Comment by LocalH | Hacker News Reader

Comment by LocalH | Hacker News Reader

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Deletion of accounts, I have no problem with.

But I have a big problem with deletion of content, outside of a window of time similar to that of editing posts.

My opinion is, if you write it, you publish it, then you don't have the right to leave such a big hole in a discussion. I'm sick of being on various social media and seeing "deleted" "deleted" "deleted".

I'm fine with removing your name from the posts, but other than that, if you say it, you shouldn't be able to run from it.

GDPR isn't some shining beacon of light, it's just a framework of policies set forth by people of power. GDPR has the potential to be just as damaging as the improper uses of PII (for example, look at what happened to the comments on a crapton of MS blogs when they transitioned to a different backend - all the comments were wiped because it was too much work to both preserve those comments and ensure GDPR compliance).

Honestly, I agree with this. Forum discussions basically become unusable if members can randomly delete everything they ever posted years after the fact, and I've seen numerous Reddit posts that now make zero sense because a bunch of users used one of those 'comment override' scripts. It gets even worse if the user can delete the whole topic, since it also removes a bunch of posts from users who may not want them removed.

I don't see no issue with forums and similar sites not allowing contributions to be deleted.

P.S. Also, for the longest time, most forums didn't even allow account deletions. Kinda curious when the expectations changed there, since I distinctly recall the likes of vBulletin and XenForo not letting members remove accounts or content.

That's your opinion. The EU's opinion is that you have the right to be forgotten - though this is separate from GDPR.

I think the "right to be forgotten" should be limited to certain specific instances regarding long-ago conduct. I don't understand this desire people have to participate in society, then try to completely pull out and say "oh, not only am I not participating, but I want to also redact every piece of content I ever wrote". Forget the person, not their contributions.

Do you realize that a real "right to be forgotten" would mean forcibly deleting content from other people's memory?

So, if such a right existed, people would have to get killed, or at least being hit strong enough in the head so that they forget the holder of the right.

There are few ideas more totalitarian than a right to control someone else's memory.

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