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Note that there was a major press cycle about this in October / November of last year - a quick Google showed stories in the Guardian, The Intercept, and the Cornell Sun, as well as commentary on Reddit. Not inconceivable that they found about it last October and had six months to leave and de-Googlify.
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> Note that there was a major press cycle about this in October / November of last year

Fair point. However...the parent's comment is also fair because the article does a poor job of raising this material fact. You have to click through a sub-article.

It's almost like this article should be tagged (2025) because it's basically a replay of the author's account from 2025.[0]

[0] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/oct/05/palest...

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As other comments say, it was a major story months ago. I started moving off around December. It's a long process to switch over all email accounts. I only recently got self hosted kubernetes set up for immich as a Google photos replacement and some other hosting needs but for the most part I am off google. I get probably 1-2 emails a week still going to Gmail but when I do I just switch those accounts to my new email. It will be a while before the old Gmail is deleted entirely unfortunately.

I didn't mention it in op but I also moved to graphene os which tbh feels much better than android has recently.

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Setting aside the fact that this is a new account and it's their only post, what about the timeline is difficult to understand?

The request came in April 2025, and the user was notified the following month. That's next to a year for them to hear about it internally and then quit and setup self-hosting prior to today.

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It's this account's only comment and was only created right before posting. It has no credibility.
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If they were motivated enough by this story to delete 20 years worth of history maybe they were motivated enough to create an account and talk about it?
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I don't care. The UX means I can't give it any credibility.

For all I know this could be somebody's OpenClaw spouting bullshit. The default credibility of all throwaways is zero and that was even true before 2023.

If you let it influence your opinion in any way you're a fool.

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From busterarm's profile: "Most people are stupid and/or on drugs."

The account is from 2013 but given that profile, I can't give it any credibility. After all, it could be somebody's OpenClaw having been granted control of the account.

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> After all, it could be somebody's OpenClaw having been granted control of the account.

Luckily for HN, I actually have a post history. You can use my post history, textual analysis and statistics to make an informed decision about whether I'm a bot or not. Whether I'm being consistent or spouting any random bs.

The account I was responding to doesn't have anything.

> The account is from 2013 but given that profile, I can't give it any credibility.

What's in my profile is a statistical fact. It's there as a reminder, to me, not to expect everyone to see the world the same way that I do. To be comfortable with strong disagreement.

Just a hair shy of half the population is below average intelligence. Roughly 1 in 4 people has a cognitive impairment. This is of any age but trends upwards with age, reaching 2 in 3 by age 70. 1 in 4 Americans take psychiatric medication. 1 in 4 participates in illegal drug use. We haven't even touched on alcohol abuse.

My profile statement is just objective reality, whether you're comfortable with being stated openly or not.

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They could just be very concerned with privacy.
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One of the best things about hn is that accounts are cheap and disposable. For me, most threads get their own account. I don't like people tracking my full comment history across the internet with it all tied to one account, even when it's just one I use to comment on harmless tech stories
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> For me, most threads get their own account.

This is a violation of the guidelines: "Throwaway accounts are ok for sensitive information, but please don't create accounts routinely. HN is a community—users should have an identity that others can relate to."

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It's also futile because you generate a signature that can be traced across aliases, sites, etc.
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`Throwaway accounts are ok for sensitive information, but please don't create accounts routinely. HN is a community—users should have an identity that others can relate to.`

This just proves my point to discount what you say. You're basically admitting to being a pest.

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That puts some responsibility on you to provide more context for your comments as extra signals of authenticity.
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No it doesn't. I don't care how many HN comments you have.
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An extensive comment history signals alignment with the community.
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What does it mean to be aligned with HN? Cause pretty sure I'm not that
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All communities have rules of behavior.
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Oh ok, I'm fine with that, but that newbie account is following the rules and being respectful. Same cannot even be said about some accounts with 9999 points.
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More than that but they back up the things they say with something more than vapor.

You don't have to dox yourself, but people have to be able to at least call you out on consistency. There needs to be some indication that you're not _just_ a sockpuppet.

Otherwise I don't have any justification to engage with your expressions seriously.

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Maybe they read one of the articles written about this incident months ago.
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