I dont want current or future employers sifting through my post history, or anyone else for that matter.
Even if you don't think your opinions are controversial today, that doesn't mean they wont be in the future, and there are several groups that scrape the web to archive content they disagree with.
And language changes over time, what used to come across as a joke can become quite offensive in the future. People will look at the post and interpret it in today's context and apply today's meaning to it. They will not attempt a charitable interpretation by checking what the context of a post was 5 years ago. And they will not check if for example 5 years ago we did not have the same level of evidence as today.
Even worse as well I have noticed that often times your statement gets misread. People will read something into your post you sometimes did not even intend. For some it is just because English is a second language. But other times you will see outright malicious attempts to misread a post to make it appear in the worst possible light just to satisfy their daily need for outrage.
I think this is an expression of something that seems to be a fundamental aspect of human nature: we tend to see what we expect to see rather than what is really there.
I think all of these are natural and healthy parts of the human growth, and legitimate uses of online conversation. Not everyone else feels this way, or care about the context of speech they find objectionable.
But to the degree that HN is "privacy hostile" as you put it, with regards to not being able to delete comments, I'd say that it's also "privacy friendly" to an almost equal degree, given there is absolutely no personal information required in order to create an account.
And there is none of the usual invasive social network crap which drives me away from literally every online platform apart from HN.
If anyone has an issue like this, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and we'll see what we can do.
Between "how deleted are my comments, really?" issues, and the number of sites that get hacked in a given week - I would not trust anybody's supposed "delete" feature for anything important.
(And for critical stuff...you might be able to talk @dang into performing a Sword, +Admin deletion here.)
Some people reported it found their old/alt accounts.
On reddit this is a right pain, and really fragments discussions. Ending up in a 7 year old discussion with half the comments [deleted] or "I've overwritten all my comments with this bot" is not brilliant. Doubly so when you're trying to find a solution for a technical problem.
As to your second point, reddit is not a public archive, or a court room, or any sort of entity that I would trust or expect to retain, much less make accessible, "public" discussions, technical or not. They have no obligation to give you anything, and the moment it's profitable for them to switch to pay-to-play, you can bet they will. Steve Huffman, the CEO of reddit, killed all the 3rd party apps accessing reddit, no? Not someone I will place my trust in.
[edit- added the below]
I would also add the court of public opinion is a place no one should be tried, and peoples' privacy trumps your desire for information, so it makes perfect sense that comments would be removed or stripped of a byline. Adding a byline redaction feature would be cool imo.
It's been a few years since I read the GDPR, and I'd have to re-read it again with HN's use case in mind, but I'm reasonably (though not completely) sure that "delete every comment you ever made" isn't covered.
I see two problems:
1. You can never be truly honest. Everyone has a side they don't project when their reputation is on the line. With a pseudo you can project it, and dump the name if things get too hot. Maybe your opinion is en-vogue today but worthy of real life harassment later. Maybe you are a person who belongs to a group of people that are not well liked. Maybe alphabet soup agencies want you. Who knows - all you know is you can't predict the future.
2. It encourages validation seeking behavior. Evidence: social media. Professionally, linkedin is a shithole of validation seeking losers posting below-the-fold faux-philosophy and/or corporate shilling. These people likely wouldn't do this if their identity was not attached to a face, an address, and a company.
Overall, it's a net loss to use your real identity. For the last 25 years I haven't needed to tell anyone online my real identity and I won't for the foreseeable future. I have plenty of friends on IRC and other places that only know me by my handle. This is not a bad thing.
Even outside that culture, creative nicknames were the norm on the multitude of message boards like this one which were common before social media.
I suppose the custom persists because it is useful, and comfortable, and people like it.
Wikipedia admins have had people call their jobs to try to get them fired. You don't need good privacy practices until you do.
[1]: Not throwing shade at dang here, but I do not want any content I write to be permanent in nature especially when that permanence is at the whims and wishes of another human (I think that phrase was slightly awkward, please tell me if you found it awkward too).
I'm just more comfortable and feel more special as "h2odragon."
I also like the ability to be wrong. I am serious about behaving appropriately so that I don't have to fear being revealed online, but there are some previous posts of mine (even here) that I feel embarassed about because they didn't come across right or I was wrong about something. If one person confronts me about that, I'll live with it. If the internet does, then what if I always have to defend myself because there's ten thousand plus people who ask?
Online, it's hard to have a one-on-one conversation. I may speak to one person, but anyone may reply. I'm sure one day the me online will be 1:1, but until then I like the peace and calm.
Here's the best metaphor I can think of on short notice: John moved to a new city recently and he was looking at the houses along his block. He noticed they all had something on their doors. Curious, he asks a neighbor, Alice, what it was for.
Alice replies, "When it rains."
John is confused. "We had a lovely sprinkle just yesterday." He says with an eyebrow raised. "I think you're too worried."
"No," Alice shakes her head. "When it pours. The water can reach up to your waist."
In the world of psychotherapy there is no trust without confidentiality. On the internet there is no trust simply because there is no confidentiality.
All this personal sharing doesn't make sense to me.
Who in their right mind thinks it is OK to share your real name on any website with the entire population of the world..
Why do you need to know who I am?
If only the Internet had an ethical Framework like the BACP
Extract from the Ethical Framework of (BACP) The British Association of Counselling and Psychotherapy.
We will protect the confidentiality and privacy of clients by:
a. actively protecting information about clients from unauthorised access or disclosure
b. informing clients about how the use of personal data and information that they share with us will be used and who is within the circle of confidentiality, particularly with access to personally identifiable information
c. requiring that all recipients of personally identifiable information have agreed to treat such information as confidential in accordance with any legal requirements and what has been agreed with the client at the time of disclosure
d. informing clients about any reasonably foreseeable limitations of privacy or confidentiality in advance of our work together, for example, communications to ensure or enhance the quality of work in supervision or training, to protect a client or others from serious harm including safeguarding commitments, and when legally required or authorised to disclose
e. taking care that all contractual requirements concerning the management and communication of client information are mutually compatible
f. ensuring that disclosure of personally identifiable information about clients is authorised by client consent or that there is a legally and ethically recognised justification
g. using thoroughly anonymised information about clients where this provides a practical alternative to sharing identifiable information
Perhaps add h: keeping the therapist's cell phone in a sound-isolated enclosure.
It is my real identity, though. It's one of the names I've been using consistently online for decades, so there is continuity. The "JohnFen" you saw online 15 years ago is still the same "JohnFen" you see online now.
1 for projects you are trying to market - this account can be publicly tied to the project and you can use it to comment on related topics. Useful for building credibility
1 for everything else
Managing online personas is part of living a digital life. There is no need for everything you do online to be easily correlated to your real persona.
Anonymity and privacy are much harder to reclaim than give up, so you should give them up sparingly
Not sure where I'm really going with this other than I fully understand opsec, the hacker mindset, cyber security, etc, but I've never really cared to stay private because I wanted to be known. Now that I'm likely as good as I'll ever be, it doesn't really matter lol. If someone finds something I said in poor taste, I'll apologize and hopefully have learned from it and move on.
there are also some major techplayers here, that im sure would be flooded out of functionality by a mob of lookyloos, that just want to say hi im your fan, autograph please?
I'm only aware of one other Mike Warot, who works as a guard at the British museum.
Name collision is the only thing I can think of for a good reason to make up a name.
Bonus points for ungooglable usernames.
It only needs to happen once and your attitude changes pretty quickly.
Seems like a lot less limitation too.