I’ve seen this happen a bunch of time now that people just ask a question and it’s deleted a day or so later. Do they delete the question themselves, or is that some automatic thing? If they do it themselves, why?
*edit*
Thanks for the great answers so far. Very insightful. Please keep them coming, I’m curious to more points of view.
I’ve deleted a few comments where I read further in the thread and realized somebody already said what I said, or I interpreted the topic incorrectly and my comment was meaningless, or some other reason I thought it just didn’t add anything. I think I deleted an Ask Lemmy question one time because I almost immediately found the answer myself or decided the question really didn’t make any sense.
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I’ve done it once asking a question. However once I got my answer and I edited my post with “solved with (insert reply from one of comments)” and people still replied with the same answers for a few days with slight variations. I got fed up with notifications and deleted the post.
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prove it haha ;)
you should delete this post
To prevent annoying trolls from digging through my post history, mostly. I’ve seen people do this on Lemmy, one person even had a stalker that would go server to server to reply angrily to their posts because he felt “wronged” somehow. Plus, nobody is reading this stuff after a month anyway, the only readership of old comments is AI scrapers trying to steal my words for their algorithm.
Of course, deleting stuff on Lemmy doesn’t mean actually deleting anything. You can trivially ignore deletion requests as a server and some seem to keep old copies of deleted content.
There’s no automated way to do it with Lemmy so I’ve written my own automation tool that occasionally runs.
5mb tool to delete comments. Also available as an .exe
Feels like smashmouth_heynow.mp3.exe all over again lol
I’ve seen people do this on Lemmy, one person even had a stalker that would go server to server to reply angrily to their posts because he felt “wronged” somehow.
those need to be reported and banned, their replies mass deleted.
Plus, nobody is reading this stuff after a month anyway,
Because we don’t have a proper (or any) system for subscribing to threads. but if I have saved a link for myself for future reference, it’ll be gone!
I’m just saying, don’t be surprised if people start running instances that disobey deletions
I gotta be honest. Idk how there isn’t a removededit for lemmy yet.
Personally the app I use sucks, so I realize I commented on the wrong thread and I delete the duplicate
Me reading my posts from a week ago: “Fucking hell, I used to be so cringe back then!”
It’s that quick for you? I either immediately cringe, or it takes years to fester in my brain and then suddenly it’s my brain tripping me up with “remember that stupid comment you made to this person years ago? CRINGE! CRINGE FOR ME, MINION!”
Yeah I’m not sure why
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My feelings exactly.
I tend to do the much more efficient system of writing an entire essay to then decide to delete it before posting.
I recognize that strategy. I’d be typing out an entire epistle, only to delete it all in the end, because I figure I wouldn’t add anything to the discussion, or I don’t feel good enough to comment on something :)
Half the time, it’s because I don’t read the original comment closely enough and realize that my point no longer makes sense, but I usually only do this if it’s less than a minute or two after posting.
That makes sense for comments, but what about posts to a community?
I always assumed it was because either deleted because it was a bot post, or they self-deleted because they got down voted and got mad about it.
A bot post is another possibility indeed. I hadn’t considered that.
Often, they just spin up a disposable account, post, and delete the whole account w/content after they’re done. It’s annoying AF and incredibly selfish. For a while, it was the same person doing it, though not sure if that’s still the case.
Regardless, those people have ruined things for everyone (especially legit new users) and I will not engage with accounts newer than 30 days. Lemm.ee evacuation notwithstanding, I kinda wish other people took a similar stance and maybe these people will knock that off.
I agree. It’s annoying and selfish. I often go back to older threads I’ve participated in to see other people’s points of view, to see if maybe I missed something. But to then see “permanently deleted” or words of that effect, that’s just sad. I can’t learn from those. No one can.
OTOH, it’s understandable given the endless apettite tech has for profiling people. The Fediverse is not Big Tech, but Big Tech wants all the data anyway, and given its open nature, it will get it eventually. Temporary accounts are a way to make it a bit harder for Big Tech, at the cost of making it worse for legitimate users.
If the Fediverse had some protection against data greed, maybe less people would be wary of leaving a long data trail. The best it can do so far is using nicknames and multiple accounts.
big tech will just scrape in realtime and at the point you deleted it they have already produced all kinds of profiles about it for you
Good point!
You check the age of every account you interact with? Can you see this easy or you’re opening up each account?
I’m the dev of Tesseract.
New accounts have badges that show their age if they’re between 0 and 30 days old (among other tricks up my sleeve)
Ah I saw that In your account, it took me two minutes to load it up because of my shitty internet and partly the connect client so I was sure there’s no way you would check each time.
I wish I could do site wide badges for stuff like that but at the end of the day I only ever recognise the one person who give me the shits on lemmy and I have them flagged haha.
Everyone else I figure is out with good intentions until they prove otherwise
Unrelated to the thread, but love your username (took me a minute to get it)
Also, yeah, love the “good intentions until proven otherwise” attitude. Two years here have nearly beaten that out of me (despite me knowing better).
Imagine being a legit new user and being shunned because your account is not 30 days old.
Besides which, I find the expectation that people should create an account and use that in perpetuity very frustrating.
I have a bunch of accounts and change according to my mood. Nothing nefarious or antisocial, I just don’t want a big silo of comments. My accounts are not an extension of my identity.
I didn’t say I had a problem with any of that. But spinning up a burner, posting, and deleting everything afterward takes other people’s conversations with it (and those don’t currently come up in search results because the post is deleted). Granted that’s a platform limitation, but it is what it is. Posting from various alts but leaving things intact…go for it.
Imagine being a legit new user and being shunned because your account is not 30 days old.
That’s part of my complaint against the ones doing that “hit it and quit it” bullshit; it makes people wary of interacting with new accounts.
Happy cake day!
Happy cake day ptz!
Gracias!
they do it all the time on reddit, i have no problems with it. its only a problem when they know they are wrong and leave it up to stir shit up.
Well I was going to explain but
Extra Deleted
[baleeted]
FLAGRANT SYSTEM ERROR
EXTERMINATE EXTERMINATE!!
Sometimes I’ll submit a comment that’s too jaded and cynical that I don’t want to expose others to after some hindsight.