To onlookers reading this, to the degree that these are designed to erase forum content to prevent public discoverability, you should know that these are effectively impossible in some sense:
- ability to delete account and all posts/comments
- ability to delete account but leave posts/comments up
- ability to change username
- ability to disable profile from search indexing (and ensure the subdomain or link alloted reflects changed username)
In fact, much simpler actions, such as running a Python snippet I could provide, could download much of this information in <5 minutes on an office computer.
I write this for “personal deontological reasons” basically, however the availability and permanence of this information is not due to me. For example, consider the situation if one had information about other, non-EA entities collecting this information (which might suggest one reason to collect this, of many).
Note that this situation cannot be prevented by shutting down the API (e.g. array of scraping residential proxies).
Separately and additionally, much more information is available than might be obvious, again using just the publicly available information on the forum.
In addition to “deontological” reasons, one reason I comment is that I want to discourage adding duties or tasks to the EA forum development team, since this might often not actually do the thing you want.
Aiight.
To onlookers reading this, to the degree that these are designed to erase forum content to prevent public discoverability, you should know that these are effectively impossible in some sense:
For example, this project itself makes this impossible.
In fact, much simpler actions, such as running a Python snippet I could provide, could download much of this information in <5 minutes on an office computer.
I write this for “personal deontological reasons” basically, however the availability and permanence of this information is not due to me. For example, consider the situation if one had information about other, non-EA entities collecting this information (which might suggest one reason to collect this, of many).
Note that this situation cannot be prevented by shutting down the API (e.g. array of scraping residential proxies).
Separately and additionally, much more information is available than might be obvious, again using just the publicly available information on the forum.
In addition to “deontological” reasons, one reason I comment is that I want to discourage adding duties or tasks to the EA forum development team, since this might often not actually do the thing you want.