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Tell HN: Hacker News will not delete my account – is that legal?

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Re: Tell HN: Hacker News will not delete my account – is that legal?

#21

Post by [deleted] »

grecy wrote: post #6
retrac wrote: post #2

It is mentioned in the site FAQ that they don't delete accounts. I feel that redacting the account name of someone who regrets some of their posts for privacy reasons, so at least individual comments cannot be linked together into a profile, would be kind. But yes, this is a very public forum.

> It is mentioned in the site FAQ that they don't delete accounts. I found another post [1] where someone was asking about account deletion and the linked part of the FAQ says: We try not to delete entire account histories because that would gut the threads the account had participated in. However, we care about protecting individual users and take care of privacy requests every day, so if we can help, please email h…

[deleted]

Re: Tell HN: Hacker News will not delete my account – is that legal?

#22

Post by slau »

uberman wrote: post #15
more_corn wrote: post #4

It seems that the CCPA requires companies to delete your data upon request. You could file a complaint to the California attorney general. They may investigate and fine the offending entity. If you want to take matters into your own hands you can view your comments and selectively delete the ones you want down. Keep in mind that copies of hacker news content will have been scraped and archived elsewhere.

The assertion that "CCPA requires companies to delete your data upon request" is not technically correct. What must be deleted is "personal information" and while I empathize with the notion that would include social media posts, I am not sure it actually does include them. see: https://privacy.ca.gov/protect-your-personal-information/wha... The closest thing mentioned is: "Contents of messages (e.g., emails, texts,…

How do you interpret “messages” as not including posts? I am very clearly replying with a message to you.

Re: Tell HN: Hacker News will not delete my account – is that legal?

#23

Post by krapp »

elmerfud wrote: post #9

The problem is, it's not your account. Whenever you voluntarily give over something to someone else it stops being yours and you stop having the ability to control it, unless there was a specific agreement in place that allowed you to retain control and ownership. There are some sites that allow you to delete your account but I quite honestly don't believe it. They may say that it's deleted and maybe it's deleted and…

Every other forum that I'm aware of, including Reddit, allows users to delete their posts and/or accounts.

And no one who signed up to HN did so having first agreed to terms of service which said their comments and account could never be deleted.

Re: Tell HN: Hacker News will not delete my account – is that legal?

#24

Post by slau »

I would argue that renaming the whole account to another account is not, in fact, anonymising it.

If dang wants to keep the content but properly anonymise it, then every single post would have to be unlinked from a single account. Every post should be attached to an unrelated random account.

/. used to handle this by having “Anonymous Coward”. Reddit has this with . Because this is not a concept on HN (or at least, not an oft used one) I feel the “random unique accounts that post a single comment” is better than marking your posts as coming from “AC” as that would still allow sift through the search results.

This being said… if people wanted to keep your comment history… wouldn’t they already have fetched it by now? Especially if you’re publicly indicating you’re trying to get your account deleted?

Re: Tell HN: Hacker News will not delete my account – is that legal?

#25

Post by uberman »

slau wrote: post #22
uberman wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The assertion that "CCPA requires companies to delete your data upon request" is not technically correct. What must be deleted is "personal information" and while I empathize with the notion that would include social media posts, I am not sure it actually does include them. see: https://privacy.ca.gov/protect-your-personal-information/wha... The closest thing mentioned is: "Contents of messages (e.g., emails, texts,…

How do you interpret “messages” as not including posts? I am very clearly replying with a message to you.

If your message was a DM to me then I think that would clearly be included, however, I can find no authoritative opinion that personal information includes public facing social media posts or comments. I would be happy to be wrong. Can you find a public statement by a law firm stating that under CCPA you have a legal right to have your comments deleted? I can't.

Re: Tell HN: Hacker News will not delete my account – is that legal?

#26

Post by elmerfud »

krapp wrote: post #23
elmerfud wrote: post #9

The problem is, it's not your account. Whenever you voluntarily give over something to someone else it stops being yours and you stop having the ability to control it, unless there was a specific agreement in place that allowed you to retain control and ownership. There are some sites that allow you to delete your account but I quite honestly don't believe it. They may say that it's deleted and maybe it's deleted and…

Every other forum that I'm aware of, including Reddit, allows users to delete their posts and/or accounts. And no one who signed up to HN did so having first agreed to terms of service which said their comments and account could never be deleted.

Do you really think those are actually deleted from those forums? They might be hidden they might remove your name but it's unlikely they are actually deleted.

Also you failed to understand one basic thing, their terms of service wouldn't list something like your account can never be deleted. Because it's not your account it is their system their platform and what you call an account is simply a way for you to access it and post on their system. The terms of service would have to say something like you continue to remain in control of everything that you've written. It's simply doesn't do that and I don't know of any system that does that. Because it's not yours.

Re: Tell HN: Hacker News will not delete my account – is that legal?

#27

Post by slau »

uberman wrote: post #25
slau wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you interpret “messages” as not including posts? I am very clearly replying with a message to you.

If your message was a DM to me then I think that would clearly be included, however, I can find no authoritative opinion that personal information includes public facing social media posts or comments. I would be happy to be wrong. Can you find a public statement by a law firm stating that under CCPA you have a legal right to have your comments deleted? I can't.

Reading the CCPA, I have to agree with you: it’s useless. It specifically excludes public information, and OP clearly made those posts publicly.

Re: Tell HN: Hacker News will not delete my account – is that legal?

#28

Post by [deleted] »

elmerfud wrote: post #26
krapp wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every other forum that I'm aware of, including Reddit, allows users to delete their posts and/or accounts. And no one who signed up to HN did so having first agreed to terms of service which said their comments and account could never be deleted.

Do you really think those are actually deleted from those forums? They might be hidden they might remove your name but it's unlikely they are actually deleted. Also you failed to understand one basic thing, their terms of service wouldn't list something like your account can never be deleted. Because it's not your account it is their system their platform and what you call an account is simply a way for you to access…

[deleted]
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