You guys have downvotes? Every time I try to downvote a post I got a server error
this post was submitted on 17 Jun 2026
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Don't some instances deactivate downvotes?
Is there a new influx of Reddit users? If so, why?
I’ve been off Reddit for awhile; when I looked over the past week it seems much deader.
Posts are getting much less engagement there than they were for the past few years, imo. Take my opinion with a grain of salt though cause that’s just for the most front page communities I happened to visit.
They got rid of r/all and the bot karma farming went super critical.
It's overrun by AI slop bots too.
This was the top post of r/aww the other day. Nobody noticed the AI slop. Or maybe all the comments were bots too.
Wait seriously?
I'm not sure but maybe it's because reddit is aggressively banning or shadow banning accounts.
Every week spez does something to mess it up. It's hard to keep track.
That's why I'm here. No clue what I even did wrong. Wild guess is that it was from editing a post that contained a pastebin link to code I was asking a question about. But whatever the reason, this place is actually kinda nice. I did manage to revive a throwaway Reddit account I once made, so I guess I could go back, but haven't really felt the need.
I was talking about this in another thread the other day, and somebody pointed out that, on the fediverse, every post gets pushed out everywhere. So, a user deleting their own post is just asking pretty please if all the federated instances will respect its deletion.
I don't think that all fediverse clients/portals delete the comments along with the posts. IIRC, Voyager lets you look at the comments on deleted posts, at least I think I've seen my own comment after the post was deleted.
Yes. But by default the instances delete the content when the request comes.
Clients like voyager and summit do show your comment because the reference exist on your profile but others cannot discover it because the post itself is gone from all feeds.
So what you're saying is it's an instance choice (and instance admin) issue? Mine shows reply comments on deleted comments. You might reflect this in OP... Likely new admins don't know to turn it off as well.
You have to modify lemmy or piefed code to not delete the post from server instances upon request. It happens automatically.
The comments stay and can be viewed on your profile. But they cannot be discovered by others because the post which reveals them to the outside world is gone.
Comments work a bit differently. When you look at a post, and a comment is deleted you can still see its reply comments.
So post is always the starting point of discovery. If you delete that everything inside is effectively gone—like removing the only door into a room.
Hope that made sense.
Thanks, makes sense now.
Still seems like a (server) code level problem to provide sensible handling rather than having to try to notify all users of an unintuitive behavior. I'm guessing piefed would likely listen, lemmy perhaps less so.
It's a per-instance choice, yes. Comments though are handled differently. A deleted comment doesn't delete the thread or any surrounding comments, just itself. The issue at hand is when a post is deleted it also deletes all comments with it. Unlike reddit where a deleted post would still have all the comments and discussions below it.
a deleted post would still have all the comments and discussions below it.
Pretty damn sure that's exactly what I see. It just says 'deleted' or some such and carries on. Makes sense for an instance like .ml where censorship is the goal, much less elsewhere. Are you sure there isn't an off switch?
No, it's not a per instance choice unless you go and edit the code. Deleting a post hides the whole thing but comments are still available via a user profile.
unless you wrote something truly horrible
Look, I will be honest, I don't like this about social media platforms. Nobody is perfect and not every person universally agrees on everything together. Disagreements and arguments are a guarantee. Who decides what is "truly horrible?" It should be defined in the rules by the mods and admins, not by each individual user.
Downvote a post or comment however you want, sure. But nobody should be following accounts to harass them in other threads or vote brigading every post they make just because they don't like or agree a post. People do this all the time on Reddit, and Lemmy is no different, they do it here too. This is way more devastating to Lemmy than deleting comments or posts.
If a post or comment actually breaks rules, that is the moderator's and admin's job to take care of. Report it and let them handle it.
Nobody should be deleting posts, I agree, but also please don't be a Brigade Bozo. Nobody likes a Brigade Bozo.
Also misunderstandings (on various layers! It's not obvious!) can go horribly wrong. As a neurodivergent it's the story of my life.
I realize you're right, but when I first read this I thought it meant that if you wrote something truly horrible it would make you just have bad karma spiritually
Who decides what is "truly horrible?
Exactly. A community rule violation is what I had in mind. Some things universally "horrible" I can think of are hate speech, racism, and bullying etc.
Surely this is on the downvoters, though? To a lot of people, downvote means "I want this post removed from the internet", not "I don't fully agree with this post".
Aren't those deleting their own posts just saying "Oh no! I didn't realise this was so upsetting to people - I better remove it"?
Not everyone downvoting wants the censure of your post or comment, no.
For instance, I downvoted this comment because I think it's a poor generalization and I'd rather have better thought out comments promoted, not because I want it censored.
How can it be on the downvoters when there is typically no justification tied to a downvote? Misinterpretation is on the poster, not on the downvoter.
This. But having worked in people management before I also understand that there are infinite ways different people might interpret one thing
Don't assume the post was deleted. Modded posts also show as deleted.
But also why would a downvoted post need to be saved? If it were a good post it'd have a positive vote count.
Different strokes for different folks
Edit: plus, bad posts can have valuable comments. They frequently do, if the post is bad because of an error in logic or ethics that can be thoroughly explained/corrected for the poster and any lurkers who identified with the post.
Yes, I frequently learn things from the replies to comments which have been removed by a moderator. I also like to look up the posts themselves to learn what was objectionable.
My client (Connect) separates user deletions from mod deletions by having mod deletions have a link to the modlog for that post/comment.