Ask HN: Why does Facebook respect my data more than HN? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Why does Facebook respect my data more than HN?

65 pointshawkharris50 comments

I don't mean for the tone of this submission to be confrontational — I'm a big fan of the HN community and consume much of my news here — but I was recently troubled to learn that HN doesn't let users delete some of their content (most notably, user accounts).

Granted, this isn't a new issue. I see that, according to The Unofficial HN Blog, the solution is to keep your profile anonymous.

Still, HN's treatment of personal data is somewhat surprising, considering that this community is so progressive when it comes to discussing privacy issues. In fact, some of the privacy-related HN posts about Facebook inspired me to delete my personal data from that site.

Why does Facebook seem to be more accommodating than HN when it comes to giving me the freedom to access my own data?

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There's not just one sense of something being someone's data. The comments people make here are part of public conversations with other people, like in a newsgroup. There's a different sense of something being someone's data in a situation like that than there is in, say, Google Docs.

Imagine one of those collaborative drawing programs in which multiple users can make marks and the resulting drawing is the sum of all their marks. Should one of the users be able to come back later and claim that he wanted all the marks he'd made deleted, on the grounds that they were "his content?" I'd argue that someone doing that would be violating an implicit social contract with the other users.

Similarly, if someone wanted all their HN comments deleted, they'd ruin other people's comments by making them incomprehensible. And how far would deletion be expected to go? If user y quotes part of a comment by user x, is that also supposed to be deleted if x wants his comments deleted? It should be if it's "his personal data," right?

We do delete individual comments and submissions when people do something they worry will get them in trouble. That combined with the fact that accounts are anonymous and that users can wipe their profiles seems to me to strike the right balance.

> Imagine one of those collaborative drawing programs

However this isn't a drawing board, this is a message board where people discuss various topics.

I think reddit handles this situation well in that the content isn't deleted but the "name" associated with the content just shows up as "[deleted]".

But with reddit, you can also roll through every last comment you ever wrote and delete them (as it should be; you own the copyright to those comments):

Reddit History Wiper http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/111025

You have granted Reddit a perpetual license to them though, so they can keep them if they want

> you agree that by posting messages, uploading files, inputting data, or engaging in any other form of communication with or through the Website, you grant us a royalty-free, perpetual, non-exclusive, unrestricted, worldwide license to use, reproduce, modify, adapt, translate, enhance, transmit, distribute, publicly perform, display, or sublicense any such communication in any medium (now in existence or hereinafter developed) and for any purpose, including commercial purposes, and to authorize others to do so.

^Reddit copyright policy

Reddit still gives you the ability to delete your comments at any time. Hacker News does not.

You misunderstand how reddit works, the comment can be deleted as well. This leads to a fairly common occurance of people asking what was said to generate the responses.

Ah you're right, what I was referring to was what happens during account deletion.

I would love it if sites like Reddit took this a step further and used stylometry obfuscation techniques in addition to removing the name on the account. We desperately need tools to help make content as anonymous as possible after the fact, but still retain the essence of that content so that conversations that are a public good can still be maintained for posterity.

Why not delete an account without removing the content? Basically disassociate the comment from the creator. This would give people back some control.

I don't see why comments by [deleted] would damage the site or flow of comments.

Yeah, I'd be open to replacing the username. One of the biggest things I overlooked when I wrote HN is that I didn't make any provision to let people change their usernames. There are no internal ids underlying usernames; the actual usernames are stored everywhere. But if I wrote something to let people change their displayed username, it could also be used for this.

something like this would be interesting I think: <randomnumber>+accountdeleted so unlike reddit, in a discussion if multiple users delete their account but keep their comment, you don't get confused if its the same user or different user.

If it was also the feature users could use to change their displayed username, it would have to work that way.

There's also the issue of "does the username belong to the user". So if user a deletes their comment and user b quotes them both by comment and name, should user a's name be masked when they delete said post? Well, isn't that user b's content that's now being infringed upon? The current non-delete mode is fine - just don't write stuff you don't want on the web on a forum, and if you do then update with a new comment retracting the statement.

>So if user a deletes their comment and user b quotes them both by comment and name, should user a's name be masked when they delete said post?

I don't think so - it's clearly unreasonable to expect every instance of a username to be policed like that, particularly considering cut-and-pasting quotes. I'm fine with the idea that if it's in a thread it's no longer 'yours.'

But I also think it should be possible to remove ones' own account and have the username on those posts no longer point to an active account.

I also think there should be a "post anonymously" option as well, which there practically already is in the form of throwaway accounts. Might as well just make it official.

Replacing the "deleted" username with its hash in the template would probably be enough.

There are potential downsides, like unexpected social consequences. One of the reasons HN users restrain themselves from getting into flamewars is because they're expected to. When people are expected to behave, they usually do.

Each HN user is, literally, their comments + their submissions. This may be an anonymous forum, but people feel a strong connection with their HN identity. When they make comments that cause them to look silly, they feel silly. Why is that?

If you let people change their identity, people may subconsciously stop trying so hard to live up to their current one.

Maybe allow each user to change their username only once.

There are also practical downsides: information on the internet is often scraped, archived and cached. For example at https://www.hnsearch.com/ and http://hackerslide.com/

If deletion is allowed, it would be easy to add "undelete" from a previously scraped copy, or even a page for all deleted comments with previous user details. Both of these already exist for Reddit. In a way, deleting a post would highlight and bring it to the attention of people looking for controversy or accidentally leaked information.

The WeLL worked like that (come back and erase comments), it made for some very problematic reading of old conversations.

This is no different to contributing to Wikipedia. You can't just have your edit history deleted. Wikipedia treats privacy seriously!

> And how far would deletion be expected to go?

I believe this is a 'slippery slope fallacy'. If I have the right to delete my comments, it doesn't immediately follow that I have the right to delete occasions where someone has quoted me.

The awkwardness of deleting quotes does not contribute any awkwardness to deleting comments.

Legally, this matter is simplified by acknowledging that written work is copyrightable.

The law around publishing copyrighted work is different than the law around quoting copyrighted work.

Hi Mr. Graham, thanks for taking the time to personally respond to my criticism. I'm a big fan of your essays (especially Keep Your Identity Small).

Having read your comment, I have a better understanding of why HN does not make the account deletion option available to users. I agree that preserving the flow of public discussion is important.

At the same time, I think other users in the comments below have raised interesting ideas (making comparisons to sites such as Reddit) about how to preserve the integrity of discussions while granting users a little more freedom to manage their data.

Besides offering criticism, I should reiterate that I think HN is a uniquely valuable forum. And I appreciate how difficult it must be to manage a technological website for technological people — because every user has a million suggestions and believes he or she knows best. :)

> I don't mean for the tone of this submission to be confrontational

Pretty hard to believe considering a title like, "how do I delete my HN data?" would have been more informative as to the post's content and would have made far fewer assumptions, not to mention it would avoid the inherent negative bias you have toward Facebook.

We need to stop promoting passive aggressive content like this. The author easily could have e-mailed site staff before taking up the pitchfork, and we developers know that a feature like account deletion doesn't just appear out of the blue -- it takes time to code. There's no need to paint HN as intentionally disrespectful of our privacy.

Perhaps a different title wouldn't have been upvoted sufficiently to get us all reading about and discussing the issue. It strikes me there's a strong element of direct marketing in getting from the New page to the front page. Once you're on the front page, of course, your content speaks for itself.

I consider HN respectful of my personal data by not asking for it, and respectful of the community by not allowing commenters to alter historical conversations, beyond a short pragmatic time window.

There's a line that needs to be drawn, and no matter where you draw it, you will find some people on one side and some on the other.

HN gives you more choice and freedom than Facebook (or G+), by allowing pseudonymity -- you just can't change your mind later.

Some people get a lot of professional and personal mileage by having their real name (or well-known pseudo) attached to HN content. Others actively avoid that. And a lot of people do both -- some simple analysis on HN comments can demonstrate multifurcation of single legal identities.

The common advice for this and many similar issues with hn is to email pg and ask him to delete your account, unban you, or give you a pony. Whether you consider this an acceptable solution is another question.

I imagine pg has more pressing matters to deal with. Better email info@ycombinator.com instead if you need something deleted. A YCombinator employee confirmed to me recently that this is the address to contact in case you absolutely have to, so it obviously shouldn't be abused.

I think there are other admins besides PG. I don't know who they are or how many there are.

Uh wait, FB lets you actually delete your stuff? Since when? From what i understand, the best they do is make it invisible to u and to ppl u know.

You could always permanently delete your account on Facebook.

https://www.facebook.com/help/www/224562897555674

My understanding was that despite "permanently deleting" if you go back and sign up it'll all magically restore.

No, that's only if you "delete" your account through the settings menu. If you fill out the form in the link it's permanent.

I believe he is referring to that if you delete your account, it will appear deleted. However, you can sign in again during some specified "grace" period to undelete it.

Deletion actually works, and in pretty much the way you’d expect of any site. Graph relationships that touch users are required to be deletable. Once deleted, there may be a record that an item existed and what type it had (post, comment, etc.) but the actual content is gone. Try downloading your data sometime from Account Settings—it’s fun to play around with.

I would not expect any site to actually delete much. Maybe deactivate or delink.

Do you mean you don’t honestly expect a site to delete content, or do you mean you would honestly expect them to delete it, but cynically expect them to violate that expectation? The difference is important.

I haven't played with the downloaded data yet, but I did this experiment once:

1) Copy Url of one of ur pics and save it somewhere.

2) Delete that Picture. (Now it doesn't show up in your photo album)

3) Access through saved link.

When i tried it, the image was still accessible, so FB didn't REALLY delete it. They just told me they did. I dont think it would show up in downloaded data (i am pretty sure they are smart enough), but they still have it. So...

Disclaimer: It maybe that for some optimization stuff, they use a deferred delete mechanism where they REALLY delete it from the system at a later date. But even if the saved link doesn't work, there's the possibility that they just changed the link.

Pictures can take weeks to be purged from their CDN, but when deleted, they are removed from the origin.

No, it's permanently deleted.

Perhaps because it's just not a widely asked for feature. You used to have to email pg if you forgot your password and needed it reset. Are there a large number of people all the sudden clamoring to delete their accounts?

> Why does Facebook seem to be more accommodating than HN when it comes to giving me the freedom to access my own data?

Presumably for the same reason that Eric Lippert gives for why certain nice and intuitive language features aren't implemented in C#: someone has to implement them.

For HN to have Facebook-grade privacy controls and account management, someone would have to write that code.

I don't think it would take "Facebook grade" anything to enable deleting or deactivating accounts.

When you write something and publish it on the public internet, it ceases to be your personal data. Discussion on a public forum becomes part of the public record and you are not entitled to alter it.

If you remember 1984, one of the first things that tells us we are in a dystopia is that Winston's job is to alter and delete from the historical record to suit his employer's purposes. Once you've voluntarily made something public, editing or deleting it is, in a sense, depriving the public of its right to know.

As far as accounts, deleting an account is largely symbolic. You are not entitled to be humored - if you don't want an account anymore, stop using it.

The only personal data HN has is your email address, which is optional - you are free to remove it from your account at any time.

I'd say: they don't respect your data more here's why:

You have no personal data stored in your account settings.

Some stuff you post on FB is supposed to be private, HN post are all public. Because they are public, they probably have been replicated quite a few times on internet archives.

Unlike FB, HN has no tracking tools (well not on the client side anyway), unlike FB which tries to track you everywhere on the internet.

Deleting your account is cumbersome to implement: how to deal with your comments, and would these need to be deleted too ?

The simple answer is that this perceived benevolence is forced upon Facebook anyhow, having a substantial presence in the EU and being subject to data privacy laws there. On the pg side of things I can only assume the chilling effect on conversation works as intended.

If you want to post something anonymously, at least HN doesn't force you to use your real name so what is the problem?

Sure, you might want to delete something after x months. But you can't delete it from the internet. Think about Google Cache, Archive.org etc...

It's generally a good practice to not put things on the internet that you don't want to be on the internet.

Follow that, and you'll find that the inability to delete an entire account is not a problem you need ever face.

Another thing I'd love to have while we are discussing data would be a way to download all of my own comments. I guess I could scrape the threads page, but an API would obviously be nicer.

https://www.hnsearch.com/api

There's a real conflict here between the expectations of individuals and the expectations of the group.

The individuals are usually told via user agreements that the content is theirs, and that they own their comments and data and are personally liable for the content of them. That is... if you libel someone, this is your problem.

And the group expects that once a collaborative work has been created (a conversation), that the work will stand in it's original form. And that implies that when others post a comment within the context of some greater conversation, that the context for their comment is preserved.

Therein is the conflict. If an individual deletes (physically removes) their data (we did tell them it was theirs), the collaborative work is affected and the context of everyone else's contributions is changed.

To resolve this nearly all fora work on the basis that you can nuke your account but not your comments. And if you do nuke comments, that you can only nuke a subset of them and that a marker will be left to indicate that a comment once existed.

This works about as well as you imagine, it pleases no-one fully and everyone just a little.

The alternative that is also taken by some fora is to have your contributions licensed in such a way that the operator of the site has a perpetual right to reproduce the content. Great... the group gets their value, but you've lost control of your content whilst still being liable for it.

And who is liable for a comment that now shows up with a [deleted] author? Likely as not, it's the site operator.

Everything on comments is just a shade of grey in this conflict zone.

When it comes to accounts. I fully agree with you. The account isn't a collaborative work, and it is solely your work.

The vast majority of fora allow account deletion by policy, but the software tends to not have caught up with the policy. Meaning you have to email the site owner and ask for deletion. On the sites I run (mostly vBulletin, some XenForo, a few Vanilla) I do deletions within a week or two of being notified. As the software doesn't support undeletion I tend to warn people and give a cooling-off period until a confirmation from the person is received to acknowledge it's an irreversible action.

I'm rambling... gist is: deletion of comments would affect the collaborative work that is the essence of a forum and should be managed with extreme caution by the site owner and attempt to leave things in context. Deletion of user profiles has no such impact and should be honoured, but unfortunately the buttons to achieve this tend not to be built into the underlying software.

And on a final note, I think systems that support aliases should be allow people to rename themselves too. But that's an even less-supported thing than profile deletion.

Forum software sucks, but it's not all the fault of software most of it comes from the social stuff surrounding a collaborative work.

i expect everyone to abuse my data to the maximum extent possible in their own best interest.

judging from the general tone around here most people take a much more naive approach.

just learn to know better and get on with it...

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