Generally speaking, not really worried about it. I don't see HN as a risk vector. If I was worried about it, I would have run it through a standalone browser on a fresh machine (or VM) behind a VPN, and not spoken in my "voice" (I would have used ChatGPT to rewrite)
Not the first time I've used a throwaway, and they've never merged my comments into my main account (only use throwaways for these types of discussions - I assume abusing it, such as ban evasion, would be a different story)
I once created a throwaway on HN for something sensitive, and I happened to be on a VPN at the time. My comment started out dead and I had to vouch for it on my main account.
So I think that's just the tradeoff they make, in order for HN to be able to exist. It probably gets reversed if you email the support link.
“Throwaway accounts are ok for sensitive information, but please don't create accounts routinely. HN is a community—users should have an identity that others can relate to.”
"Throwaway accounts are ok for sensitive information, but please don't create accounts routinely. HN is a community—users should have an identity that others can relate to."
You routinely flaunt the rules by creating multiple sock puppet accounts to avoid the rate limits, which are there for a reason. This account is one of them. Your other accounts have been banned for that reason. You have also launched massive denial of service attacks against HN users. What you are doing is wrong. Stop it. That is why I've flagged your postings.
HN has no real name policy. Why not sign up for another account that you use to discuss riskier topics? As long as you're careful to not include identifying details in posts, you should be okay.
Missing out on substantive discourse simply because of fear would make me sad.
9 times out of 10 I agree with you, but HN is a rare site on which there are often genuine causes for a throwaway account, when people have good input to make on a thread but for work related reasons can't do it under a name that their colleagues/boss/etc. might recognise.
Anecdotally, I once tried to create an account on HN by going through tor - HN allowed my account creation to go through and even let me post my comment.
But my comment wasn't visible to anyone else.
It was all very clever.
I think the HN's simple user interface is deceptively simple - there is clearly a lot more going on than I had assumed.
Requests like these are better sent to hn@ycombinator.com, but note that they simply won't reply to you if they get busy or don't feel like it.
From my testing, HN has various anti-abuse features to prevent people from creating accounts to dodge bans or moderation penalties. E.g. if you create an account using Opera's VPN, your account's comments will all show up as [dead].
Perhaps they believe that there's no valid reason to use a VPN to check HN other than to dodge penalties. Either way, it's important to remember that we don't see the good things that come of choices like this.
That's exactly my point. I think I am safe on HN because I'm using a random user name with no email attached. But their logs definitely have my ip address and that ip address will be common across other compromised logs on other sites, some of which I might be logged into with a real email (this is true regardless of incognito mode since it's the same computer).
I find it funny someone submitted an HN account just created. Seems like a good way to possibly get your main in trouble, assuming the moderation tooling links your main and newly created throwaway.
That's a good question, and I do care. And because I know the HN crowd is less tolerable of these things, I actually had a filter to NOT show it to visitors referred by HN.
And now, as I mentioned, I'm experimenting with a different type of prompt that I hope will lower that risk.
Please don't routinely create throwaway accounts. We ban those. HN is a community—anonymity is fine, but users should have some continuous identity that other users can relate to. Otherwise we might as well have no usernames and no community, and that would be an entirely different site.
I would like to upvote you, but I am genuinely afraid at some point HN is requested to share users' data, and someone at US GOV will ask me why did I sympathize with your message.
Not the first time I've used a throwaway, and they've never merged my comments into my main account (only use throwaways for these types of discussions - I assume abusing it, such as ban evasion, would be a different story)
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