There are web crawlers that retrieve the data and store it, then making it available to everyone. Once it's here it's in the world, and removing it only from here is pretty much irrelevant.<p>As the web currently stands, if you put something on it you have already lost control, so framing the question as one of "owning your own data" is misleading.<p>I've up-voted the question because I believe it's important and should see a discussion of how future systems might be able to handle this, not because I agree with the implicit sentiment. Personally it would be fascinating to see a real world implementation of the "Oubliette" as given in Hannu Rajaniemi's novel "The Quantum Thief."
Some random, not organized thoughts on the issue:<p>On HN, you have two hours in which to edit your comment or even delete it if no one has replied to it. If you aren't sure you want it to remain on the permanent record, you can remove it at that time.<p>People who think they can erase what they said at will tend to behave poorly. People who think they can change handles with impunity and fool everyone tend to behave poorly. They think they can get away with it.<p>There are valuable things said in comments that people often want to look back up.<p>Having a record helps prevent he-said-she-said style of arguments. People tend to remember things differently from what actually happened. A written record can show who actually said what.<p>If you say it once and someone is stalking you, they will remember it or even keep a record of it. If there is no record of your remarks for you to reference, you may well forget that x, y and z is out there.
> Wouldn’t it be more user friendly and privacy aware, allowing users to own their data?<p>Yes. It's a huge glaring oversight that a community so IT focused and that often complains about "Facebook" and privacy can't even see when it's happening.<p>But HN is not a utility like Facebook or Youtube, so you can argue, their site, their rules.<p>But the irony is what is annoying. The idea of dogfooding privacy and digital rights seems lost on HN.<p>PS Getting Shadowed banned will help stop getting yourself indexed at least.<p>PPS And the argument other sites might index HN anyway so it's ok to do is so flawed it's delusional.<p>PPPS The argument that the old info is of value is also "horder" style delusional. We need to stop this idea if absolutely everything is not kept (at the cost of privacy) it matters.
Thank you for the pleasantries gentleman. You've all responded in way to avoid any risk of possibly wanting to delete your comments in the future. How very diplomatic.