> It's worth mentioning the the CEO Austen had a post on here (now deleted) proclaiming to have creating a bot army via stealing people's pictures on Instagram.
But it was not actually deleted, as pointed out by wheelie_boy, it was edited to be a different username.
I've personally helped over a thousand HN users with these sorts of requests. If you know how we can do a better job of that, I'd love to hear about it.
What do you mean, these sorts of requests? If you mean deleting ownership data as is the case here - that's incredibly problematic and erodes trust in the site and you as a moderator.
Privacy-related requests. Because we don't delete entire account histories [1, 2], we do other things to help. That might include randomizing a username or otherwise renaming the account, deleting or redacting sensitive information, reassigning particular posts to random usernames, and more. We try to find a fair balance between the different interests involved; individuals' need for protection, other commenters' interest in having the context of their comments preserved, the community interest in preserving its archive, and so on.
I don't know what you mean by "incredibly problematic" etc., but if you think we should send such users away without recourse, that's an extreme position which a large proportion of the community would disagree with you about, especially as the pendulum of opinion has been swinging in the pro-privacy direction for years now. People frequently flame us for not doing more to delete history.
Just to repeat what I've already said a couple times today, we don't make any distinction between users who make these sorts of requests. We try our best to be as consistent as possible, and whether they're a YC founder or not doesn't enter into it.
That's one of several standard things that we do to help users who email us with privacy-related requests. As I've explained at those links, it has nothing to do with being a YC founder.
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[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 25.4 ms ] thread> It's worth mentioning the the CEO Austen had a post on here (now deleted) proclaiming to have creating a bot army via stealing people's pictures on Instagram.
But it was not actually deleted, as pointed out by wheelie_boy, it was edited to be a different username.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26949343
Nice job, dang and friends.
I don't know what you mean by "incredibly problematic" etc., but if you think we should send such users away without recourse, that's an extreme position which a large proportion of the community would disagree with you about, especially as the pendulum of opinion has been swinging in the pro-privacy direction for years now. People frequently flame us for not doing more to delete history.
Just to repeat what I've already said a couple times today, we don't make any distinction between users who make these sorts of requests. We try our best to be as consistent as possible, and whether they're a YC founder or not doesn't enter into it.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html
[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6813226
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26959559
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26959675
That's one of several standard things that we do to help users who email us with privacy-related requests. As I've explained at those links, it has nothing to do with being a YC founder.
Please don't stir up meta drama on HN.