Yes, this needs an entire manual.

Step 1

• Migrate off anything that might be on Nest
• Remove Hackatime credentials and plugins whereever applicable
• Unsubscribe from mailing lists
• Save any potentially important Slack attachments
• Change your timezone to (UTC) Monrovia... (most common)
• (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 stopping addictions 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 (including git hashes..., see reason note 8 for example)
• 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 they will probably lie about deleting your messages. In 60 days. And your rights were probably broken already, and if not then in 30 or 60 days. You could go cry about it online (like me), 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 (I don't doubt this org's demographics), 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 (not just guideline violations). 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: team@hackclub.com
  Phone: +18556254225


• 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) (although this is a benefit to some).^[2][1]
4. The project "orpheus-engine" (now "data warehouse") 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" (now "data warehouse") 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][1 (search: "retrospect v2")]}.
8. Housing program ("Neighborhood") had an API backdoor^[1][2][3].
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 (thread was removed IIRC)]}.
13. Some staff is poorly paid (for Vermont standards)^[1] and are sometimes misclassified for exploitation^[5].
14. A human sized collar, an item some 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 overshare inside and pretend that nothing ever exists outside of this place, also effectively depending on it (although the latter isn't inherently bad in my opinion)^[9]. 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. They have lied to me by omission (yes me, the person writing this) that my messages were removed^[8].
18. People can literally just conspire against someone to complain about them and kick them out without proof^[9].
19. A kid was laughed at for "having a bad computer" (discrimination by socio-economical status) by staff after the kid in question complained about a website being more demanding than a good videogame, especially at the time when the site automatically loaded a map^{[1 (search: "The mail.hackclub.com site is horrible")]}.
20. As most other registered non-profit organizations, it operates on interests of the companies funding them, to advertise their work and services (like Slack itself, GitHub, Bun.JS...) to kids who don't know any better^{[source: literally everyone]}.
21. This list is not complete! Just the mere fact.

References:

1. Personal observations which you may probably observe yourself if you try, in the workspace (eg, via search) or official content. Grass is usually green.
2. Ella/sleepydev: 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 (living), see one of them (anchor if it works: transphobia accusations) (archive of first page, archive of that one page).
   Best viewed with scripting disabled.
4. The way that GitHub operates, in 2025, it was available under the URL https://github.com/hackclub/shiba/commit/8334117745f080dd3b49c192cde854f25c136d0c.diff (and /logs_result.json instead of .diff at the end). Up until at least 04.2026 (April), it was still available when "hackclub" was replaced with the nickname of one of the fork owners (example was "froppii", though they have removed the fork and it doesn't work with anyone else's nickname either anymore). A few variants of the links are still available on the archives, this is left as an exercise to the reader.
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".
8. Here's A quick and dirty screenshot of my request reply in front of Slack; while I don't have the exact form fields to prompt this, I did first draft it like for an email, not aware that there was a form. Don't actually include the "train to poland" part if you are writing your own, as the violation has to happen while you are in the EU for the GDPR to count.
9. Trigger warnings: suicide, bullying. "Letters By Krish" first (and as of writing the only) entry. Requires a Hack Club (not Slack) account, intentionally as per the writer's wishes. Doesn't seem to check if the account is ID verified or has a banned/unprovisioned Slack account or anything (so you can hypothetically go to auth.hackclub.com to make a new account then not even accept the Slack EULA and go straight to this page). Also, you can save the page as .html from your browser's context menu, just saying.

<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

It has since seen some activity in the form of an IRC server but that has mostly died out as well. Even devio.us IRC has more activity, by orders of magnitude. Maybe not in the whatever future you are reading this from...

Please note that "amcforum", despite once having a global (JS only) notice saying "As featured on the manual about giving up Hack Club" (citation needed), has placeholders like "[NUMBER OF DAYS] days" on the /privacy page. At least as of that notice AND as of writing.

Conspiracy theories (/jokingly).

• The name "Hack Club" was chosen not only for search engine optimization, but also for preventing other communities naming themselves as clubs of hack (in fact, the original selling point was school club grants only and they are all called "Hack Clubs" collectively), as well as ruin search results for the previously active "hack lab" (with the letter A) sites.
• "The hacker ethic" inside of Hack Club refers to their marketing "philosophy" page, because the actual "hacker ethic" as written in the book "Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution" (I quote) says: "The last thing you need is a bureaucracy. Bureaucracies, whether corporate, government, or university, are flawed systems, dangerous in that they cannot accommodate the exploratory impulse of true hackers". Yes, I totally walked my ass all the way over to all of the book stores in this middle of nowhere and found this extremely specific book from 1984 just to open a single page, quote it on my laptop and then put the book back never to be opened again.
• Pointless #meta posts or conditions for them are made intentionally to make current drama in the channel go up out of view on people's screens.
• The IRC network stopped not because it was too complex to add a basic auth bot but because the kids would probably find other IRC servers and actually learn about "big tech" alternatives.
• The cost of electricity burned by React refreshes (on x86) and backend logic together on HCB exceed the value of most transactions.

FQA (Frequently Questioned Answers)

Why not complain about {other thing abc}?

It probably already has complete enough coverage. If not, reach out with a hint or two, maybe it will. No guarantees.

Why not {x hosting provider/solution}?

OpenNIC requires extra actions on the user's end; I2P, Hyphanet 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 refuse to pay the big ICANN for a domain.

I will probably (eventually) offer this page over Tor and others, but the target audience isn't the one who would use these. Regardless, wherever you end up seeing this from, this does not necessarily mean that I endorse them or that they endorse me.

Something new happened! Can you update this?

If this form doesn't do anything, mail to: hchasdonegoofedagain at paranoici dot org. PLEASE read the rest of this first.

If you are sending anything resembling text for the intended purpose of submitting info to be included on this page, regardless if serious or not, you hereby release your email under the same terms as this page. Obviously, your personal data (the address you mailed from) will be stored on my provider's servers. Don't include more.

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 if you are into that. 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?

Well, 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 are good enough) for postal reasons. So, pretty much not private at all, makes perfect sense.

• You could skip the postal address and phone if you are only going for non-physical gifts like a Factorio account.
• You could make the name everywhere else different (de-facto 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...".
• I don't suggest trying to fake your ID. No matter what you think about the staff and their intelligence, they might know. Although it's highly illegal, the highest recorded consequence is that you will have to start over.
• For IPs, login via a proxy/Tor once. As far as I know (no guarantee), your IP won't be logged to the admin viewable log (but will log to SalesForce ofc) if you then visit the already logged in Slack workspace from an app.slack link only (NOT hackclub.enterprise...).

While not privacy related, you could make it look closer to this shitass webpage with this userstyle (shameless self-plug). No, I don't know why that site uses the Gopher (Golang) mascot. Also, yes I know Slack changes stuff every 0.02 picoseconds, use the form above to complain about it being broken.

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. 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/BBS/maillist" button, especially near headers and footers.

B-but buh stickers?

First ask yourself if you actually need stickers. If the answer is still yes, read further. If you are into the ones that fake another logo, look up "misbrand stickers". If you want furry stickers, go get furry stickers. If you want mascots, I'm sure Puffy the Pufferfish would look great! Now, there are a couple of options: find a local company that prints stickers; buy sticker paper then unroll your ancient scroll of Winblows XP 2D printer drivers; steal some sticker paper then get a local internet cafe to print your premade .ps file with all of the stickers you want; get someone else to make the stickers.

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.

But didn't an austronaut acknowledge this org?

Some person that happened to be on the ISS, yes. I am sure they all had to record 6 more acknowledgements then talk to 8 mortal amateur radio operators testing their equipment that day. Well, depending on how you define day, I would assume they are working in shifts.

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.

I'm using HCB, now what?

If you are a simple accountant, there's a whole load of nothing you may do. If you are the organization owner, I don't have much anything to say other than that I am not aware of anyone complaining about OpenCollective...

Why aren't the blogs locally saved?

Intellectual property sucks, I am putting the burden of that on someone else. Also, the loss of archive.[is|ph|today] would probably mean a fall of the civilization we know anyway...

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... Also, it doesn't look too bad in Chawan (no border around info blocks, rest looks exactly as intended). 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 about 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 a quarter of AI company logos. The coloring was added with my copy of Python. Yes, 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.

Law, huh, so you like being told what to do, good little citizen?

No! I am in favor of openly protesting bad law. Law often sucks but that doesn't mean noone should leverage it.
^{(yes, this is political now, I like politics now, although I suggest putting our differences in this regard aside)}

So are you a lawyer then?

No. Verify statements yourself.

I thought this org was on the left, no?

Having a rainbow logo variant != "on the left". It's adjacent but one doesn't necessarily mean the other. There are whole businesses dedicated to pretending to care about stuff called "cause marketing": "the amazon forests are burning, here at Shell we are very sad".

Would you add "kids are allowed to use hormone medicine at physical events despite signed contract with parents" to the least of reasons?

Thought about it for a while but no. See, there's a loophole in there, actually. The breach of contract is excused when there's a reasonable threat to human life. Now, from what I've heard, missing a dose causes all sorts of trouble, including death. And it's reasonable to assume it's not someone's first dose if they decided to (and could) bring some to an event. So, that should be totally legal. In fact, I would likely add to the list of reasons if someone gets hurt from not being allowed a dose.
^{(While cis people very often need hormones, it's unlikely to be omitted from the medication form by their parents, so yes, this point is primarily on the topic of trans rights. Yes, very woke, boo, scary.)}

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

Not necessarily, despite what "the edits" implied (dos uno :skull: :skull: crows who mow). There's no need for anyone to conspire here, it's just relying on people being naive and/or inexperienced (and it's marketing itself at inexperienced teens).

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

That's the not-so-neat part, you probably can't. Apart from the usual "copy and share". If you insist on a monetary(-like) reward, I did have a DogeCoin private key somewhere rotting without use... Ask I guess.

Isn't this more about you and your opinions than about Hack Club?

That's... just what happens when you attempt to write a section that answers questions. Lots of questions are opinions.

What's the Where is the music at the top of the page?

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

The main voice sample seems to be "Welcome to holy Egypt outside". No, I don't know what the other sample says, please don't ask me about it.

UPDATE: The above is false. The EXPAT license is a software license, it's terms cannot be applied to something else (try lol). I have assumed the 9p share has a license header for the website (technically software), so the mp3s would be it's assets, as I was told on IRC. I have mounted the 9p share in question (tcp!9front.org!9000) and can confirm there isn't, in fact, a license header in sites, sites/9front.org and sites/9front.org/mp3. So it is nonfree and I don't want to spread it anymore, although that was probably very much unintended with the "nobody will sue you" attitude.

> 09:27 < hiro_> diaphragmwp: your mother is nonfree

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".

Yes, I am stupid for not making a bot for that. I have assumed the Slack API has to "call back" the bot with an HTTP request over the clearnet (from the little code I've seen of that) and figured it's too much of a hussle. Actually, it's quite more ironic this way, using the org's OWN tools against them.

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.

How about you get a job? Employment, not even censoring it or trigger warning it, ooo, scary.

Well, don't be a hypocrite, do you have a job? Also, if you are the right class, don't be unconstructive, send offers. No set schedule because the fascist dictator called "dad" gave me ADHD with constant sidequests; remote unless you manage to pinpoint my house and set up your office within 200 meters. A little bit of C, a little bit of Python 3, 2/3 polyglot and RPython (mentioned above), a little bit of Golang, a little bit of all sorts of markup. (Very) basic skills in SolveSpace CAD and KiCAD, too. Willing to learn most of everything, although I am allergic to object oriented programming. Unfortunately, can't demo much, as most of my "abandonware learning" projects are either unfinished, have falling apart dependencies or have been lost to time and space.
^{(this is "tongue-in-cheeck", I don't expect to get an offer, especially one worth taking from an offtopic email)}

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

Well, if you don't like what's being said here, you could just close this page. Maybe ignore whoever sent it to you. No, this is not libel as this has not (as of writing) caused any """damages""" and I don't see how any of this is explicitly untruthful, in bad faith or too out of context. By this logic, "Give Up GitHub" is also defamation, against Microsoft. Also, my country doesn't even seem to define that as a law.

Wouldn't God hate you?

God loves everyone. Apart from that, I am writing this out of love as I wouldn't wish to be treated this way upon some of the worst of my enemies, which should cover me (on this specific manner) out of consequences in pretty much every belief out there. If you count atheism and the end poem as beliefs, yes, that too. Except maybe satanism. And scientology, close enough...