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

Hi All,

I've been a member here for a good many years, but due to a couple of factors, I need to step away.

- It will be better for my mental health.

- I have a large online presence, and I'm aware of multiple people trying to dox me. I have a young family now, and my comment history on HN is too revealing.

Here is a 90 page forum thread of people discussing when I am going to die, and betting on that outcome. Yes really. I would prefer for these people not to find out where my 1 year old daughter lives.

https://texags.com/forums/34/topics/2752920

I've been back and forward with dang, and he said they will not delete my account, they will only rename it then mothball it.

The problem is many of my comments make it clear it's me IRL making the comment, so simply renaming my username will not help. I need my account deleted so all the personally identifying information is gone, which HN are refusing to do.

Is it legal for HN not to delete my account? What recourse do I have to force them to delete my content?

Also as a warming to others - be careful what you post on HN.

The laws around deletion of data in CA and the EU seem to me to support the notion of maintaining the content but anonymizing the author. So it would seem to me that what they propose would be in compliance. IANAL

I personally think it is shady as hell to refuse to delete someone's posts (conceptually). However, given the hierarchical nature of comments and the point system, I can see why this might be a technical burden.

Your position is understandable, and it is an important reminder when participating in this forum; your comments (and their contents) will be burned into the history of the site after the two hour edit window, followed by being ingested into various datasets and archives globally. What you make public is forever. In the US, I am unaware of any legal recourse you might have ("right to be forgotten"), and would suggest accepting the offer to rename/mothball the account. You might ask to have specific comments of yours with excessive personal information redacted or trimmed of certain information (versus deletion of all comments).

If people try to doxx you, report them to the police without hesitation for harassment (and enhancements, if your local jurisdiction specifically outlaws doxxing). I cannot stress this enough.

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 unrecoverable to you but I fully suspect that they still have it maybe he still have access to it it's definitely still available in their backups.

I don't even believe that as a matter of law this could be corrected. Because we have many laws on our books protecting our personal information that we have given over to companies in order to do business with them. Banking institutions collect personal information and there are stringent laws restricting what they can do with it, unless you agree that they can do more with it. Same thing with health care institutions very strong laws preventing the sharing of personal information from health care institutions, unless you agree that they are allowed to share it.

For both banks and health care institutions the problem is you must sign all kinds of agreements before they allow you to do business with them. So those protections enshrined into law mean absolutely nothing because the law does not say that these institutions must do business with you even if you don't agree to their privacy and sharing policies. Which I find rather strange just for two very core institutions to our society. The law protects us but when every bank and every health care place requires you to sign away those protections before they allow you to participate then what good were the protections to begin with?

So if we can't get this right for banking and healthcare what makes you think some little place on the interwebs where you can post quippy comments would be any better?