HN doesn’t care. In the past, I requested this very feature citing both the increasing ease and likelihood of correlating user data since 2006 and the very much increased safety risk of certain speech wrt to various authoritarian world actors.

In an email to hn@ycombinator.com, I wrote:

> ”I understand the user interface doesn't provide for comment removal, but with all due respect it's only a matter of time before that policy contributes to the imprisonment or even death of some of your users.”

> ”It's too late to be entirely safe from historical comments but we have no idea how much the threshold for what is truly dangerous to have said on the internet will change going forward. Even a small decrease in the personal risk going forward is important to me.”

HN’s response was no, because that would “gut the threads the account had participated in”. He then suggested there was upcoming an account renaming feature. Obviously, that feature would do nothing to alleviate the doxxing concerns brought up by the OP.

It was very disappointing.

YC literally put a higher value on maintaining old forum threads than reducing risk former users faced being detained, beaten or killed by religious or political organizations.