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Comment by theK | Hacker News Reader

I am very curious about this ideology.

The whole world seems to see indelibility of data as a problem in this context. Yet immutability is seen as a generally good thing for a lot of other software cases. Further we cannot manipulate past events and there even is something about repeating history when you don’t know it.

So why would we really want to delete past data? From this standpoint wouldn’t deleting data be similar to trying to cover up the past? Sure we might also try to label it “humankind’s childish try to assert itself over the unstoppable arrow of time” but that is just too Freudian to me.

Is there some big idea I’m missing that explains the favoring of the “mutable past” view?

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What you're missing is that in some domains like healthcare there are legal compliance requirements to delete past data in certain circumstances. If false or embarrassing or misattributed data ends up in my medical record I want it completely removed, not just marked as outdated. This isn't just ideology, it's a fundamental matter of patient privacy.

> Is there some big idea I’m missing that explains the favoring of the “mutable past” view?

It is called law. There are lots of laws that govern circumstances under which data must be destroyed, and others that make certain data illegal to possess.

You can argue that they're bad laws, and I'd agree that some of them are. But whatever you think of them, ignore them at your peril.

I think this is a case where "Think of the children" is the right answer.

Someone uploads pictures of a child being violently sexually abused to a blockchain. It is my honest opinion the majority of people would not want to continue distributing those photos. It is certainly the law of many countries that it is illegal to distribute such pictures.

> So why would we really want to delete past data? From this standpoint wouldn’t deleting data be similar to trying to cover up the past?

This assumes that data is always true and accurate, which is not always the case. Say Bob was convicted for pedophilia but a couple months after the charge was retracted because it was an error. Now Bob can’t find a job because “the data” says he’s a pedophile, even if he’s not.

and why can't bob find a job even if he was a pedophile or a murderer or whatever?

why is extrajudicial punishment allowed?

> why is extrajudicial punishment allowed?

In some cases it is common sense. For instance: a pedophile shouldn't be allowed to be a school teacher.

in that case, there should be a court order that prevents them from exercising such occupations.

Even if, there is still human bias.

What if someone posted false claims about you? Would you like recourse in that event?

well there was that new york time podcast on child abuse and how the internet made things exponentially worse... that was quite a big moment for me about being able to remove online data.

yes, we need to be able to erase stuff from the internet.

HIPAA, GDPR, CCPA, Right to be Forgotten, DMCA

The ideology is law, most blockchains as is do not comply with law. So the are effectively unusable in practice (generally speaking too)

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