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Kind of wish deleting posts wasn't a thing. Would rather just the user-association was removed or something. Just because OP doesn't want to be involved in the thread anymore, doesn't mean everyone else feels the same.
I think deleting posts is an important feature, but it should only remove the content of the post, not hide the associated comments. The post is created by the OP, so they should be able to remove it, but comments are created by other users and so there's no reason why the OP should have the power to remove them.
https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/issues/5525
How would that work in practice though?
Changing the post title, content, and author to something like "[deleted]" while keeping comments visible should be sufficient.
I appreciate having control over my own data though. I would like to keep an option to delete all my posts/likes/dislikes/accounts as I desire. If someone wants to save a copy of my data, they have an option to do so before I delete my data, but not after.
I get what you're saying, but as you kind of mentioned, it's a falsehood to believe any of your posts and comments here are under your control anyway. They get federated to other instances, maybe mirrored or crawled by bots. And these may or may not abide by your deletion of the content.
Might be best to just expose/enforce this reality to users. You send data publicly onto the Internet, it's forever out of your control. And there's no system in existence that can change that reality.
Also why it's important that a doxxed Internet never becomes reality.
Even so, I would rather have the option to eliminate data pollution at my convenience. If someone else wants to replicate my data, they have their window to do it. Once Ive deleted it, that window is closed. I want to be able to decide that window of time, not others decide it for me.
We should all be proactive on cleaning up our data footprint imo. This is more than social media posts. It should be images, documents, videos, and any other data that is sprawling out uncontrolled. Gotta clean things up occasionally.
Part of the problem would be others not knowing if or when a post might be deleted. There might something to the idea mentioned elsewhere of being able to 'disown' a post, so that it's no longer associated with you? (If that's possible)
I wouldn't want it disowned. I would rather have my data completely removed. Leaving the data there would leave footprints, which could later be used to go back and tie my account to that post.
I can see that. Depends on what was shared. Maybe if both options were available. Or an OP can edit the post and redact personally identifiable elements?
The thing is, once you've started a discussion, there's a case to be made that it's no longer just your data, but rather the entire post and comments is a new creation, something greater than the sum of its parts. At that point, is it fair to remove your bit, and devaluing the rest?
An automated way to do so would effectively be to keep the data but unlink it from the account that created it, no?
The unfortunate reality is obscuring the post by unlinking the account serves no purpose. There are ways to tie the posts to accounts even after they would have been unlinked. Post style, metadata, and residual data leftover by the instance is probably enough to recreate that link.
It sucks that the whole post disappears once someone deletes it, instead of just a single user's part of it, but that's preferable versus leaving data behind IMO.
Anybody who's willing to put in that much effort could just set up an instance and scrape it from the start. You're not getting any protection either way.
Exactly. Just do that then.
Meanwhile, let me manage data on my instance as I see fit. If i want to delete it from my instance, then thats up to me.
You seem to have missed the whole point of this discussion, which is that it sucks for other people.
I get you want to keep the data, but I dont. We're at odds. Thats all. Simple. Agree to disagree.
We don't have to align on this.
Not possible unless you remove the ability to edit as well. Trivial for a user to edit the down to a single period or something, if the ability to delete is taken away.
That wouldn't be a problem is we had one of the other features i want - to be able to see the revision history of posts and comments
May I ask why? I've never felt it was really a necessary feature.
Not the person you replied to, but there's a lot of people who get into arguments then edit their original comment to make it seem like the other person is in the wrong.
But that would still better, even if the content of the post is taken away, there discussion and comments are immediately lost and replies d interactions can continue.
A more thoughtful way to do it would be if the user were able to delete any contributions they'd made to the discussion (while the title and links persist). This should be the default. NO contribution would ever be removed except by the creator (or by the mods, if warranted according to ze rools.)
Yeah, this is one of the few areas where Reddit does a better job than the Fediverse, IMO.
100% this