I’m with you on this, and don’t like the fact that delete windows for comments and posts is quite short and that accounts (along with content) cannot be deleted. This is why I never put any personal or demographic details in my comments here.
HN is also not a platform that changes much over long periods of time (in UI, UX or policies). So don’t keep your hopes up on this one being dealt with as you’d like it to be. HN the platform does not keep up with the times as much as you’d expect it to be for a platform with deep pockets behind it (don’t bring up Facebook in comparison; that’s a downright malicious platform). “The right to be forgotten” is a stranger here.
I’ve seen in past discussions that HN wants to preserve conversations and doesn’t want to delete content, especially if it means making threads meaningless. Imagine deleting a reply to a comment based on a request that in turn has replies from others beneath it. The people who posted those replies may not want their content to be deleted. I’ve seen platforms deal with this in different ways. Facebook deals with it by removing the entire comment thread or subthread when the top comment is deleted. Reddit deals with it by removing only that specific comment (marking it as deleted) and leaving replies dangling without any context.
The other side of the coin is that HN is not a platform you or I own. So the platform is well within its rights (up to legal limits) to do anything with your content.
People must really understand that anything they put on the web is susceptible to stay forever in corners they may not even be aware of. The content you post may also be mirrored on the Internet Archive with time based snapshots without your knowledge. The Internet Archive doesn’t have an easy way to request for deletion (or even exclusion from being archived). If you send emails, sometimes you get asked to provide more proof (like invoices for domain registrations) even after you’ve provided evidence of ownership through other means (without exposing personal information). Is the Internet Archive wrong to copy content and make it difficult (or impossible) to remove it from its databases? The answer depends on who you ask. You’d also find people who have different views on how it ought to be on HN vs. Internet Archive.
What people and platforms cannot seem to agree on is what content truly belongs to you in a way you can edit, delete and modify it as you please and have that be the only version that everyone else sees.
The typical way to preserve content upon account deletion is just to remove the displayed username from the posts, but keep the content. I don’t see why that couldn’t apply here also.
The content itself might have specific signals or links to who that person is. Those cases also deserve to be covered during deletion. For the sake of being complete, even the content must be allowed to be deleted.
HN is also not a platform that changes much over long periods of time (in UI, UX or policies). So don’t keep your hopes up on this one being dealt with as you’d like it to be. HN the platform does not keep up with the times as much as you’d expect it to be for a platform with deep pockets behind it (don’t bring up Facebook in comparison; that’s a downright malicious platform). “The right to be forgotten” is a stranger here.
I’ve seen in past discussions that HN wants to preserve conversations and doesn’t want to delete content, especially if it means making threads meaningless. Imagine deleting a reply to a comment based on a request that in turn has replies from others beneath it. The people who posted those replies may not want their content to be deleted. I’ve seen platforms deal with this in different ways. Facebook deals with it by removing the entire comment thread or subthread when the top comment is deleted. Reddit deals with it by removing only that specific comment (marking it as deleted) and leaving replies dangling without any context.
The other side of the coin is that HN is not a platform you or I own. So the platform is well within its rights (up to legal limits) to do anything with your content.
People must really understand that anything they put on the web is susceptible to stay forever in corners they may not even be aware of. The content you post may also be mirrored on the Internet Archive with time based snapshots without your knowledge. The Internet Archive doesn’t have an easy way to request for deletion (or even exclusion from being archived). If you send emails, sometimes you get asked to provide more proof (like invoices for domain registrations) even after you’ve provided evidence of ownership through other means (without exposing personal information). Is the Internet Archive wrong to copy content and make it difficult (or impossible) to remove it from its databases? The answer depends on who you ask. You’d also find people who have different views on how it ought to be on HN vs. Internet Archive.
What people and platforms cannot seem to agree on is what content truly belongs to you in a way you can edit, delete and modify it as you please and have that be the only version that everyone else sees.