Item — HN Reader

> With privacy concerns, companies should be shamed for storing billions of messages.

should we shame ycombinator for storing the messages, accounts and comments on hacker news then?

I am still unable to delete my account here even though the CCPA and the GDPR exists. But here we are.

3 comments

Honest question: could it be argued that HN does not store any PII and therefore does not need to let you delete your account ?

yes. whataboutism.

So I shouldn't be able to delete account information about me on HN or Discord? Care to explain this?

no, sorry if unclear. i meant the opposite, you should be able to.

Your comments are a public thing you choose to publish to the world, but many (most?) discord messages are not. You'd want them to get deleted.

Sorry but no, I don't want my messages deleted. I use search history all the time even to search for things I personally said. I can get behind deleting messages if the account is deleted though, but as some type of automatic thing based on time in the past? No thanks.

That you wold chose to 'keep your messages' is a little besides the point of those who would opt for more privacy.

Nobody is making the argument you should be forced to delete your messages.

In any normal world, messages that are not used would be deleted as a matter of privacy. They're kept, because they can be kept, and they can be monetized. That monetization has zero benefit to the user, it's just an artifact of our odd way of doing business where we continue to externalize a lot of things. I think over the next 10 years we might see a regulator shift , which also means costs more directly exposed, meaning Discord may cost $1 month, i.e. the externalization 'costed in' like carbon tax on fuels.

Not if one would want to choose to delete their account afterwards with the expectation that all comments would be deleted as well.