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theLiminatoryesterday at 11:29 PM2 repliesview on HN

Privacy regulations make soft delete unviable in many of the cases where it's useful.


Replies

wavemodeyesterday at 11:57 PM

Soft deletion and privacy deletion serve different purposes.

If you leave a comment on a forum, and then delete it, it may be marked as soft-deleted so that it doesn't appear publicly in the thread anymore, but admins can still read what you wrote for moderation/auditing purposes.

On the other hand, if you send a privacy deletion request to the forum, they would be required to actually fully delete or anonymize your data, so even admins can no longer tie comments that you wrote back to you.

Most social media sites probably have to implement both of these processes/systems.

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sedatkyesterday at 11:30 PM

The opposite is true in countries where there are data retention laws. Soft-delete is mandatory in those cases.