this conversation.
Do other users have the right to redefine your data by changing the context surrounding it?
If you posted "I vote for this too" to some very sound proposal to allow changing of usernames, and then the original author changed the proposal to "Bestiality should be legal", thus suggesting to the world you support such a thing... did the other user have right through the control of their data to substantial modify the context of your data? To the point that the other person could create a personal liability for you?
Where do the lines start and end, if your content can stand alone then the issues are not there. Almost everything in a forum is a discussion, conversation, argument, debate, an interaction depending on the context of other people's content. The minutes of those things are a record of fact, that someone said something and someone else replied and said something else. Content on a forum is never detached from the content of others.
I agree you have the right to your data, but disagree someone has the right to modify those minutes, those records of fact, to impact the data of other people in any way.
A forum is a collective work, and the rules for a collective work are different to the rules of a personal work.
- cliveowen 13y agoDeleting a post doesn't mean the whole conversation should be deleted (reddit works this way), and the meaning of following posts can be extrapolated from the context.
- gabemart 13y agoReddit gives users near total control over their comments and submissions. Comments can be manually edited or deleted months or years after submission. Self-posts can also be edited at any time. Posted submissions can be deleted, which replaces the submitter's name with [deleted] and prevents the submission from showing up in any public list of posts (it will still show up at the submission permalink). The only concession is that posts edited at any time beyond a few minutes from their posting appear with an asterisk. Deleting an account on Reddit doesn't delete every comment and submission, but it does replace the username on every comment and submission with [deleted]. This isn't perfect from the user's perspective, but it's a lot better than most forums. It anonymizes any post or submission that doesn't directly leak personally identifying information by itself, which for most users will a large majority or even 100% of submissions. I think allowing users to delete accounts and have their usernames replaced with [deleted] on every comment and submission is a decent compromise between respecting privacy for the user and maintaining the integrity of discussion for the community. I would feel much more comfortable using HN if it had such a system, although my revealed preference is that I care more about posting to HN than I do about the ability to retroactive delete my data.
- buro9 13y ago> Reddit gives users near total control over their comments and submissions. Comments can be manually edited or deleted months or years after submission. Self-posts can also be edited at any time. Posted submissions can be deleted, which replaces the submitter's name with [deleted] and prevents the submission from showing up in any public list of posts (it will still show up at the submission permalink). The only concession is that posts edited at any time beyond a few minutes from their posting appear with an asterisk. Has reddit not had users who flounced and programmatically nuked every submission they've ever made? Whilst this wouldn't affect Reddit as a whole, it could lay waste to a subreddit if the person was one of the top posters within a very small area. This is largely why most forums operate a "edit within a reasonable time" policy. Though obviously there are benefits to being able to cache long-term too. Can you imagine the impact on HN if patio11 went through a bout of depression and decided to nuke every comment he'd ever made? The impact to the collective work would be substantial.
- dreamfactory2 13y agoa) You have copyright on your work. That means you own and retain the right to distribute it or not, and importantly this includes a notion of moral rights. b) A forum is not a collective work; it is a privately owned publishing vehicle which may be selectively edited or change hands at any point.
- KC8ZKF 13y agoc) You sign terms of service granting rights to the publishing vehicle.
- dreamfactory2 13y agogood point, though I believe publishing contracts need limited terms to be enforceable and that you don't grant reproduction/distribution rights in perpetuity
- eik3_de 13y agoI agree that posts shouldn't be deleted. But should the user be able to anonymize his posts when he deletes his account? Such that the username 'JohnDoe' is replaced with 'DeletedUser20140405.42'. IMO that doesn't destroy the readability of the conversation.
- baby 13y agoI see that sometimes in reddit, the pseudo says [deleted] but the text is still there. Sometimes the text is shown as [deleted] as well. I don't understand when and how the first occurrence happens.
- nolok 13y agoAccount marked deleted but not the post means the user account has been deleted. Both marked deleted means that specific post has been deleted (but not the user account).
- RexRollman 13y agoI don't see the point of that since other people often respond to posters with their name/username.
- ryandrake 13y agoReplacing the name with a unique id is not enough to anonymize the data. For example, the "anonymized" AOL search data release: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AOL_search_data_leak#Notable_users http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AOL_search_data_leak#Notable_us...
- rhizome 13y agoSince when has "readability" been a fatal flaw in any discussion medium? It simply doesn't matter, and there's no reason to apply distinct IDs over a collector or a simple piece of text like Reddit does.
- buro9 13y agoThat's where we're going with Microcosm. Deleting a user will nuke the account itself, and assign all content owned by that account to an anonymous/deleted account. The context is preserved and no-one else's data is affected, but we've removed all Googleable trace of the original account (the username and profile). The only remaining issue is whether a person made posts containing personal information (defined as being the same as personal data according to EU Data Protection laws... name, phone number, email, etc). But for that we'll always honour take-down requests even when the information is orphaned from an ownership record. PS: To the downvoters, I'd love to understand what part is objectionable.