I've been "h2odragon" online since 1991. My real name is completely generic (and shorter). You can find out what it is without a lot of effort, if you want, I'm not paranoid about it.
I'm just more comfortable and feel more special as "h2odragon."
IMO using your real identity anywhere online discourages open conversation and exploration.
I dont want current or future employers sifting through my post history, or anyone else for that matter.
Even if you don't think your opinions are controversial today, that doesn't mean they wont be in the future, and there are several groups that scrape the web to archive content they disagree with.
I have noticed that the overton window on some topics has moved so much that you can't even discuss them properly anymore. Attempts to deescalate don't work anymore or even make you a target.
> Even if you don't think your opinions are controversial today, that doesn't mean they wont be in the future, and there are several groups that scrape the web to archive content they disagree with.
And language changes over time, what used to come across as a joke can become quite offensive in the future. People will look at the post and interpret it in today's context and apply today's meaning to it. They will not attempt a charitable interpretation by checking what the context of a post was 5 years ago. And they will not check if for example 5 years ago we did not have the same level of evidence as today.
Even worse as well I have noticed that often times your statement gets misread. People will read something into your post you sometimes did not even intend. For some it is just because English is a second language. But other times you will see outright malicious attempts to misread a post to make it appear in the worst possible light just to satisfy their daily need for outrage.
> People will read something into your post you sometimes did not even intend.
I think this is an expression of something that seems to be a fundamental aspect of human nature: we tend to see what we expect to see rather than what is really there.
we are not in an exclusive enclave; there are hostile elements here.
there are also some major techplayers here, that im sure would be flooded out of functionality by a mob of lookyloos, that just want to say hi im your fan, autograph please?
I'm not here to enhance my personal brand. Doing that would require a passably distinctive name anyway - vs. I'm much closer to "John_Doe_37" than to "Isaac_Asimov".
I don't use my real name here (or anywhere online) because it lets me be more open and honest in my public conversations. If I used my real name, there are a lot of things I wouldn't dare to even comment on.
It is my real identity, though. It's one of the names I've been using consistently online for decades, so there is continuity. The "JohnFen" you saw online 15 years ago is still the same "JohnFen" you see online now.
Because while you could definitely find out who I am, I don't necessarily want this account to be the first thing that comes out if someone googles my name.
It's a very privacy-hostile site, it's the only site I've ever used where I can't delete my comments. Since I don't have control over my content here I'd never associate it with my real name. I don't remember everything I posted ten years ago. None of it was blatantly terrible, but I have evolved and don't know if I stand behind everything I've ever said. I could only consider an account here to be for throwaway content.
I have likely posted some terrible things online on various sites that could easily get me fired or cause me trouble. Sometimes these are illustrations in debate to demonstrate a repugnant conclusion. Sometimes they have been roleplaying the opposite of my actual position, to better understand it. Sometimes I have just had bad takes.
I think all of these are natural and healthy parts of the human growth, and legitimate uses of online conversation. Not everyone else feels this way, or care about the context of speech they find objectionable.
I do kind of agree with this, and I definitely resonate with not wanting to have to worry about what I said ten years ago.
But to the degree that HN is "privacy hostile" as you put it, with regards to not being able to delete comments, I'd say that it's also "privacy friendly" to an almost equal degree, given there is absolutely no personal information required in order to create an account.
And there is none of the usual invasive social network crap which drives me away from literally every online platform apart from HN.
The old comments are associated forever. I'm choosing to be more careful of my comments at the moment, but I may need to create a new account at some point to discuss things anonymously.
If the comment history is considered sacrosanct, it could be nice to be able to go back and retroactively change the username for an account, at least.
Comment history shouldn't be considered sacrosanct. This is just a web forum, nothing happening here needs to preserved for the ages. If Reddit and literally every other forum in existence can manage to allow users to delete comments, Hacker News should be able to manage as well.
Yea, I imagine this is hacker news idolizing themselves a bit, i.e. "we are very smart and this is useful discussion." Unfortunately we don't have the GDPR here in the US, with a right to deletion like in the EU, and I don't expect we'll get those features without some privacy laws.
"Right to deletion" doesn't apply to "anything I want deleted", but only to PII within the context of the GDPR. In my reading "everything I ever posted to HN" doesn't really fall under that. If you have some specific comment for a specific reason then that would be different.
On reddit this is a right pain, and really fragments discussions. Ending up in a 7 year old discussion with half the comments [deleted] or "I've overwritten all my comments with this bot" is not brilliant. Doubly so when you're trying to find a solution for a technical problem.
I'm pretty sure right to deletion does include account deletion, which I did not see anywhere as an option, but I could be wrong. As you mention, some of this might be possible by messaging the staff members directly. Last I read, there were like 2 moderators for this site who work their ass off.
As to your second point, reddit is not a public archive, or a court room, or any sort of entity that I would trust or expect to retain, much less make accessible, "public" discussions, technical or not. They have no obligation to give you anything, and the moment it's profitable for them to switch to pay-to-play, you can bet they will. Steve Huffman, the CEO of reddit, killed all the 3rd party apps accessing reddit, no? Not someone I will place my trust in.
[edit- added the below]
I would also add the court of public opinion is a place no one should be tried, and peoples' privacy trumps your desire for information, so it makes perfect sense that comments would be removed or stripped of a byline. Adding a byline redaction feature would be cool imo.
IIRC it only specifies deletion of private data, not "account deletion". Those are somewhat different things.
It's been a few years since I read the GDPR, and I'd have to re-read it again with HN's use case in mind, but I'm reasonably (though not completely) sure that "delete every comment you ever made" isn't covered.
I definitely believe it. I'm more worried about the scenario like that Marvel/Disney director who got fired because people found some off color tweet he made 10 years prior. Determined people can accomplish a lot, but removing some of the low hanging fruit would be nice.
> ... it's the only site I've ever used where I can't delete ...
Between "how deleted are my comments, really?" issues, and the number of sites that get hacked in a given week - I would not trust anybody's supposed "delete" feature for anything important.
(And for critical stuff...you might be able to talk @dang into performing a Sword, +Admin deletion here.)
It's true that we don't delete entire histories wholesale, but we have a big bag of other tricks to help with privacy requests, and we take care of such requests every day. We just try to do it with more precise tools than wholesale deletion. I realize it's not everything, but it's also not nothing.
If anyone has an issue like this, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and we'll see what we can do.
1 for projects you are trying to market - this account can be publicly tied to the project and you can use it to comment on related topics. Useful for building credibility
1 for everything else
Managing online personas is part of living a digital life. There is no need for everything you do online to be easily correlated to your real persona.
Anonymity and privacy are much harder to reclaim than give up, so you should give them up sparingly
I look back on the views I held 3 years ago, the things I said and/or did back then, and I cringe immensely. I do not want anything I write to be irreversibly linked to my real name, especially on a website that doesn't allow one to delete comments or even their own profile without an email to a moderator [1].
[1]: Not throwing shade at dang here, but I do not want any content I write to be permanent in nature especially when that permanence is at the whims and wishes of another human (I think that phrase was slightly awkward, please tell me if you found it awkward too).
Golden rule: different username per website (and don't connect them afterwards) unless you have an EXCELLENT reason to do so. Real name? Absolutely not.
Wikipedia admins have had people call their jobs to try to get them fired. You don't need good privacy practices until you do.
I don't go with a different name for each website ("forum", really, because it's not just websites). Instead, I go with a different name for each subculture. That way there is still a continuity of identity within a particular social group.
Using your real identity anywhere online is a terrible idea. I'm not sure exactly when it happened that it became normal but I'm guessing social media is why.
I see two problems:
1. You can never be truly honest. Everyone has a side they don't project when their reputation is on the line. With a pseudo you can project it, and dump the name if things get too hot. Maybe your opinion is en-vogue today but worthy of real life harassment later. Maybe you are a person who belongs to a group of people that are not well liked. Maybe alphabet soup agencies want you. Who knows - all you know is you can't predict the future.
2. It encourages validation seeking behavior. Evidence: social media. Professionally, linkedin is a shithole of validation seeking losers posting below-the-fold faux-philosophy and/or corporate shilling. These people likely wouldn't do this if their identity was not attached to a face, an address, and a company.
Overall, it's a net loss to use your real identity. For the last 25 years I haven't needed to tell anyone online my real identity and I won't for the foreseeable future. I have plenty of friends on IRC and other places that only know me by my handle. This is not a bad thing.
My family, friends and colleagues know my real name and that is enough.
I value the privacy of my family and friends and the ability to remain incognito.
In the world of psychotherapy there is no trust without confidentiality.
On the internet there is no trust simply because there is no confidentiality.
All this personal sharing doesn't make sense to me.
Who in their right mind thinks it is OK to share your real name on any website with the entire population of the world..
Why do you need to know who I am?
If only the Internet had an ethical Framework like the BACP
Extract from the Ethical Framework of (BACP) The British Association of Counselling and Psychotherapy.
We will protect the confidentiality and privacy of clients by:
a. actively protecting information about clients from unauthorised access or disclosure
b. informing clients about how the use of personal data and information that they share with us will be used and who is within the circle of confidentiality, particularly with access to personally identifiable information
c. requiring that all recipients of personally identifiable information have agreed to treat such information as confidential in accordance with any legal requirements and what has been agreed with the client at the time of disclosure
d. informing clients about any reasonably foreseeable limitations of privacy or confidentiality in advance of our work together, for example, communications to ensure or enhance the quality of work in supervision or training, to protect a client or others from serious harm including safeguarding commitments, and when legally required or authorised to disclose
e. taking care that all contractual requirements concerning the management and communication of client information are mutually compatible
f. ensuring that disclosure of personally identifiable information about clients is authorised by client consent or that there is a legally and ethically recognised justification
g. using thoroughly anonymised information about clients where this provides a practical alternative to sharing identifiable information
61 comments
[ 6.0 ms ] story [ 121 ms ] threadSeems like a lot less limitation too.
I'm just more comfortable and feel more special as "h2odragon."
I dont want current or future employers sifting through my post history, or anyone else for that matter.
Even if you don't think your opinions are controversial today, that doesn't mean they wont be in the future, and there are several groups that scrape the web to archive content they disagree with.
And language changes over time, what used to come across as a joke can become quite offensive in the future. People will look at the post and interpret it in today's context and apply today's meaning to it. They will not attempt a charitable interpretation by checking what the context of a post was 5 years ago. And they will not check if for example 5 years ago we did not have the same level of evidence as today.
Even worse as well I have noticed that often times your statement gets misread. People will read something into your post you sometimes did not even intend. For some it is just because English is a second language. But other times you will see outright malicious attempts to misread a post to make it appear in the worst possible light just to satisfy their daily need for outrage.
I think this is an expression of something that seems to be a fundamental aspect of human nature: we tend to see what we expect to see rather than what is really there.
there are also some major techplayers here, that im sure would be flooded out of functionality by a mob of lookyloos, that just want to say hi im your fan, autograph please?
It is my real identity, though. It's one of the names I've been using consistently online for decades, so there is continuity. The "JohnFen" you saw online 15 years ago is still the same "JohnFen" you see online now.
Bonus points for ungooglable usernames.
I think all of these are natural and healthy parts of the human growth, and legitimate uses of online conversation. Not everyone else feels this way, or care about the context of speech they find objectionable.
But to the degree that HN is "privacy hostile" as you put it, with regards to not being able to delete comments, I'd say that it's also "privacy friendly" to an almost equal degree, given there is absolutely no personal information required in order to create an account.
And there is none of the usual invasive social network crap which drives me away from literally every online platform apart from HN.
On reddit this is a right pain, and really fragments discussions. Ending up in a 7 year old discussion with half the comments [deleted] or "I've overwritten all my comments with this bot" is not brilliant. Doubly so when you're trying to find a solution for a technical problem.
As to your second point, reddit is not a public archive, or a court room, or any sort of entity that I would trust or expect to retain, much less make accessible, "public" discussions, technical or not. They have no obligation to give you anything, and the moment it's profitable for them to switch to pay-to-play, you can bet they will. Steve Huffman, the CEO of reddit, killed all the 3rd party apps accessing reddit, no? Not someone I will place my trust in.
[edit- added the below]
I would also add the court of public opinion is a place no one should be tried, and peoples' privacy trumps your desire for information, so it makes perfect sense that comments would be removed or stripped of a byline. Adding a byline redaction feature would be cool imo.
It's been a few years since I read the GDPR, and I'd have to re-read it again with HN's use case in mind, but I'm reasonably (though not completely) sure that "delete every comment you ever made" isn't covered.
Some people reported it found their old/alt accounts.
Between "how deleted are my comments, really?" issues, and the number of sites that get hacked in a given week - I would not trust anybody's supposed "delete" feature for anything important.
(And for critical stuff...you might be able to talk @dang into performing a Sword, +Admin deletion here.)
If anyone has an issue like this, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and we'll see what we can do.
1 for projects you are trying to market - this account can be publicly tied to the project and you can use it to comment on related topics. Useful for building credibility
1 for everything else
Managing online personas is part of living a digital life. There is no need for everything you do online to be easily correlated to your real persona.
Anonymity and privacy are much harder to reclaim than give up, so you should give them up sparingly
Even outside that culture, creative nicknames were the norm on the multitude of message boards like this one which were common before social media.
I suppose the custom persists because it is useful, and comfortable, and people like it.
[1]: Not throwing shade at dang here, but I do not want any content I write to be permanent in nature especially when that permanence is at the whims and wishes of another human (I think that phrase was slightly awkward, please tell me if you found it awkward too).
Wikipedia admins have had people call their jobs to try to get them fired. You don't need good privacy practices until you do.
I see two problems:
1. You can never be truly honest. Everyone has a side they don't project when their reputation is on the line. With a pseudo you can project it, and dump the name if things get too hot. Maybe your opinion is en-vogue today but worthy of real life harassment later. Maybe you are a person who belongs to a group of people that are not well liked. Maybe alphabet soup agencies want you. Who knows - all you know is you can't predict the future.
2. It encourages validation seeking behavior. Evidence: social media. Professionally, linkedin is a shithole of validation seeking losers posting below-the-fold faux-philosophy and/or corporate shilling. These people likely wouldn't do this if their identity was not attached to a face, an address, and a company.
Overall, it's a net loss to use your real identity. For the last 25 years I haven't needed to tell anyone online my real identity and I won't for the foreseeable future. I have plenty of friends on IRC and other places that only know me by my handle. This is not a bad thing.
In the world of psychotherapy there is no trust without confidentiality. On the internet there is no trust simply because there is no confidentiality.
All this personal sharing doesn't make sense to me.
Who in their right mind thinks it is OK to share your real name on any website with the entire population of the world..
Why do you need to know who I am?
If only the Internet had an ethical Framework like the BACP
Extract from the Ethical Framework of (BACP) The British Association of Counselling and Psychotherapy.
We will protect the confidentiality and privacy of clients by:
a. actively protecting information about clients from unauthorised access or disclosure
b. informing clients about how the use of personal data and information that they share with us will be used and who is within the circle of confidentiality, particularly with access to personally identifiable information
c. requiring that all recipients of personally identifiable information have agreed to treat such information as confidential in accordance with any legal requirements and what has been agreed with the client at the time of disclosure
d. informing clients about any reasonably foreseeable limitations of privacy or confidentiality in advance of our work together, for example, communications to ensure or enhance the quality of work in supervision or training, to protect a client or others from serious harm including safeguarding commitments, and when legally required or authorised to disclose
e. taking care that all contractual requirements concerning the management and communication of client information are mutually compatible
f. ensuring that disclosure of personally identifiable information about clients is authorised by client consent or that there is a legally and ethically recognised justification
g. using thoroughly anonymised information about clients where this provides a practical alternative to sharing identifiable information
Perhaps add h: keeping the therapist's cell phone in a sound-isolated enclosure.