Feddit UK

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Why can't we properly delete comments? (feddit.uk)

submitted 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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When I "delete" a comment, all it does is replace the text with "deleted by creator". It doesn't even hide my username. This is different from previous behaviour where the comment was entirely removed from the public view.

I should be in control of my comment. If I want to delete it then it should be entirely removed - at least from the public view. I don't want to make comments knowing that I'm permenantly etching my username into the stone of the thread forever with no ability to delete it. I'm highly put off from engaging now that I can't reliably delete what I write.

Being able to undo the deletion is fine but the undo really should only last 1h or maybe 24h before the comment is properly deleted.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 10 months ago (2 children)

This is an feature of Lemmy, so I don't think there's much we can do. It should be easy enough to sort out because it's already checking it's your post to offer you the undelete option, so it could just hide a deleted post from everyone other than the user or moderators. However, it'd need to be flagged up to the Lemmy developers.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Fair, I was hoping it'd be something you could configure. Hopefully this improves with Lemmy in the future then.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I'll have a nose around but I think it's just part of the functionality and may need to sorted through a feature request to the devs.

[–] cashews_best_nut 1 points 10 months ago

*cough* Bookwyrm *cough* books *cough* import *cough*

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Strictly speaking you can do something about it - there's nothing that says you have to run pure, unmodified lemmy code. However, unless you're a hotshot dev yourself I wouldn't expect it, and also deviating from the core codebase is not really something that should be encouraged.

It's definitely something users should be aware of, though. At the end of the day we're all putting a great deal of trust in our instance and its admin, even moreso than the lemmy developers.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

We can purge the comment as administrators, which removes the comment (from this instance as far as I'm aware). I believe it also culls the thread down from there.

People are welcome to ask for us to purge, and if it's appropriate we can...However, once a comment had been federated to another instance, I believe that's up to whatever instance it's propagated to, and removing would be akin to removing from archive.org.

The code may change in the future (anyone can contribute), and if this becomes an instance-level option, we may engage the community to see if there is a clear preference.

I've already been caught out by it myself, and had to edit the comment. (In that case, explaining that I'd got two things confused)

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago

However, once a comment had been federated to another instance, I believe that’s up to whatever instance it’s propagated to

Yeah that's a very good point. However, your instance will have fulfilled its responsibility, at least.

At the end of the day though, anything you publish online should be considered lost, in a practical sense. Even if lemmy adds a feature to facilitate permanent deletion, it's up to each instance to actually implement it - much like it would be up to internet scrapers to delete the content they collect from anywhere and everywhere.

lemmy isn't without its bugs - like I mentioned in another comment, it's now possible for users to view deleted comments, at least in certain apps (in Jerboa, if you start a reply to a deleted comment you'll see it). But it's steadily evolving.

I'm still waiting for more instance agnostic links for things. feddit.uk/comment/123456 is different to lemmy.world/comment/123456, but what we should have is something more like a federated host at feddit.uk/comment/123456, then copies should be lemmy.world/comment/[email protected]. As it is now, there is no straightforward way to go from a comment or post in one instance to the same in another. You have to manually search the community or user. I think maybe there are ways for apps to do this through the back-end API, but this should really be there on the front end. It's annoying when someone gives you a link to another instance and you can't reply to it.