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> There is really no such thing as deleting your trail in the internet [...] Deleting accounts is a thing though.

muyuu 12y ago
That causes a lot more harm than good. You fuck up a site just because you didn't care to read the Universal small print of the interwebs, and you do so for barely no practical advantage.
- ptaipale 12y ago
  Changing a name to "deleted" (or something similar) is, however, a somewhat meaningful workaround to alleviate the problem from end-user point of view. But even that carries an administrational cost so I don't think sysadmins should be forced to do that just at the whim of other people. (Particularly when we are talking of things that are offered more or less as a public, free service).
  - muyuu 12y ago
    Still puzzles participants in conversations and gives them an incentive to spider and backup whole threads. It's probably an acceptable workaround but I believe it's best to always remember than the Internet simply doesn't forget. Even if some level of exposure can be minimised, nothing you can remotely call "protection". It can even be argued that this feature promotes irresponsible behaviour ("I can always delete it later" - no, you really can't). You can take many approaches between not deleting at all and delete from your servers (obviously you can't "delete" from the collective internet memory). All of them with pros and cons.
    - k-mcgrady 12y ago
      >> "I believe it's best to always remember than the Internet simply doesn't forget" Let's also not forget that the internet is still a very new thing. Not everyone understands the consequences of posting and that that content may never fully go away. We can't force them to learn this lesson when it's too late. It seems like we should have some measures in place so people who didn't understand the risks at the time have a solution. Deleting your account may not be truly permanent but it will help someone who wants content disassociated with them in most cases. We can keep the content available under a different name ('deleted' or a random string) and then the conversation doesn't get destroyed.
- teamhappy 12y ago
  > That causes a lot more harm than good. [...] and you do so for barely no practical advantage. That's highly subjective. As far as fucking up a site goes, I really don't care. It's my account after all. (Or is it?) > just because you didn't care to read the Universal small print of the interwebs What?
  - muyuu 12y ago
    What? That nothing is forgotten. That precisely malicious private info traffickers will have your info, plus big corps, plus some government agencies. You basically protect yourself against random strangers who don't give a fuck about you and maybe your ex-girlfriend (if she doesn't care enough to pay the right people).
    - teamhappy 12y ago
      So Instagram shouldn't allow you to delete one of your pictures simply because I could have already grabbed a copy of it? That's ridiculous. I'm not protecting myself against anything, I just like to be in charge of my data. By the way: This whole "nothing is forgotten" thing is a straw man anyway. Not being able to fully prevent something doesn't justify not trying. Murder comes to mind.
      - muyuu 12y ago
        As I said before, I appreciate that all approaches regarding this have their pros and cons. That means I accept there are reasonable pros too. However, from my PoV, anything that can give the false illusion to the mass that their data is truly deleted when a server stops showing it (or even internally deletes it to the best of their ability) it's an overall negative. General rule of thumb as far as I'm concerned. You are more likely to trigger the attention of malicious crawlers by deleting your stuff than you are of protecting almost anything.

muyuu 12y ago

That causes a lot more harm than good. You fuck up a site just because you didn't care to read the Universal small print of the interwebs, and you do so for barely no practical advantage.

ptaipale 12y ago
Changing a name to "deleted" (or something similar) is, however, a somewhat meaningful workaround to alleviate the problem from end-user point of view. But even that carries an administrational cost so I don't think sysadmins should be forced to do that just at the whim of other people. (Particularly when we are talking of things that are offered more or less as a public, free service).
- muyuu 12y ago
  Still puzzles participants in conversations and gives them an incentive to spider and backup whole threads. It's probably an acceptable workaround but I believe it's best to always remember than the Internet simply doesn't forget. Even if some level of exposure can be minimised, nothing you can remotely call "protection". It can even be argued that this feature promotes irresponsible behaviour ("I can always delete it later" - no, you really can't). You can take many approaches between not deleting at all and delete from your servers (obviously you can't "delete" from the collective internet memory). All of them with pros and cons.
  - k-mcgrady 12y ago
    >> "I believe it's best to always remember than the Internet simply doesn't forget" Let's also not forget that the internet is still a very new thing. Not everyone understands the consequences of posting and that that content may never fully go away. We can't force them to learn this lesson when it's too late. It seems like we should have some measures in place so people who didn't understand the risks at the time have a solution. Deleting your account may not be truly permanent but it will help someone who wants content disassociated with them in most cases. We can keep the content available under a different name ('deleted' or a random string) and then the conversation doesn't get destroyed.
teamhappy 12y ago
> That causes a lot more harm than good. [...] and you do so for barely no practical advantage. That's highly subjective. As far as fucking up a site goes, I really don't care. It's my account after all. (Or is it?) > just because you didn't care to read the Universal small print of the interwebs What?
- muyuu 12y ago
  What? That nothing is forgotten. That precisely malicious private info traffickers will have your info, plus big corps, plus some government agencies. You basically protect yourself against random strangers who don't give a fuck about you and maybe your ex-girlfriend (if she doesn't care enough to pay the right people).
  - teamhappy 12y ago
    So Instagram shouldn't allow you to delete one of your pictures simply because I could have already grabbed a copy of it? That's ridiculous. I'm not protecting myself against anything, I just like to be in charge of my data. By the way: This whole "nothing is forgotten" thing is a straw man anyway. Not being able to fully prevent something doesn't justify not trying. Murder comes to mind.
    - muyuu 12y ago
      As I said before, I appreciate that all approaches regarding this have their pros and cons. That means I accept there are reasonable pros too. However, from my PoV, anything that can give the false illusion to the mass that their data is truly deleted when a server stops showing it (or even internally deletes it to the best of their ability) it's an overall negative. General rule of thumb as far as I'm concerned. You are more likely to trigger the attention of malicious crawlers by deleting your stuff than you are of protecting almost anything.