A project like this doesn't need a privacy policy or a data policy, and it doesn't need to address social problems. If we start imposing bureaucratic checklists and social burdens on little projects, that will smother them and kill all the fun.
If and when it turns into Facebook, legal teams will do the needful. In the meantime let's use HN to respond to people's projects in the intended spirit: fun, curious, creative.
[–] Arainach 8 hours ago
[–] dang 8 hours ago
It's easy for generic criticisms to pop up first in a thread because they come to mind so quickly. It takes little effort to fire them off or to put down someone else's work.
In this case you led with your feelings about social issues. Those are important, but in a thread like this, they are a bummer—doubly so when there hasn't yet been time for interesting (and interested!) comments to appear. What incentive do people have to share anything if they can expect to get scolded and told that society ought not to tolerate this?
That's why I'm replying at such length; probably too intensely, sorry! I don't intend any of it personally—I just know how sensitive to initial conditions HN threads are.
[–] noduerme 1 hour ago
Re previous reply, I didn't notice who I was replying to. I've removed it. That was my natural impulse... not to double down on the scold, I see your point of view, but we are so flooded now with vibe coded stuff made to filch our lives that the diminishing probability of it being in good faith is outweighed by likelihood that it's not, and I think instinctive reticence against uploading photos to an unknown site should be the norm.
I had a submission flagged a few days ago for what reason I don't know, but one of my more optimistic guesses was that it included a photo with a reflection of me that could've been enhanced.
I don't feel like this poster was necessarily attempting to inject social issues into the review of a Show HN, even if they were being a scold and doing the obvious scolding thing... I think that especially with the raft of vibe code now, data hygiene is probably the most critical hacking issue of our time, whether you build a project or just try someone's out.
I do get that it's a downer for someone to just start in aggressively criticizing someone else's project that way, but it'd be a legitimate criticism even if the rejector's view was just copypasta. People who write code now owe something to users. I owe it to users. I'm in possession of unbelievable amounts of personal data, and photos, and I take that responsibility seriously. I think debunking that type of critique as too common obviates the point that untrusted new sites asking for your personal data are so ubiquitous that people have stopped caring; should we really get mad at the people who raise warnings about them?
FWIW - never in a million years would I upload a photo to that site, and I think it's fair to warn people why not to. No matter the warm intentions of the site's author.
And now that I know who I'm responding to, I'm sorry about the snarky bits. Once I get revved up I. You know. If I'm banned again, LMK.
A couple of sentences saying "pictures won't be used for anything and will be retained for X days" goes a long way to reassuring even if there isn't source code or any way to verify them.