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HendrikHensenyesterday at 9:11 PM8 repliesview on HN

I rotate accounts on "social media" (mostly Reddit and Hacker News, the others don't interest me) every few weeks or months to make sure not too much of my post history accumulates in one account. I would dislike it very much if there would be high friction to create new accounts. On the other hand my behavior is probably a major outlier.


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7777332215yesterday at 9:54 PM

Same, though I'm also surprised how easy I can make new accounts for this site. But I love that. Hope it doesn't require me to jump through a bunch of hoops in the future.

gnabgibtoday at 3:45 AM

You are aware of the guidelines? (You are not fostering community)

> 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.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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i_think_sotoday at 7:25 AM

Your behavior is only an outlier because we don't teach kids basic security practices and so they don't grow up into adults who think like that. We also don't teach kids how to avoid "Internet addiction" dopamine chasing, so seeing a number (eg: karma score) get smaller instead of bigger hurts feefees.

I'm well aware that the cyberlibertarian ethos endemic here opposes any form of regulation. But when the status quo clearly isn't working something has to change. Parent's have failed to step up and do their jobs. Somebody else has to.

trinsic2yesterday at 9:57 PM

I think the problem is you can be tracked by your email when you sign up for a new account. So I am not sure how this can be helpful.

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sridyesterday at 9:17 PM

> not too much of my post history accumulates in one account

I'm curious to hear what benefits you think can be gained from avoiding this.

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BobbyJotoday at 1:33 AM

Honestly, it's probably good if platforms disincentivize this. If you know creating a new account is high friction, you are more likely to take care of the account you have, and be a higher quality member.

If you intend your accounts to be thrown away, you will likely behave worse.

*I'm using "you" generically, I don't mean you specifically.

oofbeyyesterday at 9:15 PM

I think yours might be extreme. But I think the anonymity here is widely appreciated. And frankly necessarily relies on easy creation of accounts.

People share things that they often wouldn’t. And somehow the culture remains mostly civil. It’s a pretty fantastic forum IMHO.

Changing the rules would surely change the vibe, so to speak.

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Bombthecatyesterday at 9:28 PM

Reddit didn't ban you? I got banned for that lmao

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