> This is law in some places and it's not entirely unreasonable.
Its absolutely unreasonable (eg) for HN. And this is just one form of information processing.
>(8) Disagreement with processing pursuant to paragraph 6(c) must be expressed by the data subject in writing. The controller shall be obliged to notify each controller to whom he has transferred the name, surname and address of the data subject of the fact that the data subject has expressed disagreement with the processing.
What this means, is that if telemarketers call you, you just say that you require them to erase your data, and notify everyone they gave the data to erase it too. And you never hear from any telemarketers again. (At least in my experience, it says the disagreement has to be in writing, but they probably err on the side of caution.)
It's neither unreasonable nor entirely impractical from a mechanical perspective once it's thought through a little bit.
Because comments are made here effectively anonymously, I don't see the issue, but it's not at all unreasonable that comments could be removed given a mandate.
So it happens already, just for different reasons...
No, I think it would be so rare it would not make a difference.
For that 'small intrusion' on your HN experience, you get a hefty dose of privacy and security protection.
I would gladly agree if HN allowed people to 'delete all comments'.