That problem seems like an extreme outlier. Such user protection would prevent "crimes of opportunity". The average person is not going to have a constant backup of HN in case one day they might want to spy on someone's past.

And if they do, they're likely to start with Twitter or Facebook - something useful against more of the population. HN users are still very much a minority.

The problem doesn’t appear to be that much of an extreme outlier, the thread poster is concerned about a specific tool. That tool has already downloaded the complete data set, he’s already lost.

And there's no guarantee that service will stay around, or that they won't accept requests. I still think it's worthwhile to reduce the attack surface.

Nothing going forward can help in that case, but we can still weigh impact on other threat models going forward.

"We refuse to help because it's a mild inconvenience to us and we'll justify it by assuming that it won't help without knowing for a fact that it won't."

That's a fascinating stance that you've outlined and that others have parroted. A stance that HN has implied with the reply to OP.

I’m not in charge of anything at HN, so how can my statement say HN won’t do something?