this post was submitted on 06 Jun 2025
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No Stupid Questions

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I've seen this happen a bunch of time now that people just ask a question and it's deleted a day or so later. Do they delete the question themselves, or is that some automatic thing? If they do it themselves, why?

*edit*

Thanks for the great answers so far. Very insightful. Please keep them coming, I'm curious to more points of view.

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[–] ptz@dubvee.org 60 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (7 children)

Often, they just spin up a disposable account, post, and delete the whole account w/content after they're done. It's annoying AF and incredibly selfish. For a while, it was the same person doing it, though not sure if that's still the case.

Regardless, those people have ruined things for everyone (especially legit new users) and I will not engage with accounts newer than 30 days. Lemm.ee evacuation notwithstanding, I kinda wish other people took a similar stance and maybe these people will knock that off.

[–] madjo@feddit.nl 31 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I agree. It's annoying and selfish. I often go back to older threads I've participated in to see other people's points of view, to see if maybe I missed something. But to then see "permanently deleted" or words of that effect, that's just sad. I can't learn from those. No one can.

[–] TeamAssimilation@infosec.pub 8 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (2 children)

OTOH, it’s understandable given the endless apettite tech has for profiling people. The Fediverse is not Big Tech, but Big Tech wants all the data anyway, and given its open nature, it will get it eventually. Temporary accounts are a way to make it a bit harder for Big Tech, at the cost of making it worse for legitimate users.

If the Fediverse had some protection against data greed, maybe less people would be wary of leaving a long data trail. The best it can do so far is using nicknames and multiple accounts.

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[–] null_dot@lemmy.dbzer0.com 14 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Imagine being a legit new user and being shunned because your account is not 30 days old.

Besides which, I find the expectation that people should create an account and use that in perpetuity very frustrating.

I have a bunch of accounts and change according to my mood. Nothing nefarious or antisocial, I just don't want a big silo of comments. My accounts are not an extension of my identity.

[–] ptz@dubvee.org 11 points 1 week ago

I didn't say I had a problem with any of that. But spinning up a burner, posting, and deleting everything afterward takes other people's conversations with it (and those don't currently come up in search results because the post is deleted). Granted that's a platform limitation, but it is what it is. Posting from various alts but leaving things intact...go for it.

Imagine being a legit new user and being shunned because your account is not 30 days old.

That's part of my complaint against the ones doing that "hit it and quit it" bullshit; it makes people wary of interacting with new accounts.

[–] Aussiemandeus@aussie.zone 5 points 1 week ago (1 children)

You check the age of every account you interact with? Can you see this easy or you're opening up each account?

[–] ptz@dubvee.org 11 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

I'm the dev of Tesseract.

New accounts have badges that show their age if they're between 0 and 30 days old (among other tricks up my sleeve)

[–] Aussiemandeus@aussie.zone 6 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Ah I saw that In your account, it took me two minutes to load it up because of my shitty internet and partly the connect client so I was sure there's no way you would check each time.

I wish I could do site wide badges for stuff like that but at the end of the day I only ever recognise the one person who give me the shits on lemmy and I have them flagged haha.

Everyone else I figure is out with good intentions until they prove otherwise

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[–] SomeAmateur@sh.itjust.works 35 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Idk why but when I see deleted by creator I think it's funny to imagine God personally zapping it from existence but they still leave that so everyone knows it was them

[–] Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de 6 points 1 week ago

the divine voice of the lord booms down from the heavens: "CRINGE"
a clap of thunder vaporizes the blasphemer where they stand, leaving nought by a smouldering pile of ash

[–] Ilixtze@lemm.ee 32 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Me reading my posts from a week ago: "Fucking hell, I used to be so cringe back then!"

[–] madjo@feddit.nl 5 points 1 week ago

It's that quick for you? I either immediately cringe, or it takes years to fester in my brain and then suddenly it's my brain tripping me up with "remember that stupid comment you made to this person years ago? CRINGE! CRINGE FOR ME, MINION!"

[–] webghost0101@sopuli.xyz 31 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I tend to do the much more efficient system of writing an entire essay to then decide to delete it before posting.

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[–] jumjummy@lemmy.world 28 points 1 week ago (1 children)

user deleted their post

/sorry I had to

[–] madjo@feddit.nl 11 points 1 week ago (1 children)

😄

Yeah that would be a great joke on my part, too. Getting my answers and just deleting the question in a day or so.

I'm not intending on doing that though. So, if it does happen, it's not because of something that I did.

[–] charade_you_are@sh.itjust.works 18 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I sometimes think about what I just wrote after I wrote it. I then go back and read it and then remove it because it was lame.

[–] madjo@feddit.nl 4 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (2 children)

Makes sense for comments, but for posts to for instance this Sub-lemmy, I mean community?

[–] Ghostalmedia@lemmy.world 7 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Sub-lemmy

Technically the term is “community” here.

Subreddits are to Reddit as Communities are to Lemmy.

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[–] charade_you_are@sh.itjust.works 6 points 1 week ago (3 children)

Well shit, read that title wrong. Moving along ....

[–] magnetosphere@fedia.io 6 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I get “posts” and “comments” or “replies” confused all the time. You are not alone!

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[–] Pilferjinx@lemmy.world 16 points 1 week ago

Sometimes I'll submit a comment that's too jaded and cynical that I don't want to expose others to after some hindsight.

[–] otacon239@lemmy.world 15 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Half the time, it’s because I don’t read the original comment closely enough and realize that my point no longer makes sense, but I usually only do this if it’s less than a minute or two after posting.

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[–] givesomefucks@lemmy.world 14 points 1 week ago (5 children)

Usually (but not always) if a mod removes it, it shows up in the mod log.

But lots of people don't get the answer they want and delete it. Part of that is you can't disable replies. A month from now someone might see this post for whatever reason and you'd get a notification.

That's probably playing into it

[–] madjo@feddit.nl 7 points 1 week ago (1 children)

A month I can kind of understand. I let mastodon auto delete my month old posts. But a few days? I don't know...
But you're right, it could be that they didn't like the answers they got. That does make the most sense. Like that kid who's dating that Muslim girl, and pretty much all of the reactions sided with her point of view.

[–] magnetosphere@fedia.io 5 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Dammit, he deleted that one? I thought I gave a pretty good reply… although, yes, I sided with her, too.

[–] madjo@feddit.nl 5 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Your answer was really good! But yeah, he deleted that post.

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[–] Crackhappy@lemmy.world 13 points 1 week ago

Deleted by creator

[–] Grimy@lemmy.world 12 points 1 week ago (1 children)

If you are talking about posts where people lay out their problems and ask for advice, it is probably to avoid getting doxed.

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[–] scroll_responsibly@lemmy.sdf.org 12 points 1 week ago (1 children)
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[–] some_guy@lemmy.sdf.org 8 points 1 week ago

I assume because they didn’t stand by their comment or made a mistake. I misread a title on a post an hour ago. Rather than delete it, I edited and stated the mistake and put strikethrough on the text. I don’t delete the record; I amend it.

[–] dumbass@leminal.space 8 points 1 week ago

Sometimes I'll delete a comment if someone's already made the shitty joke or I'm too stoned and misread the original post, it's usually the second one tho.

[–] Etterra@discuss.online 7 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I always assumed it was because either deleted because it was a bot post, or they self-deleted because they got down voted and got mad about it.

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[–] skullgiver@popplesburger.hilciferous.nl 7 points 1 week ago (2 children)

To prevent annoying trolls from digging through my post history, mostly. I've seen people do this on Lemmy, one person even had a stalker that would go server to server to reply angrily to their posts because he felt "wronged" somehow. Plus, nobody is reading this stuff after a month anyway, the only readership of old comments is AI scrapers trying to steal my words for their algorithm.

Of course, deleting stuff on Lemmy doesn't mean actually deleting anything. You can trivially ignore deletion requests as a server and some seem to keep old copies of deleted content.

There's no automated way to do it with Lemmy so I've written my own automation tool that occasionally runs.

[–] WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.works 5 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I've seen people do this on Lemmy, one person even had a stalker that would go server to server to reply angrily to their posts because he felt "wronged" somehow.

those need to be reported and banned, their replies mass deleted.

Plus, nobody is reading this stuff after a month anyway,

Because we don't have a proper (or any) system for subscribing to threads. but if I have saved a link for myself for future reference, it'll be gone!

I'm just saying, don't be surprised if people start running instances that disobey deletions

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[–] BagOfHeavyStones@piefed.social 7 points 1 week ago (4 children)

I've done it a few times over the years. Usually it's because I've written something I thought was funny or insightful but the hive mind disagreed and voted it down or worse. Sometimes I just don't fit into the social norms.

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[–] PP_BOY_@lemmy.world 6 points 1 week ago

It contradicts my current argument

[–] Lightsong@lemmy.world 5 points 1 week ago

I've done it once asking a question. However once I got my answer and I edited my post with "solved with (insert reply from one of comments)" and people still replied with the same answers for a few days with slight variations. I got fed up with notifications and deleted the post.

Perhaps its something embarassing or potentially very political which they don't want to remain on the internet forever.

I guess we can add a rule stating that "By participating in this community, you agree to give permission that all your posts/comments can be archived" like under Creative Commons rules. And have a bot automatically archive it.

But then again, there's an argument that this violates privacy.

[–] Lasherz12@lemmy.world 5 points 1 week ago

Probably multiple reasons. If it's a throwaway account they may want to cover the tracks. If it didn't get a response they were looking for, they may delete and recreate to avoid the double posting rules. They may have posted on the wrong account, or maybe the answer was so obvious they were embarrassed.

[–] Nachtnebel@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 1 week ago

you should delete this post

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