[goatinaboat]

once you've publicly posted something that's part of an online conversation you can no longer unilaterally delete it.

But once you delete your account those posts can be attributed to “Deleted User”. HN doesn’t even do that.

[ghaff]

I agree that's a more defensible position. Of course, there are lots of situations--you have a bylined article "printed" in a newspaper/magazine, you write a book, you appear speaking in someone else's YouTube video--where it's not really reasonable to expect to be able to expunge what you've written from the public record.

This isn't a new thing. You couldn't typically delete a Usenet post either.

What has changed is how easily and casually people can put things out in public without editorial oversight that they may regret.

[goatinaboat]

You couldn't typically delete a Usenet post either.

In the early days of Usenet posts were ephemeral and would only last a week. That expectation was baked into the culture and everyone was surprised to find a sneaky organisation had been archiving it all to monetise later.

[ghaff]

Maybe in the very early days. But there were various archives of many newsgroups pre-Web (much less pre-DejaNews and Google).

[goatinaboat]

Yes lots of groups had their FAQs for example on an FTP site, but ordinary posts weren’t typically archived