Yes, this needs an entire manual.

Step 1

• Migrate off anything that might be on Nest
• Remove Hackatime credentials and plugins whereever applicable
• (optional) Unsubscribe from mailing lists
• Save any potentially important Slack attachments
• Change your timezone to (UTC-08:00) Pacific... (Slack's fallback, common due to oversight not allowing "Atlantic/Reykjavik" (common spoof) to link correctly)
• (optional) change your username to either "Deactivated user" or something forbidden (misspelling someone else is the smallest offense) to make an admin do it later
• Change anything else potentionally sensitive in both your Slack profile to placeholders (probably duplicated elsewhere anyway)

Step 2

Navigate to hackclub.slack.com/account/settings (your browser and/or settings don't allow that) Press "Log out all..." to prevent further notification connections and then "Deactivate account" Disable notification permissions in the browser (if enabled) You may now uninstall native Slack aplications (if you've tortured yourself with those)

<i> Benefits to still doing this include addiction stopping and letting others know you have left via the "Workspaces" field.
It is still possible to use attachment URLs until an unpaid admin has decided to deactivate you from the organization.

Step 3

Skip if you want a stronger case in Step 5 Navigate to auth.hackclub.com (not on this browser!) On the sidebar press "Addresses" For each saved mailing address, press "edit" Change all values to nonsense and country to "North Korea" (no reasonable person would believe test test lives there) (and again, this is probably duplicated elsewhere) On the sidebar press "My info" Do the same, the phone number can be "911" for clarity

Step 4

• Navigate to hackclub.com/privacy (any browser) and then click on the form link under "Your Rights and Choices" (fully featured browser only) <!> Achtung! Remember to locally write down each field name and value exactly as in the form for later.
• Fill out your name (unfortunately real) and account email
• Choose "Delete..." (may or may not repeat with "Get a copy of..." afterwards)

  <i> While still unlikely to succeed, it may aid to also get your parent/guardian to complete the form specifying so.

• Carefully specify each possible kind of information you may have left and where (if possible, including git hashes)
• Optionally use a legal tone while providing definitions, if you understand how
• Press "Submit..." and confirm with an email code
• You have finished for the most part. But your rights were probably broken. You could go cry about it online, or...

Step 5

• Research you jurisdiction's privacy law (yes, really!)
  
  • Just look up "{name} privacy law" and skim through all of the requirements
  • Example for EU: gdpr-info.eu
  • You may also ask an LLM if you are into that but make sure it's actually repeating what is said on a government (looking) website
• Look for: third party processing and disclosure, disclosure in general, deletion requests, scraping, leaks and notifications
• Now, find the contact information and template for your local data protection authority

  <i> Most jurisdictions (including most EU officers) will reject a mere "report".
  In this case you should specify exact dates and describe all actions for when specifically your rights were violated.
  This may also make the authority setup a formal communication link with HC, similarly to a legal dispute.
  You may demand monetary compensation through it (research this part as well).
  This should be a concious decision you are making.
  If you don't have a case right now but your jurisdiction has right for deletion, wait ~60 days and come back.
  Yes really, save this page locally in multiple places and setup multiple reminders across devices and applications to not miss it.

• Fill it out (see note); the contact information for HC is (whichever requested, otherwise all):
  Name: Hack Foundation
  Postal Address: Hack Club
  8605 Santa Monica Blvd #86294
  West Hollywood, CA 90069, USA
  EMail: [email protected]
  Phone: +18556254225
  Physical address: 15 Falls Rd, Shelburne, VT 05482, USA


• Proofread and send
• Most importantly, good luck!

Reasons.

1. The terms look templated and were setup just before a collaboration with Open Sauce; they do not address most of the previous criticism.^[1]
2. Terms state: "Please check {this} periodically for {...} changes", with no notifications of change.^[1] This is the kind of stuff Mojang gets away with.
3. No effort is made to confirm parental permission of the children under the respective local limit for entry (to the online space).^[2][1]
4. The project "orpheus-engine" mass scrapes webpages and social media matching personal data.^[2][1]

   <i> The General Data Protection Regulation, article 4:
   personal data means any information relating to an identified or identifiable natural person (data subject);
   an identifiable natural person is one who can be identified, directly or indirectly,
   in particular by reference to an identifier such as a name, an identification number, location data,
   an online identifier or to one or more factors specific to the physical, physiological, genetic, mental,
   economic, cultural or social identity of that natural person

5. "orpheus-engine" feeds data to OpenAI and genderize.io^[2], as well as projects in general use Airtable^[1] (third party processing), without legal disclosure.
6. The founder and cofounder make up and overexaggerate facts for damage control, such as calling a trans woman transphobic^[3].
7. Terms: "none of these representations create a binding obligation to provide the Award"^[1]. This is confirmed in practice^[3].
8. Housing program ("Neighborhood") had an API backdoor^[1].
9. Highseas backdoor^{[1] [better citation needed]}.
10. Juice backdoor^{[1] [better citation needed]}.
11. Personal data git tracked on Shiba^[4][6].
12. Campfire backdoor^{[citation needed]}.
13. Most staff is poorly paid (for Vermont standards)^[1] and are sometimes misclassified^[5].
14. A human sized collar, an item most would consider fetish^[1], has been sold to minors for scrips^[6] on a whitelisted "second market"^[7].
15. Enshittification and community disconnect over time^{[source: everyone who's been there >= 30d] [1][2][3][5]}
16. People like to pretend that nothing ever exists outside of this place. From pushing clearly tech-clueless people there to stuff like putting "I am on Slack" ("what Slack? so you are employed?") on social media profiles^[1]
17. This list is not complete! Just the mere fact.

References:

1. Personal observations, easily verifiable.
2. Ella: first (relevant) blog, second blog, third blog, forth blog (most definitive).
   One of them (called "Another one") has been lost to time and space. It doesn't matter too much, as most of it is duplicated.
   Source: seen it. My memory of it is blurry, however.
3. ChiefDelphi Discourse instance threads, see one of them (anchor: transphobia accusations) (archive of first page, archive of that one page).
   Best viewed with scripting disabled.
4. The way GitHub operates, the diff is still visible from fork base URLs. That's just public now.
5. Reese Ricci Armstrong: blogpost, archive.
6. 4chan thread (extreme language and PTSD/mental triggers (and I mean it), proceed with caution).
7. Code diff containing "black market".

<i> "Hard Fork" by Reese is no longer in service.

Hard Fork is no longer alive anymore for the most part, =
I recommend looking into https://amcforum.wiki as a replacement.

- reeseric

FQA (Frequently Questioned Answers)

Why does the URL look weird?

You are probably viewing this from an IPFS node. The short answer is that I cannot afford a real web server at the moment and want to preserve anonymity.

Why not {x hosting provider}?

Ignoring anonymity:
OpenNIC requires extra actions on the user's end; I2P, Freenet and Tor are the same except also needs the user to install stuff; "big tech" providers would go against the very site this is inspired by AND I am too broke to pay IANA for a domain.

Some new shit happened! Can you update this?

There are some technical difficulties associated with that. IPFS (the vibecode) only represents immutable indexes.
I may or may not have a redirect to the current latest version at nerdvpn.de/s/giveuphc (if you see a page on the topic claiming it's me and that version has no mention of it, it's likely a lie).

I don't want to leave, I have friendssssss here, now what?

If they are true friends, they will follow you onto other platforms and IRC chatrooms and such. Or perchance even meet you IRL. The entire planet doesn't revolve around that one place.
No, you may not meet me IRL. I am an internet personality, I do not exist.

I don't want to leave, I want free stuff?

I mean, that's your choice. You will likely be used as advertisement for rich people by rich people, but as long as you are fine with that...

If I were to get free stuff from billionaires' wallets in the most private way possible, what would it be?

Well, you still need an ID (matching your IDV name), and likely a phone of sorts (VoIP and landline fit) for postal reasons. So, pretty much not private at all, makes perfect sense.
You could skip the postal address and phone for non-physical gifts (which I don't suggest getting anyway).
You could make the name everywhere else different (explicitly allowed for trans people but nobody would know in case you aren't).
Basically just avoid talking and remove everything from your profile. Set the timezone to "(UTC) Monrovia..." in this case (more plausible).
Do NOT try to fake your ID. No matter what you think about the staff, they will know.
For IPs, login via a VPN/Tor once and then visit the Slack workspace from a app.slack link only.

I don't want to leave, I am a mentally broken #confessions user? :(

Oof, that's a hard riddle to solve... But teens somehow vented before that place existed. Again, the entire planet doesn't revolve around it.
I'm sure that you've managed to make some friends along the way (see above). Even if not, that's fine.
Put leaving on hold (!!) and test other chatrooms (as long as some part of your story is on topic) and things like Lemmy to see if anything works.
Sometimes the mere act of writing your feelings down works. If you are really desperate, I guess there are image/text boards.....
Please note that actual church confession rooms exist. And mental health facilities, if you trust those. Stay safe!

I don't want to leave, I want software/hardware advice and yap?

Go to the websites of your favorite projects and look for some sort of "IRC/Community" button, especially near headers and footers.

B-but buh stickers?

If you want furry stickers, go get furry stickers. If you want mascots, I'm sure Puffy the Pufferfish would look great!

B-but buh content creators?

You mean your Scratch ragebaiter and stuff? These exist for entertainment. It may be a good idea to treat stuff you see there as fiction. Really not too big of a deal not meeting them.

I'm interning there, now what?

If you can't find a better position, you shouldn't leave. Nobody should really treat a job as their entire personality, that's a terrible way to look at the world. A man should have hobbies. And non-men too.
At least one person left, but being a hobo (especially in the US) isn't a great experience.

Who are you again?

It's very much possible to figure out who I am (don't get it wrong!) but I am intentionally creating friction in contacting me.

Why aren't the blogs locally saved?

I want to workaround some copyright law. Also, a loss of archive.is would probably mean a fall of the civilization we know anyway...
...on second thought, "weird copyright law" also includes not attributing yourself. But, oh welp at this point.

This site looks terrible! Why?

Look at the Dillo bug counter. Then Context menu - Save... this page then get the libwww "Line Mode" demo (second ever browser) and try it in that... I guess this answers the next question of

How do I keep myself entertained while making it feel productive without that place?

Silly things like this. You could also try reading something you've never tried, like porting a program to a new/old OS.

Are you pretending to be in a culture you may not actually have place in?

maybe :(

What is this logo? Looks awesome!

It does not. Stolen figlet fonts. About as impressive as that one AI company's logo. The coloring was added with my copy of Python.
"can't they just beat you or something? that's horrible; also we don't handle child abuse issues here" some IRC user in mention of parents taking me to Python courses

Why did you call all vulnurabilities "backdoors"?

This level of negligence... It could be intentional. But nobody can prove it.

Is this a conspiracy with the FSB and CIA with the use of Ghostty?

No. Despite what the videos say (satire).

How do I support... ...whatever this is?

The least you could do is share this or pin it! ...please?
The docs for the reference IPFS implementation, kubo, are pretty much worthless because someone thought it was a good idea to explicitly allow vibecode... sounds familiar...
But it's the best we have. Sorry.
ipfs init
ipfs config Plugins.Plugins.telemetry.Disabled --bool true
ipfs pin add {rootCID}
ipfs files mkdir /giveuphackclubv2/
ipfs files cp /ipfs/{rootCID} /giveuphackclubv2/
systemctl --user enable ipfs # rc-update or your favorite init system/script here
systemctl --user start ipfs # rc-service or your favorite init here
I don't know the rootCID because I haven't published this yet! It's the big piece of seemingly random letters and numbers in the link here.

What's the <bgsound> here?

holy_egypt_outside2.mp3, as part of MIT licensed free (as in freedom) software.

Are you Russian?

"Yes, I'm Rushing to your mom's bedroom tonight" - tsoding

Why did you make that "Winterflow"?

Was just poking fun with a friend at how much an ID is needed everywhere while I can do shit like this at any time anon. Could even make it trigger every message if I really wanted to.
We even have a meme for that, it's a stock picture of a gate in the middle of a field with the caption "Hack Club".
No, I am not "stupid" for not making a bot for that. The Slack API has to "call back" the bot with an HTTP request over the clearnet. I can't do that anon (without money).
No, I did not expect to make any meaningful impact with this. In fact, literally nobody from the time frame seems to have turned around.

Erm, how dare you talk shit about my favorite place?

Sue me.