Account Deletion Feature Request

[Leon-Sander]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.
Would be nice to be able to delete ones account.

Describe the solution you'd like
A button with which (after confirmation) one can delete his account.
Ideally there would be an additional option to then also delete all posts and comments
made from this account,

[ekzyis]

Afaik, first user request to delete account: https://stacker.news/items/229252

[ekzyis]

Afaik, first user request to delete account: https://stacker.news/items/229252

@hellmanhellman, I see you changed your bio again. I've read your request to delete your account and that you mentioned GDPR.

Do you want us to delete your account now or not? If so, make it official by sending a mail to ek@stacker.news or kk@stacker.news.

edit: I see, you created a dedicated post

[m0wer]

This looks important. The challenge probably is not breaking threads and so on.

Probably the best is to implement the same behavior as Reddit: username references, posts, and comments get replaced with [DELETED]. But everything else (other user's replies) is still there.

Additionally, the user should mark a checkbox or something to accept the loss of remaining CCs or sats. And we should make sure that the deletion does not break scheduled jobs such as the rewards one.

[huumn]

Those all sound like good additions. We could move all records we want to keep to a user called deleted or something, then delete the rest very carefully.

[m0wer]

Implementation plan

• Approach: Implement a "soft delete" mechanism that anonymizes user personal information while preserving content structure where needed.
• User Experience: Add a "Delete Account" section in settings with clear warnings and confirmation steps.
• Data Handling:
  • User can choose to delete/anonymize their content or leave it intact
  • Personal information is nullified regardless of content choice
  • Transaction records are preserved for accounting or whatever you might need
  • Remaining balance must be withdrawn before deletion
• Technical Implementation:
  • Add deletedAt timestamp to User model
  • Create database triggers to handle anonymization
  • Add GraphQL mutation for account deletion
  • Modify authentication to reject deleted accounts
  • Exclude deleted users from crons like rewards distribution
  • Update UI components to display "[deleted]" for deleted users and disable zaps
• Security & Privacy:
  • All personal information is removed from database
  • Sessions are invalidated for deleted accounts
  • Clear warning flow prevents accidental deletions
• Impact Assessment:
  • Preserves thread integrity in discussions
  • Maintains transaction records to be cleaned up as usual
  • Protects user privacy by removing personal data
  • Prevents reuse of deleted usernames

Questions

• Option to delete account despite balance greater than 0 (sats or CCs)? And they go to the rewards pool.
• I guess it's best to disable zaps and rewards to content created by deleted accounts. But I might be missing something. Would someone still want to bump content despite the creator's account being deleted? Might make sense for the case of a deleted user that leaves the content visible (e.g., DarthCoin removes his account but leaves guides or other cool posts).
• Also remove the username from the database? More private for the user but would enable re-use of deleted account usernames (would this be a bug or a feature?).
• Do we clean up all transactions automatically as well or is it ok/better to wait for the regular cron to do so?

[m0wer]

Progress Update

Made some progress!

✅ What's Done:

• Soft delete with deletedAt timestamp
• User data anonymization (email, pubkey, etc. all nullified)
• Username gets hashed with deletion timestamp to prevent unique constrain problems
• Optional content deletion that replaces posts/comments with [deleted] + hash
• Balance validation (must withdraw before deletion)
• UI in settings with proper confirmation flow
• Auth checks to reject deleted accounts
• Display [deleted] in UI where deleted users appear

🤔 Questions:

1. Hash approach - is using SHA256 hashes for usernames and content cool? Keeps some uniqueness while anonymizing. And could allow for account recovery in the future.
2. Zapping deleted content - deleted posts/comments can still be zapped since the content structure remains. Is this the behavior we want?
3. Still unresolved from earlier:
   • What to do with remaining balance if user insists on deletion? (send to rewards pool?)
   • Should we completely remove username from DB to enable reuse of deleted usernames?
   • Clean up transactions immediately or wait for regular cron?

The core functionality works but would love feedback before continuing.

[huumn]

1. the hash is neat. I wonder if we still need it given we use opentimestamps
2. iirc our manual item delete prevents zapping, but if it doesn't this is fine
3. • remaining balance can just be donated I guess
   • ideally
   • transactions? if you mean money stuff, I'm not sure. invoices are foreign keys referenced in a lot of places, withdrawals shouldn't be deleted for at least 7 days after their creation

It looks like you made a call on most of these already. I'll try to check out the PR soon.