Why do so many people comment and then delete their message?
I know this is a thing on Reddit where idiot kids will circumvent ToS and subreddit rules by deleting their commment because it remains as a notification, while removing any reportable trace, but that’s not how Lenny works. Deleted comments show that a person commented but does not show they comment.
So, why is this so common?
(If this isn’t the place to ask, my apologies. I just don’t know what the right pace to ask it is if this isn’t the one. Also. I’m blocking all the clowns that think it’s funny to comment and delete.)
111 replies
sometimes I say something dumb then realize it's dumb.
Doesn't even have to be something dumb. Sometimes I write a comment, post it, and then think "Do I really want to get involved in this?"
I usually get to that point after writing but just before posting.
And that makes sense, however, it seems to happens way to frequently.
I'm pretty dumb.
And funny
Hey thats me!
😂
Sometimes mine spins and then posts twice. Sometimes i realize that I'm replying to the wrong comment. Sometimes the typos and autocowrongs are so bad that it's unintelligible. Sometimes the written words don't come across the way i intended. 🤷
I get that. But I think the frequency of it lends to it being more than just that. It happens a lot.
Do let me be a bit provocative here: why did you pose the question if you don't accept the answers?
How have I not accepted the answers? There’s been plenty of good responses, and some kids that think they’re funny. What in your opinion, have I not accepted.
I read under 3 replies, that you don't think they explain the frequency.
But they're the answers given by most and also the one that I would give. Maybe they do explain the frequency. Maybe our communities here are just more full of self doubt or self reflection than other websites.
OP want sit to be some sort of conspiracy, instead of mundane.
I’ve done it because I’ve realized I misread something in the comment I replied to, making myself look stupid 🤷♂️
Okay that a fair reason and makes things make more sense. I appreciate the response!
I generally strike it all out, add an edit line, explain that I misread something, and apologize.
That’s just who I am though. I’m not saying you should do it, but I’m suggesting an alternate action. I’d rather be honest that I fucked up than hide it because it shows growth, and I also hope that it encourages other to realize it’s ok to make a mistake and reflect.
It’s usually not that serious. 🤷♂️
Ah. Well, fair enough!
Same
Created by deletor
because i realize i don't want my inbox to be full of people mad at me.
Protip for lemmy devs: if there was a 'disable inbox replies' button I wouldn't do this.
I think on voyager, you can disable notifications for posts/comments.
Nice. AFAICT there is no such option on lemmy.world in a web browser.
I think enduring this now and then is healthy if you meant what you said
You gotta balance standing your ground when your stance is unpopular with understanding the mindset of others
Of course block anybody badgering you to the point of harassment
Sometimes my first reaction to shit-takes is anger. I usually don't want that to be my comment. I'm trying to stay empathetic and have a constructive discussion, because I do not want Lemmy to become like Reddit and I think empathy and arguing in good faith is what makes the difference.
So I'm usually only letting the anger out when my opposite is arguing in bad faith.
I typically stick with what I say, for better or for worse. But I have deleted maybe two comments in the past; usually because I recognized how poorly I reacted and felt the person didn’t deserve my stupidity.
Same. I believe people should have the strength of conviction to stand by their opinions. I’ve said shit that probably should be removed, and some of it has, but I felt it needed to be said. It’s the risk one takes when using social media.
My top two reasons are realizing I posted somewhere I maybe shouldn’t and realizing I shared personal identifying information. A bit too late for the latter once it’s out there but you can’t win ‘em all 🤷🏼♀️
The other day someone posted an interesting boundary map of their farthest travels and I thought it was a fun idea, made my own and uploaded it and realized after posting that a Europe comm might not want Americans posting so I deleted it for example.
Sometimes I accidentally reply to the wrong comment.
I did it because trump won a second term and made some pretty threatening comments about people doing/saying the things I said. so I got rid of them.
that said, I stopped for two reasons;
Sometimes it's because I've said something stupid or that, in hindsight, comes off as stupid.
Usually it's because my comment has sparked an argument that I lose interest in continuing.
Oh no, once there's an argument, you can't delete the comment anymore. You've created something and it has taken root, you must own it. You don't abort a child after it has been born, went to school, got a degree, married and had kids of its own, do you?
Not with that attitude
That’s a fair point. However, most of the time, it’s a comment made and deleted within minutes.
I usually only delete if I replied to the wrong comment or accidentally replied to the main post instead of a comment. There are some good reasons.
Also if I comment and then read down and I see I duplicated someone.
My dudes we can do the funniest thing ever
I expected deleted comment chains
Your dudes are already doing what they think is the funniest thing ever. And I’d imagine commenting and deleting just to troll someone is against the rules of the community.
Let’s find out….
For me it’s because I: replied to the wrong comment, wrote a response that was wrong because I didn’t fully read or understand the subject, or I decided that it wasn’t worth it.
Pretty much the same for me.
I don't usually delete my comments but mistakes happen. Even if I notice and delete them immediately, the trace of my comment lives there, because Fediverse. Basically you cannot put back in Genie once it's out of bottle.
Fair point. This helps.
Usually because I'm feeling strongly enough about something to comment, then I'm reminded that engaging the random public is akin to pissing into a fan, and that's not very pleasant
It happens more here, for some reason, that I comment on the post instead of under another comment, so I delete the one and writes a new.
^-- This
Only times I've done it it was because I accidentally replied to the wrong comment.
because it remains as a notification, while removing any reportable trace
This.
It's a chickenshit hit & run tactic for hate speech.
Used mainly by those who decry hate speech online.
Go Figger. .
Yeah, the issue is these dumbasses think it works like Reddit here. It doesn’t.
maybe the culture will adjust and change over time.
the internet didn't always suck like it has for the past 10-15 years.
it went from what is was in the 90's to what it is today.
maybe the pendulum will swing back in the other direction eventually, as is the trend in most things.
either because people simply move on, or because people begin to see the error that is present in the current way of doing things.
life is tough. people are assholes. deal with it.
It is not common for me to see deleted comments. Do you tend to see this in certain communities?
I wouldn’t say it’s community specific, but it’s usually on controversial threads where people tend to debate a lot. It never happens at all where the discussion is friendly and neutral.
On piefed you can give a reason something is deleted. Nifty feature.
Oh that’s cool. Maybe that will come to voyager soon?
I don't think Blorp supports this yet, does it?
What is that? Another client?
It's the only piefed client I'm aware of, other than summit
Interesting. I'll try it out sometime. I just use Firefox on the phone. But I'll try apps :)
I habitually delete about a month back to try and reduce the number of things that taken together could ID me. I’m not a particularly unique person but I’m sure with enough comments someone could get close.
The reasoning is fair but it kinda sucks for the rest of us. Like, maybe you could roll a new account? I'm fairly certain your posts would be archived and retrievable no? Just inconvenient for regular people who don't care who you are anyway.
I make a new accounts and dump the old one. Either abandon it or delete it.
Honestly I do both. I’m 90% sure it’s part of why I was shadow banned on Reddit (along with my use of old Reddit).
Fair point. But I’m taking about comments that are minutes to hours old. I know I didn’t mention that and should have.
I’ve only deleted when I realized I broke a community’s rules.
It’s unfortunately part of the the lemmy culture now. A lot of people instinctively react and post without thinking, which they later regret. We’ve lost a lot of critical thinking when it comes to the internet culture, so here we are.
Yeah. I think it’s this too. Or at least a lot of it.
there's a lot of paranoid mouthy kids here
Sometimes I do it because I comment in the wrong post or wrong comment thread.
I see a lot of differing reasons people do it, all of which are legit. I wonder if it might make sense for Lemmy to add an optional delete reason field.
DELETED
BLOCKED.
I've been on Reddit for 10+yrs and can't remember getting a notification without a comment sitting there to read. Based on that, I assumed that if the comment was deleted, that would cancel the notification. *shrug*
On Reddit, you can comment horrific shit and insult people and then delete it. That person will still get the message, but if you try to go to the message thread, it won’t be there. Therefore you cannot report it.
Essentially, they get to harass you with impunity.
That isn’t how lemmy works though.
Yes, I understood your argument for that being how it works.
I'm saying I don't recall seeing it work like that. Well, at least not recently. Maybe I'm forgetting from a few years ago or something.
I've always known it to work this way. Unless it's changed recently, it likely still does.
Yeah. It works like that. At least it did as of a few weeks ago. I’ve since left Reddit, but I’m assuming it’s still the same.
I remember seeing people as far back as 5 or 6 years ago asking Reddit mods/admins to do something about it, but clearly they’re fine with it being that way and would rather perma-ban people for making easily provable mistakes.
Is it possible you don't have reply notifications enabled?
I most certainly do.
Guess you just haven't triggered any trolls who pull this, then.
In piefed I swear I can see the replies in my inbox after the comment is deleted by the user as I sometimes click on them and they show as deleted in the post comments.
Just commenting to point out that all three of those people have commented and then deleted their comments on this post too 😂
That’s where I took the screenshots from. They think they’re being funny.
we are being funny
Ohh I thought it was another post and all three had done the same thing here, damn
Nope. It was here. It’s just gradeshool clowns that think they’re being funny. I’ve blocked them. That type of dumbfuckery is usualt of no use down the road so it’s no great loss.
I don't see any screenshots -- where did you post them?
I removed them. I think the kids are trying to get added on purpose and deleting their comments for that reason alone. Dumb of me to expect better.
Deleted.
I delete if I made the comment in error, otherwise no
Usually for me I say something that pisses people off and get tired of people replying to it. It often happens when I shit talk Canada.
Why would you shit talk Canada? They’re pretty lovely if you ask me.
I don't hate Canada just to be clear. Yes, the people are lovely. For one thing, Canada's treatment of it's natives. I found this article that can explain my gripe much better than I can so check that out if it interests you. Also, I'll admit some of it is me being petty, but Pierre Poilievre would have won had he not alligned himself with Trump. Than Canada would have been in a very bad place as well. Lastly, Canada isn't much more affordable than the US. Y'all got healthcare though so I'll give you that one. I also like Coffee Crisp.
They're great, and I don't shit talk them, but sometimes you meet completely irrational people that are angry and full of hate. I got shit on a lot for trying to explain how politics really work in the US to be met with America hate and you're to blame for everything and we have our own problems. You can read about the racist twat in my comments, some Chinese--Canadian that is totally cool at shitting on people in America and loves to shit on Japanese people then calls me racist.
I'm like chill out, you're basically barking at people locked in a prison and telling them why don't you do something about it.
Sigh 六四事件?
I mean I know a lot of people on Lemmy are more privacy conscious and one practice I myself have done in that regard is periodically both purging all posts and comments and deleteing the account itself and making a fresh one.
[deleted]
You rang?
[blocked]
[sadface]
But to give you a serious answer, I sometimes delete stuff because I don’t want my wisdom eaten by AI to enrich the bastards.
Every so often I'll go to the tail end of my acocunt history and simply delete anything that isn't particularly interesting.
Simply privacy.
Right. That makes total sense. But what I’m taking about is comments made on a post or comment that merely a few hours old.
In addition to other comments, I've encountered a few weirdoes on here that repeatedly ask the same question and then delete it afterwards. No one is quite sure why they do this but they're easy to block
I do it when I respond to the wrong person. Or rarely when I think better of what I just said. Usually the second one happens before I post though.
Why did you also delete your username?!?!
There's a subset of fedi users who delete their comments after a while to save resources for their instance. It's probably not the majority of what you encounter, but there's enough that a lot of fedi software supports it as a feature.
You know that social media makes the brain smaller and smaller.
So, when there's hardly any brain left anymore, but comments are still pouring out...
/s
If more downvotes than upvotes, it's unpopular. To the bin with it.
Unpopular doesn’t mean it’s wrong. Stand by your opinions. And if rh think here’s a chance you’re wrong, allow people to change it. Deleting the comment doesn’t help anything.
I've had lots of comments get downvoted because other people are wrong and I'm right (not always, sometimes it's the other way around) or because Lemmy insists an issue is black and white when there is nuance. Why should I delete when they're the ones that suck?
Internet points are meaningless and they're forgotten about in a week anyway. Hell, unlike Reddit, they don't even get tallied on your account; they are entirely per post, so even if I were trying to impress anyone, there's no lasting effect of a downvote. It's edifying when the zeitgeist agrees with me, but when they don't, that doesn't change the reason I was moved to comment in the first place.
Will you delete this comment? It has now more downvotes than upvotes
Naah. If I kill it, the upvoted children will lose their parent.
I'm more likely to nuke it if it's a joke that fell flat or something like that, or if I can see I was just plain wrong about something.