So I was going to be making this thread anyway at some point, but seeing as Govind posted the big thread in announcements yesterday, it seemed adequate to make it today.
Regarding the right to vanish
This thread is essentially to highlight a big flaw I have noticed in this policy, along with arguments as to why users SHOULD be able to have certain content removed from the site (depending on the circumstance and their situation) and finally a solution that could benefit both parties. Other people are free to chime in their thoughts.
Let's look at some examples (these examples are genuinely honest scenarios):
- User posted their e-mail on here long ago that and an employer may have that same e-mail on record and perhaps that user posted content that they may not want their employer to see (silly content in the Spam Forum for example). There have been plenty of occurrences online of people being linked to random websites and their employer has flagged them up and they've got in trouble for it.
- User has joined another community online and has the same user-name or e-mail and may have links to content they don't want that community to know about. While you can change your username on here now, your OLD user-name / email being quoted in a post or mentioned in a locked thread is still going to be an issue. Plus all someone has to do is make a thread saying "X user is Y user but they changed their name" rendering the entire username change pointless.
- There could just be general content a user made when they were less "mature" and would prefer it just gets removed for the sake of embarrassment. (Hell, fuck knows how much shit I posted on here when I first joined that I would never post now). I would imagine EVERYONE has posted something years ago they would never post now.
I would say a lot of users are mainly concerned with people finding their content from OFF-SITE, not so much ON-SITE. So you probably wouldn't care if someone in the spam forum found something and giggled at it, but you might care a lot if an employer or another community you are a part of came across it.
One big flaw I have noticed in this policy is staff themselves can actually go and remove their old content from the past on their own or even for their friends, so why can't we? Now of course the admins will say "well, this policy applies to staff too." But what is actually stopping any staff member from editing and deleting their old posts on here? This is not intended as a jab at the staff, but it is true - if someone became a staff member then that's essentially all they need to just start clearing out anyone's old posts or whatnot from before.
Long story short: Staff can quietly take down their old posts + content without anybody knowing, I highly doubt an admin is going through each and every moderator action that is made to check for any odd actions. Given how we still have threads going from 2007, the amount of threads is quite large and there's simply no way to detect when something is quietly taken down. Yes Google likes to save caches, but they refresh every few days (and you can even write to Google to clear a cache sooner). No one is actively watching the moderator actions (unless they are suspicious or a situation arises when they have to review something if a dispute has risen).
One big argument the staff will have for removing content is "If you wanted something taken down, you shouldn't have posted it in the first place." This is very true, except no one can predict the future and like I said earlier - we've all posted stuff from when we were younger and we may have just been oblivious or just not really thought about we are posting online. We were all young and stupid once, saying "well you should have known better when you were a child" is not a sensible argument at all.
We are in the digital age now where an insane amount of information on the Internet is public information and search engines like Google have made all this possible. Go look at your Facebook profile 5 years ago and see what sort of stuff you posted, I bet you all anything there is stuff there you would never post today.
In addition, I've found that most websites out there do have some sort of policy in place that will allow you to remove info you've posted and delete your account and so on. Reddit being one of these places (although discussions that you have started won't be deleted, but your user-name won't be attached to it anymore, so in theory there is no way to link it to you).
This is a general process list of how this would work:
1. User creates private case (for content removal) and it goes to Staff Lounge (or higher, depending on which rank of staff is deemed appropriate to decide on this).
2. Staff review it and discuss if the content is worth anything and if it could pose any risk or harm if it was soft hidden.
3. Staff come to a decision on what to do with the content and carry out the necessary action.
Outcome A - If successful, the user that requested is PM'ed on the outcome and the content is hidden.
Outcome B - If not successful, the user is PM'ed the outcome (including the reason why) and the content stays.
If the "only viewable to users logged in" feature is implemented - To be able to view content made only viewable to logged in users with the privacy issues - you would need something like at least 50 posts, maybe 14 / 28 days registered on the site. This would prevent things like employers or other communities simply making an account just to see if there is any additional hidden info about a user on here. (These limits would have to be not publicly mentioned, so it is just something that appears when you reach the criteria. Given the small amount of content that would end up being made viewable to only be viewable to users logged in, this would not be a problem or noticed at all).
One last point: If you are perm banned for scamming, malicious acts or even if it done off-site and it has been brought to light here. You are NOT eligible to have ANY information (personal or otherwise) removed while banned. Also, if you have had any content hidden away but you later scam or end up perm banned for something quite bad (including off-site activity of the same nature) - staff will make your hidden information public once more as punishment. Perhaps a record could be kept of all removed content just so upper staff would always have it to hand in the user does pull anything funny. This makes perfect sense because a genuine user who wants their info hidden is not going to go off and commit serious offences here or off-site if they know their info will just be "made public" again.
To sum it up: Do staff HAVE to or are legally obligated to remove content we make? No, but I feel we should be offered the chance to have content we made private if we can make a good case and if the user is not banned or is marked as suspicious.
Staff can remove content they've made without any real way to track it or keep an eye on it, so why shouldn't the users?
UPDATE:
Staff have confirmed since this thread was made that they will in most cases delete threads a user has made in the personal support section.
Furthermore, Richard (@Sythe) has confirmed that "removing content" would certainly be up for consideration under GDPR (whether this only applies to users in Europe I don't know). More information is needed on this, what exactly is removed and how much a "trace" of you is left upon your account being removed (for example if people who have quoted a post you made once is retained or deleted / your name edited out).
Regarding the right to vanish
This thread is essentially to highlight a big flaw I have noticed in this policy, along with arguments as to why users SHOULD be able to have certain content removed from the site (depending on the circumstance and their situation) and finally a solution that could benefit both parties. Other people are free to chime in their thoughts.
Let's look at some examples (these examples are genuinely honest scenarios):
- User posted their e-mail on here long ago that and an employer may have that same e-mail on record and perhaps that user posted content that they may not want their employer to see (silly content in the Spam Forum for example). There have been plenty of occurrences online of people being linked to random websites and their employer has flagged them up and they've got in trouble for it.
- User has joined another community online and has the same user-name or e-mail and may have links to content they don't want that community to know about. While you can change your username on here now, your OLD user-name / email being quoted in a post or mentioned in a locked thread is still going to be an issue. Plus all someone has to do is make a thread saying "X user is Y user but they changed their name" rendering the entire username change pointless.
- There could just be general content a user made when they were less "mature" and would prefer it just gets removed for the sake of embarrassment. (Hell, fuck knows how much shit I posted on here when I first joined that I would never post now). I would imagine EVERYONE has posted something years ago they would never post now.
I would say a lot of users are mainly concerned with people finding their content from OFF-SITE, not so much ON-SITE. So you probably wouldn't care if someone in the spam forum found something and giggled at it, but you might care a lot if an employer or another community you are a part of came across it.
One big flaw I have noticed in this policy is staff themselves can actually go and remove their old content from the past on their own or even for their friends, so why can't we? Now of course the admins will say "well, this policy applies to staff too." But what is actually stopping any staff member from editing and deleting their old posts on here? This is not intended as a jab at the staff, but it is true - if someone became a staff member then that's essentially all they need to just start clearing out anyone's old posts or whatnot from before.
Long story short: Staff can quietly take down their old posts + content without anybody knowing, I highly doubt an admin is going through each and every moderator action that is made to check for any odd actions. Given how we still have threads going from 2007, the amount of threads is quite large and there's simply no way to detect when something is quietly taken down. Yes Google likes to save caches, but they refresh every few days (and you can even write to Google to clear a cache sooner). No one is actively watching the moderator actions (unless they are suspicious or a situation arises when they have to review something if a dispute has risen).
One big argument the staff will have for removing content is "If you wanted something taken down, you shouldn't have posted it in the first place." This is very true, except no one can predict the future and like I said earlier - we've all posted stuff from when we were younger and we may have just been oblivious or just not really thought about we are posting online. We were all young and stupid once, saying "well you should have known better when you were a child" is not a sensible argument at all.
We are in the digital age now where an insane amount of information on the Internet is public information and search engines like Google have made all this possible. Go look at your Facebook profile 5 years ago and see what sort of stuff you posted, I bet you all anything there is stuff there you would never post today.
In addition, I've found that most websites out there do have some sort of policy in place that will allow you to remove info you've posted and delete your account and so on. Reddit being one of these places (although discussions that you have started won't be deleted, but your user-name won't be attached to it anymore, so in theory there is no way to link it to you).
This is a general process list of how this would work:
1. User creates private case (for content removal) and it goes to Staff Lounge (or higher, depending on which rank of staff is deemed appropriate to decide on this).
2. Staff review it and discuss if the content is worth anything and if it could pose any risk or harm if it was soft hidden.
3. Staff come to a decision on what to do with the content and carry out the necessary action.
Outcome A - If successful, the user that requested is PM'ed on the outcome and the content is hidden.
Outcome B - If not successful, the user is PM'ed the outcome (including the reason why) and the content stays.
If the "only viewable to users logged in" feature is implemented - To be able to view content made only viewable to logged in users with the privacy issues - you would need something like at least 50 posts, maybe 14 / 28 days registered on the site. This would prevent things like employers or other communities simply making an account just to see if there is any additional hidden info about a user on here. (These limits would have to be not publicly mentioned, so it is just something that appears when you reach the criteria. Given the small amount of content that would end up being made viewable to only be viewable to users logged in, this would not be a problem or noticed at all).
One last point: If you are perm banned for scamming, malicious acts or even if it done off-site and it has been brought to light here. You are NOT eligible to have ANY information (personal or otherwise) removed while banned. Also, if you have had any content hidden away but you later scam or end up perm banned for something quite bad (including off-site activity of the same nature) - staff will make your hidden information public once more as punishment. Perhaps a record could be kept of all removed content just so upper staff would always have it to hand in the user does pull anything funny. This makes perfect sense because a genuine user who wants their info hidden is not going to go off and commit serious offences here or off-site if they know their info will just be "made public" again.
To sum it up: Do staff HAVE to or are legally obligated to remove content we make? No, but I feel we should be offered the chance to have content we made private if we can make a good case and if the user is not banned or is marked as suspicious.
Staff can remove content they've made without any real way to track it or keep an eye on it, so why shouldn't the users?
UPDATE:
Staff have confirmed since this thread was made that they will in most cases delete threads a user has made in the personal support section.
Furthermore, Richard (@Sythe) has confirmed that "removing content" would certainly be up for consideration under GDPR (whether this only applies to users in Europe I don't know). More information is needed on this, what exactly is removed and how much a "trace" of you is left upon your account being removed (for example if people who have quoted a post you made once is retained or deleted / your name edited out).
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