You can't think of anything worse than not having a delete account button on a pseudonymous list of article comments?
> All we need to ask now is "Why"
HN already employs someone to manage this little discussion site, and he seems to have the bandwidth to handle an occasional delete request by hand. Why assume there's a more nefarious reason for not investing resources into automating that process?
Why is HN somehow outside of critique of Dark Patterns?
> HN already employs someone to manage this little discussion site, and he seems to have the bandwidth to handle an occasional delete request by hand. Why assume there's a more nefarious reason for not investing resources into automating that process?
The "little discussion site" is a feeder venue for the venture capitalist side. The words, "Strategic Operations" come to mind.
And I don't have to come up with "assumptions" of nefarious reasons. The fact is, that deletion is not available to us without significant dark patterns. Every other site has this to maintain data and/or users. Why would I expect HN not to be in this category when every other one is?
"Easy to sign up yourself and impossible to remove yourself" - the perfect dark pattern. All we need to ask now is "Why"...