This is the pull request that changed the behaviour, for the curious. They changed it because deleting the comment entirely broke a lot of stuff, like viewing replies to deleted comments.
this post was submitted on 16 Jan 2024
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Thanks. From the linked discussion, it does solve a legitimate problem - I had noticed that entire comment branches could be lost if a parent comment was deleted or removed. That was also pretty bad, so I'm glad there's been progress there.
Honestly I think reddit's approach is correct: when I delete my comment, other see that a comment existed here once, but not what it said or who wrote it, and it's no longer interactive. And, deleting it doesn't affect child comments.
You’ll probably be unhappy to learn that federated comments may never be deleted. The external server has to both listen for the delete request and adhere to it.
I know that. But at least that's not really publicly listed for anyone to load from my home server in the original comment thread. And that's beyond the server host's control anyway; it's completely within the server host's control to decide to delete something properly on request or not, so choosing to not delete it is just weird.
Rather than having some control over my comment in the source thread on the source server, I now have zero control at all. That's not a good user experience.
Rather than having some control over [thing I put on the internet], I ~~now~~ have zero control at all.
Correct. Everything you post online can and will be instantly archived by data hoarders and data corporations.
That's not a good user experience.
That's the World Wide Web for you, we should have stopped at gopher.
Everything you post online can and will be instantly archived by data hoarders and data corporations
I don't agree with your implication that because someone somewhere might be archiving my comment, then there's no point in giving users a proper delete button.
There's also a huge difference between my comment being publicly accessible in the original thread versus stored elsewhere in some archivist's database. Obviously nobody can control the latter but that doesn't mean there's no point in controlling the former.
It's a distinction without a difference.
maybe to you ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
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.
Fair, I was hoping it'd be something you could configure. Hopefully this improves with Lemmy in the future then.
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.
*cough* Bookwyrm *cough* books *cough* import *cough*
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.
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)
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/123456@feddit.uk. 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.
It takes time. Things I've deleted still show up as "deleted by creator" but only for maybe a day or two. After that, they completely vanish and I'm unable to find them even with a saved link.
I don't know if this is because of the undo feature, or just the inherent nature of how lemmy sends things around to other instances.
That said...
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.
You shouldn't be posting online at all then. Even if the service you use works flawlessly and timely in obeying your request for deletion, it doesn't affect any number of other factors that could cement your posts online forever. This used to be rule 1 of the Internet: don't post anything you don't want out in the world forever. Someone or something can be archiving and reposting anything and everything you or anyone else posts anywhere on the public Internet.
Yeah i hate it too . Hoping that they make it so that we can fully delete it . But once something's on the internet it can almost always never be deleted compltely .
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
As for your username being attached to the comment, that is an issue. I just checked, and yeah even logged out you still see it.
What needs to be done is the deleted comment should only have your username visible when you're logged in - everyone else should see a blank username, maybe moderators should be able to see it though.
However I disagree about the timeout. I want to be able to recover my comments indefinitely. If there is to be a permanent deletion (and legally speaking there probably needs to be, one which removes it from the server) it should be an extra step.
There are, I guess, three front end levels.
Delete, moderator delete (invisible to all but mods, at least for top level posts), and Purge (admin level, wipes the content from the local database).
I'm hoping to have a bit of a dive and an experiment once things have settled down here a bit.
It would probably be good to have a test instance - maybe that other one could be spun up with minimal resources and heavily restricted access?
I'd also suggest speaking to /u/sunaurus@lemm.ee. He seems to really knows his stuff. When shit hit the fan with bigger instances (DDOS attacks and SQL exploits), his instance was already immune and he still stepped up to the plate to help others sort things out.
There is absolutely a plan for a test instance, you'll be pleased to hear.
Especially because I really want somewhere I can test upgrades or changes without impacting a live site.
That is indeed good to hear.
This is just a poke reply in case you didn't see my edit.
Aha, I see it now.
I may have a look at what they've said, cheers for that.
I don't think he comments much, he's more of a coder. He's like /u/tom@feddit.uk, if he was actually active lol.
I wondered this - nothing major, but I replied to the wrong comment in a thread, so reposted the reply where I'd meant it to be, and deleted the original - but it left the post there marked as deleted, looking like I'd done something really suspicious.
username checks out