[teraflop]

It took me a while to figure out what exactly you were objecting to, but I guess you don't like the fact that HN sends its data to Firebase?

I don't think it's fair to criticize the admins for that. For pretty much any web application you want to use, "only visible to you and us" should automatically be understood to include "and our hosting provider too, if they go digging or screw up."

[dang]

The situation is actually tighter than that. We don't give the "only visible to you and us" data to Firebase (or anyone else), precisely so it won't matter if somebody else goes digging or screws up. You're protected from all of that. What you're not protected from, unfortunately, is us screwing up. We'll try our best not to do that again.