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.
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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
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)
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.
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.
Sometimes I’ll submit a comment that’s too jaded and cynical that I don’t want to expose others to after some hindsight.
I tend to do the much more efficient system of writing an entire essay to then decide to delete it before posting.
I’ve done it a few times over the years. Usually it’s because I’ve written something I thought was funny or insightful but the hive mind disagreed and voted it down or worse. Sometimes I just don’t fit into the social norms.
{{{LumpyPancakes}}}
Are you mad, Jo?
No, just crazy. :)
I was giving you a textual hug, if you didn’t know what {{{ }}} means.
Perhaps its something embarassing or potentially very political which they don’t want to remain on the internet forever.
I guess we can add a rule stating that “By participating in this community, you agree to give permission that all your posts/comments can be archived” like under Creative Commons rules. And have a bot automatically archive it.
But then again, there’s an argument that this violates privacy.
Sometimes I do it for comments, and it’s just because I don’t really like what I wrote. I read it and it’s just banal, and I’m like, “you’re not moving the discourse forward at all.”
What annoys me are people who did that to thousands of their posts after leaving Reddit. They’re their posts, they have the right to do it, but I’m like, c’mon, Reddit isn’t suffering from it. They’re selling the data for the same price with or without, and they have all the backups. No, all the users who are googling a one-place-on-the-Internet solution to their extremely specific problem are suffering.
I think that’s like getting angry at your boss and taking it out on your family.
I sometimes think about what I just wrote after I wrote it. I then go back and read it and then remove it because it was lame.
Makes sense for comments, but for posts to for instance this Sub-lemmy, I mean community?
Sub-lemmy
Technically the term is “community” here.
Subreddits are to Reddit as Communities are to Lemmy.
Well shit, read that title wrong. Moving along …
I get “posts” and “comments” or “replies” confused all the time. You are not alone!
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.
It was with great pain that I recently deleted something like 50 to 100 of my own posts. They were all political. Lots of great discussions. But we live in a time where having the wrong kind of history on social media could make you a target either now or in the future. I’m sure a lot of that is still floating around one way or another but if I can reduce any spotlights on my ass it’s something I felt I had to do.
Since then I haven’t deleted anything. I try to keep my posts non-political. In my real life I am now focusing on bettering myself. I’ve given up on trying to change the country or anything like that. It can all they to ash. I’ve ran out of fucks to give.
But hey, I’m contributing on [email protected] again, so there’s that.
You dont use your real name on Lemmy so I dont see why your history matters here. I could understand it on linkedin, which is why its a super cringe platform also, but here? I dont see a problem.
I like Lemmy because it can be genuine and real, unless posted on a instance that moderates away opinions the moderators dont agree with.
You can go back and find opinions in my history you wont agree with. But thats because i dont try to look a certain way, and I dont change my opinions to look good to others.
I think everyone should do the same. Be who you are. Reflect on feedback, maybe you are wrong, but if you dont think so, dont change yourself.
What I still post here is still genuine. I’m just biting my tongue about certain topics. No different than one would do while at work.
You shouldnt. Post and be downvoted. As long as you are not intentionally trolling anyone, it shows strength of character to stand up for what you believe.
Its very different from work where you are not free to do what you want, because your entire paycheck is based on going along with the charade. You dont have to do that outside of work. :)
Almost every person I’ve had an argument/discussion with who goes through my past comments to try and find things to use against me when they’re losing has been someone who goes back and deleted all of their comments. I don’t think that’s a coincidence.
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