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Comment by XaspR8d | Hacker News Reader

Basic question: since the entries form a chain and reference the previous, is there no way to edit or delete your old entries? (I see it "prevents tampering" and there's something of a philosophical question here about whether you're "tampering" with your own history when you editorialize -- I agree with the crypto interpretation, but in the context of offline interaction, social communication isn't burdened with such expectations of accuracy or time-invariance.)

If so I see that as a fairly large limitation for the common user. Even though truly removing something from the internet is effectively an impossibility, I think most non-technical folks aren't actively aware of this, and I'd at least like the option make it harder for folks to uncover.

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There is no way (as far as I know) to delete old entries, and I think this is good because with gossip mechanics we cannot lie to ourselves: there is no way of stopping that information from spreading.

What's possible, on the other hand, is to make a message type "ignore the previous" which client apps would interpret to hide them, but obviously a client app can be configured to not hide them.

Yes I suppose I'm targetting the protocol a little too much when I should think about what features clients can implement.

I'm certainly happy with the "gossip" approach; I just see it as challenging for some people to adopt when they are coddled with the idea that they can censor their past.

Another very important point with no-deletes is: you can't deny history. You can't, in real-life, take back something you said. The mechanics of digital deletion in centralized systems is a big problem for History. I remember Julian Assange describing a corruption scandal that was essentially erased from History because a digital article by a large media company was deleted, and not replicated fast enough.

Usenet is, once again, a lesson here. Remember cancel messages. Then remember forged cancels. Then remember the people who decided to stop respecting cancel messages. Then remember the discussions about signed cancel messages. And so on. (-:

I wonder if there was one added step on every post to this network "warning, you are about to make this public without the possibility of removal, are you sure you want to post this?", would that better educate people and make them less likely to make public that which they will later wish was private? I think the solution is also a culture or user education issue. Basically teach people more about how the Internet works and they're less likely to want to post information on it.

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