Comment on How do I identify someone who has deleted their post?
Rhaedas@fedia.io 6 days ago
Hopefully there isn't a way. I get your need to find their identity, but think how that could be used for other purposes. If I decide I want to remove something, or edit it, or whatever, that should favor me, not preservation of my past activities. Yes, the internet never forgets, except it does if the content isn't viewed enough (RIP a lot of the old web).
Anonymity should be highest priority. It sucks when it's used for nefarious purposes, or just annoying ones. Maybe the person had second thoughts and didn't realize anyone had seen it yet. Maybe they're revising a new post to be clearer. Maybe they'll see this post and realize what happened, and tell you they're sorry.
If I decide I want to remove something, or edit it, or whatever, that should favor me, not preservation of my past activities.
Should, yes. But just FYI; Lemmy does not work that way. Deletion/edit requests are solely up to the instance to comply with.
I may be in the minority, but I do feel like that is teaching people the wrong lesson. People should be thinking before they post and treating this like an open public square. It was one of the first rules of the internet back when it started. People can easily create throw away accounts for questions they are uneasy about a question.
One of the things reddit still has on the fediverse is that they are a repository of free knowledge. If this place is treated like snapchat or instagram stories, then it may never really grow.
Also if the idea is that everything gets purged every year or so because people’s instances can’t handle the data, that’s also fine, but it should be something we become aware is just the culture of the fediverse.
I do think if that becomes the culture, that people would be less likely inclined to interact, post and try to build something that can easily just be taken down. This topic comes up often enough that it does seem to worry people.
Social media is ideally meant to be ephemeral, like a conversation you have over a gaming table. We should rather get used to things disappearing.
At that point wouldn’t it just be easier to resurrect AIM, MSN and other chat rooms? Most of those places has conversations that just went away.
When Digg and later Reddit were created, they weren’t even classified as social media. The term wasn’t really created until a couple years after Facebook opened its doors publicly. These types of platforms were compared more to forums, because of the conversation aggregation. If we create a culture of data deletion, I feel we would just be carving out more paths to the larger companies that are taking digital content away from us, and even destroying physical information for control.
You say that like I left that era willingly.
Everything you do on fediverse is public by design and is exchanged with other servers.
The only way to be “anonymous” is to make sure that your account is not connected to your real identity. However everything your account does will still be transparent.
schipelblorp@sh.itjust.works 6 days ago
One of the comments on the post was, “Hey, didn´t you post this a few days ago then delete it?” so this makes me think this guy is a serial offender.
Maybe it should be up to moderators to block them? But how would anyone report? Seems flawed. The system can be too heavily weighted towards control by the user and thereby allow bad actors. There needs to be some form of accountability.
Bougie_Birdie@piefed.blahaj.zone 6 days ago
Was this the one about video games playing it safe?
I wrote a rather detailed reply and it was deleted before I got to post it. Super lame
schipelblorp@sh.itjust.works 6 days ago
I did coincidentally interact with that post.
In retrospect, someone who earnestly asks, “why don’t they just make games so edgy that they are required to region lock the game to prevent the largest markets in the world from buying them?” probably has more than one screw loose.
Rhaedas@fedia.io 6 days ago
But there's the key. Enough times and someone recognizes the name and actions. It's up to those who did remember who it was to reach out to moderation to take the next steps.
I just prefer protecting the regular user first and letting a few offenders get away with things until they make it obvious who they are. The whole innocent until proven guilty thing. Making it so any user can track down any other user and come after them feels like the wrong side of this.
zout@fedia.io 6 days ago
I get what you're saying, and I kind of agree, but to be honest, I've had this happen so many times that I'll first look where something is posted, if it's (for instance, there are more) asklemmy I'll just not reply at all.
schipelblorp@sh.itjust.works 6 days ago
I rarely take note of who I’m writing to, and even if I asked, “is this the same guy?” I couldn’t verify because they´d have deleted their older posts! So I’d be left making blind accusations.
I don’t know what you think you are protecting users from. Blocking someone is not “coming after” them.
Rhaedas@fedia.io 6 days ago
Giving moderation abilities to anyone opens up a lot more than just blocking. Err on the side of caution and anonymity is my only position.
It also has potential for an arms race between users who are able to do things past just posting. Even been in an ops war for a channel? Maybe not, that's old IRC stuff.