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

Deleted by creator

[–] ptz@dubvee.org 60 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days 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 2 days 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 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days 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.

[–] WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 day ago

big tech will just scrape in realtime and at the point you deleted it they have already produced all kinds of profiles about it for you

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[–] null_dot@lemmy.dbzer0.com 14 points 2 days 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 2 days 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 2 days 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 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days 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 2 days 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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[–] Ilixtze@lemm.ee 31 points 2 days 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 2 days 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!"

[–] LovableSidekick@lemmy.world 4 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

I've deleted a few comments where I read further in the thread and realized somebody already said what I said, or I interpreted the topic incorrectly and my comment was meaningless, or some other reason I thought it just didn't add anything. I think I deleted an Ask Lemmy question one time because I almost immediately found the answer myself or decided the question really didn't make any sense.

[–] webghost0101@sopuli.xyz 31 points 2 days 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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[–] Lightsong@lemmy.world 5 points 1 day 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.

[–] SomeAmateur@sh.itjust.works 34 points 2 days 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 2 days 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

[–] skullgiver@popplesburger.hilciferous.nl 7 points 1 day 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 day 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

I gotta be honest. Idk how there isn’t a removededit for lemmy yet.

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[–] jumjummy@lemmy.world 28 points 2 days ago (1 children)

user deleted their post

/sorry I had to

[–] madjo@feddit.nl 11 points 2 days 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.

[–] otacon239@lemmy.world 15 points 2 days 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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[–] Nachtnebel@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 1 day ago

you should delete this post

[–] Pilferjinx@lemmy.world 16 points 2 days 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.

[–] charade_you_are@sh.itjust.works 18 points 2 days ago (8 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.

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[–] scroll_responsibly@lemmy.sdf.org 12 points 2 days ago (1 children)
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[–] Grimy@lemmy.world 12 points 2 days 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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[–] givesomefucks@lemmy.world 14 points 2 days ago (8 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

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[–] Etterra@discuss.online 7 points 2 days 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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[–] jagged_circle@feddit.nl 3 points 1 day ago

Personally the app I use sucks, so I realize I commented on the wrong thread and I delete the duplicate

[–] dumbass@leminal.space 8 points 2 days 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.

[–] some_guy@lemmy.sdf.org 8 points 2 days 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.

[–] BagOfHeavyStones@piefed.social 7 points 2 days 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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