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Comment by more_corn | Hacker News Reader

It seems that the CCPA requires companies to delete your data upon request. You could file a complaint to the California attorney general. They may investigate and fine the offending entity.

If you want to take matters into your own hands you can view your comments and selectively delete the ones you want down. Keep in mind that copies of hacker news content will have been scraped and archived elsewhere.

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The assertion that "CCPA requires companies to delete your data upon request" is not technically correct. What must be deleted is "personal information" and while I empathize with the notion that would include social media posts, I am not sure it actually does include them.

see: https://privacy.ca.gov/protect-your-personal-information/wha...

The closest thing mentioned is: "Contents of messages (e.g., emails, texts, chats)" but does that actually cover posts? I'm not sure and I can't find an authoritative answer that it does.

How do you interpret “messages” as not including posts? I am very clearly replying with a message to you.

If your message was a DM to me then I think that would clearly be included, however, I can find no authoritative opinion that personal information includes public facing social media posts or comments. I would be happy to be wrong. Can you find a public statement by a law firm stating that under CCPA you have a legal right to have your comments deleted? I can't.

Reading the CCPA, I have to agree with you: it’s useless. It specifically excludes public information, and OP clearly made those posts publicly.

> You could file a complaint to the California attorney general

Does it matter if I'm not in California? (or even the USA?)

If YC’s processing of information fails to comply with the laws governing YC, a business operating in California, then certainly a report of mishandling is presumably of interest to California functionaries. Whether or not that is the case is something you’d have to evaluate using California law and a direct knowledge of the PII or PII-alike in question.

>If you want to take matters into your own hands you can view your comments and selectively delete the ones you want down.

Nope. Everything older than 1 or 2 hours is stored permanently, with no way to edit or delete.

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