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Apparently they won't delete your old comments if you ask them to.

I'm someone who goes to somewhat absurd lengths to avoid tracking, but HN's policy doesn't bother me because I know the data exists elsewhere and deleting it here won't make a jot of difference to that.

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I'm not entirely sure they'd need to comply. The question is what the purpose of the data being collected was, but seems to me that if you emphasise the whole idea that this is a conversation (which HN does in several ways) then actually "We don't delete comments" is defensible.

If I'm reading a thread about a problem I'm having in a video game on Reddit and it goes "This is very frustrating because I can't get a rabbit to teleport", then a reply which is [deleted] and then "Oh! Thanks so much, I'd never have figured that out" I'm in exactly the same place as the original poster, but now with the additional agony of knowing that there was a correct solution and that it's hard to figure out what it is - ugh.

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Right to be forgotten is part of GDPR even though most people only think of cookie banners. There's no one-click export, either.
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Like most of the GDPR "Right to be forgotten" is not an absolute right. As you'll quickly discover when you insist that the bank needs to "forget" that you owe them a lot of money, there are plenty of legitimate reasons they can decline to "forget" you despite your invocation of a "right".
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That's cute. Your records are yours. Barring some agreement to the contrary, I have no right to mess with them or inspect them, even if they contain information about me.
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That's an interesting opinion, but EU law says the opposite.
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EU law only matters to those subject to it.
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Which is why I questioned American websites complying with GDPR, and pointed out that HN doesn't feel any need to.
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