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Comment by gabept | Hacker News Reader

I also always wondered why is there no option to delete submissions and comments?

That is an awfully exposing experience IMO.

You have the opportunity during the first two hours of them being submitted, unless there's a response to them, if I remember correctly.

Being exposing is a bit of a benefit for HN, in that it's a very good way to serve as a snapshot of culture at any given time. People can't just whitewash their histories or wrong actions on HN.

The proponents of the EU's right to be forgotten would like to have a word about that.

HN doesn't enforce real names so it's rather different.

From a legal standpoint, I don't think it makes a lot of difference. Especially since unless you are specifically trying to make a throwaway, figuring out who you are is trivial, especially if you use a chunk of your RL name in your username. Or in my case, if your username is commonly identifiable as you and tied to your RL name on other sites.

I don't think anything about Right To Be Forgotten leaves it to the individual's responsibility to mask their identity.

From a legal standpoint, HN doesn't sell products, use user data for profit, or operate in the EU. Both it and YC have made it rather clear they don't want to touch the EU.

Complying with GDPR would basically be an act of goodwill more than anything, and even that's debatable.

Both it and YC have made it rather clear they don't want to touch the EU.

Not sure where you are getting that. YC have funded a lot of EU companies, and some partners are from the EU.

YC certainly has revenue (from investors). HN isn't some separate legal entity - it's right there in the domain name.

They require every founder to come to the US and register as a US company. That's not particularly touching it.

Unless they IP ban the whole of the EU, they will still be subject to the GDPR once any EU citizen accesses their site. (Which, agreeing with AmericanChopper, is a purely theoretical thing - until the moment where YC wants to conduct any kind of business in the EU)

Simply being accessible from the EU does not automatically mean the GDPR applies to a site. See Recital 23: https://gdpr-info.eu/recitals/no-23/

Ah, that's a fair point, I didn't see that.

“Not touching the EU” is a meaningless phrase.

If they raise money from any limited partners in the EU it’s pretty easy to make a case they have an EU business. The physical location is irrelevant - that’s the whole point of the GDPR.

I think you mean from an enforceability standpoint. From a legal standpoint, GDPR applies to all EU ‘data subjects’, and HN would be in breach of it if they don’t provide EU ‘data subjects’ with their rights under the GDPR.

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