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It's this account's only comment and was only created right before posting. It has no credibility.


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?


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.


The content of the message is the credibility. It doesn't matter where it came from or who posted it. This exact topic comes up every time Google reveals its true self and lots of us have a resurgence of our latent interest to de-Google (the massive inconvenience being the major barrier).


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.


> 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.


They could just be very concerned with privacy.


[flagged]


> 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."


It's also futile because you generate a signature that can be traced across aliases, sites, etc.


True, but it also assumes HN is engaging in this practice which is not a given because it's a rather unusual site.


If your point is that obscure topics are raised, couldn't that make you more identifiable if you have digital footprints on the same topic elsewhere?

HN also disallows post deletion past a certain period.


`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.


That puts some responsibility on you to provide more context for your comments as extra signals of authenticity.


No it doesn't. I don't care how many HN comments you have.


An extensive comment history signals alignment with the community.


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.


What does it mean to be aligned with HN? Cause pretty sure I'm not that


All communities have rules of behavior.


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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