Feddit UK

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Community for the Feddit UK instance.
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Why can't we properly delete comments? (self.feddituk)

submitted 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) by Robbo to c/feddituk

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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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[–] Tweak 3 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Part of this was a fix for the broken threads. It's not really fair for a user to delete their comment and then completely remove all the other comments underneath. Before one of the recent updates, the threads underneath would get completely buggered, killing the conversation.

It's not hard to see how this could be used maliciously. Someone could say something, be corrected and put in their place, only for them to delete their top comment and spoil the conversation.

The far bigger issue is that you can actually view the deleted comment. I've done it in Jerboa, simply starting a reply to the deleted comment lets you see it.

[–] Patch 3 points 10 months ago (1 children)

It’s not hard to see how this could be used maliciously. Someone could say something, be corrected and put in their place, only for them to delete their top comment and spoil the conversation.

Someone did that to me once; it was very frustrating. They posted a wrong thing, got corrected by me and others, their post got downvoted and the corrections got upvoted. So they delete their comment (and ours) and repost the same thing again. Get corrected again, votes pan out again...so they do it again. Basically repeated the trick until the others in the conversation gave up and left them to it.

Glad to hear it's fixed.

[–] Tweak 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

They posted a wrong thing, got corrected by me and others, their post got downvoted and the corrections got upvoted. So they delete their comment

See, deleting a comment when it is wrong, either to limit the score or even just to stop the influx of replies of people telling you that you were wrong, is reasonable. The issue isn't that they deleted the comment, the issue is that the deleted comment took out the rest of the thread.

I don't think they were necessarily intentionally taking out the thread in your example (I dunno either way) but there certainly was scope for maliciousness. Now, the system seems to have swung too far the other way. Deleted comments don't break things, but they are too easily accessed by others. A deleted comment should only be visible to admin, and there should be a simpler way of doing the ultimate purge deletion.

FYI, an admin here told me there are 3 levels of deletion: user delete, mod delete, and purge. Purge is the only one that actually removes it from the server, but only admin have that capability. Admin should honour any request to purge, but it's still up to them to actually do it. Also, there's nothing to say that a federated instance will honour that, however this is ultimately no different to web scrapers.

Personally, I find this whole situation quite entertaining. I want to see it sorted out fully, and I think it will be eventually, but it's funny seeing the codebase walk serpentine towards its goal. Less than ideal, sure, but entertaining.

And this is all low stakes at the end of the day - there's no overall score leaving a black mark on your account and no hidden comments or rate limiting.

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

I don't think they were necessarily intentionally taking out the thread in your example (I dunno either way)

As per the second half of the sentence in my parent comment, they deleted their original comment only to repost the same comment again without the replies, and did this at least 3 times (after which I'd lost interest).

There's no reason to do that other than to remove the replies you didn't like.

FYI, an admin here told me there are 3 levels of deletion: user delete, mod delete, and purge. Purge is the only one that actually removes it from the server, but only admin have that capability. Admin should honour any request to purge, but it's still up to them to actually do it. Also, there's nothing to say that a federated instance will honour that, however this is ultimately no different to web scrapers.

As an aside, it's worth noting that "right to be forgotten" laws apply here for any server based in the UK, the EU, and a fair few other jurisdictions. In the UK and EU it's part of the GDPR regulations. GDPR breaches can carry hefty fines, and in the case of a setup like on this instance the admins would be personally liable for those fines (what with there not being any limited liability holding company). So deletion can be pretty serious business.

[–] Tweak 0 points 10 months ago

As per the second half of the sentence in my parent comment, they deleted their original comment only to repost the same comment again without the replies, and did this at least 3 times (after which I’d lost interest).

Yay for my reading comprehension! Lol sorry about that.

As an aside, it’s worth noting that “right to be forgotten” laws apply here for any server based in the UK, the EU, and a fair few other jurisdictions.

Unfortunately, "the right to be forgotten" ultimately amounted to little more than granting the wealthy the opportunity to curate their presence on the internet. The British right to be forgotten laws were introduced before GDPR, by Theresa May, and since then it's been harder and harder to find negative things about Tory politicians - at least the stuff they don't want you to find.

Case in point, while May was still PM, I once Googled "Theresa May, something bad" and the first result was "Theresa May is bad, but other Tory MP's are worse". They don't only spin what they say, they now spin your search results.