I hear you loud and clear. Signed up for reddit in 2007 and last week finally decided to run "shreddit" and delete my entire post and comment history from the website. No way I'm letting some comment I made 13 years ago get taken out context and ruin my career or relationships.
Edit: why the downvotes? I am genuinely interested. Shreddit does not protect you from anything, it's only an illusion. I think more people should be aware of that.
A motivated individual could still dig things up, but many people (even most users of reddit) are unfamiliar with the archives out there.
https://hacker-news-example.factor.dev/
I'm not really sure why people would do this, except perhaps some seo shenanigans?
My opinion is this- if somebody wants to stalk my Internet personality, so be it. I'm willing to sacrifice those relationships.
I guess the problem would be if I ended up with some leadership/management position and a subordinate saw it?
Like this guy fired over an article written 33 years ago?
https://nypost.com/2020/07/03/boeing-communications-boss-nie...
A global pandemic is also an exceptionally rare event, yet it's wise to be prepared for such things because sometimes they happen.
As for "be in a position of power", there's a lot of websites with enough SEO to show up in the first page of Google results for your name. How much do you care about what potential employers/co-workers/business partners/romantic partners think of you?
For "be irrational enough", just look at any click-bait headline or random sampling of tweets. There's a lot of people in this world who are quite happy to take things at face-value without thinking too hard.
If someone judges me based on some randonm old comment without even talking to me, I absolutely do not want to work with them or be their friend, ever.
This is fine for you and me right now.
It is not fine for persons like one of the guys who was mentioned in the story in "the Atlantic" who had, for the first time in his life landed a good job only to be thrown under the bus at the first opportunity.
I'm fairly certain if a judge haf given him his job back he would have accepted it.
Why? Because I have been in a tight spot myself and while I wasn't fired (I moved to a new city to a job I was promised only to be told on Monday morning that they had reconsidered and wouldn't hire me anyway) I know the feeling of going -in a few hours - from a situation where everything looks nicer than ever before to a situation where I'm begging every nearby company to hire me.
From that doesn't follow that one should just say nothing (that isn't utterly benign and impersonal) on the web. This would leave something like participation in public debate to the forever unemployed or bots. If we think that far enough, you could also not communicate with other human beings in private messages, because they might take a screenshot or record it, and so on.
This could very well lead to a world where having a well paid job will come with less freedom, dignity and happiness than even being unemployed does today. I cannot affect the world much with my decisions, but by them I can unilaterally decide what kind of world I would have deserved to live in.
If only HN offered that option for people who signed up under identities that could be linked to their real identity back in the day when the Internet was sane(r).
It will live on in archive.org indefinitely anyway.
After I had entered my info, but before completing the process, it said “We found all these comments out there. Are any of them yours?”
It displayed a list of ancient stuff; a lot of it posted anonymously (I thought).
I was horrified, and immediately binned the signup.
The Internet can be a downright creepy place.
Maybe sometimes, not always.
I generally try to avoid being too controversial or, if I feel the need to make a potentially controversial point, couch it in thoughtful and reasoned terms (except on the rare occasions where I've drunk posted in which case it all goes out the window and I post something that makes no sense even to me the next day - and, of course, I don't recommend doing this).
You obviously can't see how many downvotes or upvotes a post on HN gets, or when they've come in, but I've certainly had situations where the score changes over time in a way that suggests a "wave" of downvotes followed by a "wave" of upvotes, and occasionally vice versa. I.e, comments that started out popular have become unpopular, and vice versa.
The other pattern I see from time to time is that you get absolutely roasted in the comments, but the silent majority upvote you massively. I remember posting something broadly supportive of Microsoft in some way or other where exactly this happened: I got completely slagged, but also picked up a ton of points.
I think this illustrates that the at least sometimes the mob involved in the mob wrath might be a lot smaller, and sometimes with less credible concerns, than you might think.
This is one of the problems I see with twitter: it's hugely adversarial yet only a small minority of people use it so when you go outside into the real world you realise it doesn't - or perhaps shouldn't - have that much bearing even though it's so prevalently cited in the media.
Did that save Stallman?
They're almost never used for their actual purpose anyway, which is to rank down uninformative or just dumb posts, they always end up being utilized in heated discussions as a way to stick it to whoever someone is arguing with.
Many users clearly want to quickly express their personal opinion in a low effort manner and are more than willing to "misuse" the voting mechanism for that. There was a post on the front page of HN earlier today about railroad crossings and blaming end users for (arguably) systemic failures. It seems like the current incarnation of social media runs afoul of this quite badly in all cases I'm aware of.
(I'm reminded of an SO comment by Tim Post about comments being their version of a public trash can and the reputation requirement for them roughly equating to a municipality welding them shut. The result is pretty much what you would expect.)
"Encourage the person; discourage the behavior."
Seems to have received lukewarm response, but it may be an oversimplified approach to a complex issue.
"There's always an easy solution to every human problem; Neat, plausible and wrong." –H. L. Mencken
[0] https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/398537/what-can-we-...
Downvotes directly lead to a post being ignored, because they get greyed out and eventually die. I consider that a great self-moderation feature. How would you replace that?
This is an editorial issue, because those upvotes are decorative. They suggest a post has more reach and engagement, and perhaps is more entertaining. But not that it has more objective credibility - which is of course a reflection of Facebook's preference for promoting the former over the latter.
Voting isn't the answer. There may not be a community-sourced answer, because any system you imagine can be gamed by any more or less organised adversary.
The only workable solution is manual moderation with some attention to tone and content, and the banning of those who consistently troll.
This would work in a secure community, but it will stop working as soon as astroturfing PR firms and state troll farms move in, because on most sites it's trivially easy to create downvotes bots to attack specific names.
Here's an example: A couple of days ago, Antirez made this excellent post[0].
I could completely relate. I have been through the same kind of thing. I have created a project for free that is becoming a worldwide standard, but is tiny, and rather pathetic, compared to redis.
But I could still relate to what he wrote, and I made a post, saying that. I pointed to my own little project.
It immediately started getting downvoted. They were coming fast and furious, so I deleted it.
On reflection, I see that it was perceived as being "small-time loser compares himself to tech god."
I didn't mean it that way, but I'm a bit "on the spectrum," and aren't always too aware of how I come across.
I considered it a lost cause. I nuked it, and wrote a quick "thanks!" post, like everyone else.
The fox just wasn't worth the chase.
> They were coming fast and furious
All 4 of them? You know can only possibly lose 4 points, right?
Also, I noticed that on some topics I know more about than most, the best comments on the page are initially downvoted, then return to the black fairly soon.[0] You may just be penalizing yourself with the panicky deletions. And I'd much rather your comments stay here, if you meant what you said, and what you said and how you said it seemed good to you. Well, maybe you are a real bastard and frequently write horrible comments that should be deleted, but I doubt it. :-)
[0] Maybe/probably this happens with every topic, just I can only see it on topics I know best, where I can clearly see which are the good comments and which are plain wrong/ignorant.
For example, I have learned that there's very often many different aspects to others, beyond my shallow "first reaction." Although social media (and media, in general) encourages us to think of others as 1-dimensional "avatars," it has been my experience that every person is a marvelously complex being, with many different facets.
Sometimes, it's best for me to just keep my mouth/keyboard shut. Retroactive deletion is not the ideal approach, but I believe that it is better than leaving clearly unsuitable material out there, and I suffer from an overwhelming urge to participate in society, despite my challenges.
It might be a good exercise to consider the possibility that I could also have interests in life beyond HN. In fact, I often delete stuff, because it just isn't really important to me that I be heard. I don't live and die by the opinions of others, but it's important to be a member of society, and that means interacting with others in a respectful manner. If what I write does nothing but cause trouble, and I don't really care whether or not anyone likes it, then maybe the world would be a better place without my "wisdom."
I see that you also have many interests beyond the technical, so I have to assume that there was some point that you wanted to make, other than what appears to be a rather flaccid insult.
I must tender an apology. I don't think I have the capacity to understand your point.
I'm not sure what you're trying to say there or why. Just sounds condescending. That you do? We all do, I guess.
> I have to assume that there was some point that you wanted to make, other than what appears to be a rather flaccid insult.
That feels a bit rude, you could have just asked what my point is. I was offering what I hoped helpful advice. Wasn't meant to be insulting at all, sorry. (I assume you meant "a little pathetic"? My comment was meant in a "you can do better than that!" way, trying to lift up, not put down. "Be a man, like Eleanor Roosevelt" is I think a Simpsons quote, I should have put it in " "s)
I didn't write the comment when I first read yours, thinking it wasn't necessary to reply, but an hour later I thought of it again, so came back here to comment. It was apparently something I really wanted to say, which is one good test of whether to comment, I guess.
fix? why would you want to become part of the echo chamber? i do understand the desire to not receive a downvote. Your specific example was indeed perhaps out of place and the downvotes were maybe "correct" and thus you were right to reflect and delete the post.
but more often than not, with contentious topics like donald trump downvotes are merely "i disagree". the pushback you're getting here is about that kind of downvote, and I agree. there's nothing to "fix". HN tries to make sure such topics don't even make it here for discussion, but the filter is steep so plenty get through.
There are a couple other trigger topics, but I can't remember at this time. Oh, one is asking about salary, but I guess that's sort of understandable.
Like I said, I am trying to make amends. One of the symptoms of that, is that I can come across as "stuffy."
Also, I do want to put out a good image of myself, but that can come across as "self-promotion," something I'm downright awful at. I'm also pretty much terrible at relating (tends to come across as "making it all about me"), so it tends to fall flat, when I try.