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Comment by robg | Hacker News Reader

Thanks! Those are fair points. We're thinking we could uplevel the social layer so you can connect with people of similar interests for deeper connections. In this way we compute not just your contributions but how they relate to others.

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This seems like a slippery slope towards bog-standard social media.

Currently, HN is the only place on the internet I am willing to interact with others _because_ it lacks the "social layer" you are recommending.

The focus on user comments that are thoughtful, relevant, and respectful _is_ the social connection I value.

The social web died, all you're doing it making pitchfork and torch 2.0 for mobs.

If you want to add value and not bloody public spectacle rank comments instead of users.

I have a bunch of low quality posts here when idiots piss me off, but also share world first research and breakthroughs I've been involved with the rare time the counter party is worth talking to.

> rank comments instead of users

> I have a bunch of low quality posts here when idiots piss me off

It’s ironic because in the second of the parts I quoted you on here you are basically yourself generalizing the users instead of the comments.

Is it really “idiots” that piss you off (the users)? Or is it the specific things they said in isolated cases (the comments) that piss you off? Wasn’t your point exactly that this kind of distinction is important?

And the OP here seems to willfully ignore the main point his parent was making. He said that not having this focus on a "social layer" made HN better. But then OP says:

    We're thinking we could uplevel the social layer

head => palm

With such efforts I think it is time for people start deleting their accounts, not because they want/need to hide anything, but some people may want to stay semi-anonymous by using aliases and data mining everything and correlating it with other sources (e.g. LinkedIn) may help identify them and cause trouble (e.g. someone wrote something about their workplace without naming it, but hey, it is "John Doe that works in MegaCorp".

> it is time for people start deleting their accounts

HN does not let you do that though. At least last time I asked about it, they sent me a response saying that they’d notify me when it became possible to delete an account. And they provided some reasons for why they don’t delete comments and accounts.

It would destroy older comment threads. There are quite some gold nuggets to be found there.

Sure, but what is more important? Some random comment threads, or honoring the wishes of the people who have been contributing comments to the site?

For me I would prioritize the wishes of the contributors.

Well, how about the contributers honoring the wishes of the owners of the plattform?

Also my wish as a contributer is that the threads stay like this. So I can come back later and reread them. I often gained value in reading a linked old thread.

My advice for people not wishing for that, would be simply to stop commenting instead of demanding the site should change.

Could there be a middle ground to remove the account ID as a correlation between posts? The posts could remain as a graph of replies without retaining who posted which.

I know this means someone could still use stylometry to try to reaggregate the posts, but that's less reliable than HN actually telling us that the same authenticated user made all these posts over a decade.

I could very much live with that solution.

I thought it goes without saying, that when you post something sensitive, that you don't want to connect openly to your account - you use a throwaway account. HN made it easy to do that.

"Witness Mr. Henry Bemis, a charter member in the fraternity of dreamers. A bookish little man whose passion is the printed page, but who is conspired against by a bank president and a wife and a world full of tongue-cluckers and the unrelenting hands of a clock. But in just a moment, Mr. Bemis will enter a world without bank presidents or wives or clocks or anything else. He'll have a world all to himself... without anyone."

-Twilight Zone Episode: Time Enough at Last-

It’s great that you finished it but I wish you had taken a little more care to protect users here. Some people I respect a lot are a little more vulnerable because of this

How?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com