Does this mean people can delete comments from HN?

aw1621107 7 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Only if HN counts as a "data broker" under the corresponding law [0]. It states:

> “Data broker” means a business that knowingly collects and sells to third parties the personal information of a consumer with whom the business does not have a direct relationship. “Data broker” does not include any of the following:

> An entity to the extent that it is covered by the federal Fair Credit Reporting Act (15 U.S.C. Sec. 1681 et seq.).

> An entity to the extent that it is covered by the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (Public Law 106-102) and implementing regulations.

> An entity to the extent that it is covered by the Insurance Information and Privacy Protection Act (Article 6.6 (commencing with Section 791) of Chapter 1 of Part 2 of Division 1 of the Insurance Code).

> An entity, or a business associate of a covered entity, to the extent their processing of personal information is exempt under Section 1798.146. For purposes of this paragraph, “business associate” and “covered entity” have the same meanings as defined in Section 1798.146 [1].

I don't think HN counts as a "data broker" under this definition since they state that they "do not collect any Personal Information unless you choose to provide your email address and/or information in the "about" field" for HN accounts and "do not sell or share your Personal Information (as those terms are defined under the CCPA)."

[0]: https://cppa.ca.gov/regulations/pdf/data_broker_reg_delete_a...

[1]: https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySectio....

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testing22321 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

[flagged]

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tomhow 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

We are never rude or obstinate like this. We will always do whatever we can to protect people's privacy, which we do by redacting PII and moving posts to anonymized accounts.

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adzm 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Conversely, they did help me out.

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downrightmike 5 hours ago | parent [-]

really just whatever dang feels like that day

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tomhow 3 hours ago | parent [-]

We take users' privacy seriously and have had a consistent policy for years. If anyone is worried about personally identifying information, we're always happy to redact the PII and reassign comments/posts to an anonymous account. The only thing we don't do is wholesale wipe someone's entire history from HN, because it guts the threads and ruins them for everyone else who participated and who might find them interesting to read in the future.

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testing22321 an hour ago | parent [-]

> If anyone is worried about personally identifying information, we're always happy to redact the PII and reassign comments/posts to an anonymous account

This is the identical line dang fed me, and what he did is useless. It changes nothing.

Stop saying you’ll go out of your way to help users when you clearly won’t. Changing my username on all my old comments to some other username is not enough. It’s trivial to figure out who I am, and then have all my comments attributed to me.

You should aim to actually do better, not just say that what you do now is good enough when it clearly isn’t.

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tomhow an hour ago | parent [-]

We go to great effort to find the right balance between a user's need for privacy and the community/public benefit in keeping threads intact and coherent (moving every one of a user's comments to a different username makes the threads incoherent).

On a case-by-case basis we can move a selection of comments to a separate username. We of course don't want anyone to be in danger.

	▲	testing22321 26 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		It seems like you’re more concerned about keeping threads from years ago coherent than you are about my wishes and safety. Middle ground: on any given topic change all my comments to some random user I’d, then a different one for every topic. threads will stay coherent, but people won’t be able to follow my old user name around topics for 14 years. I’ll send an email in the morning. I have to sleep.