@ delete posts...not a fan \ stacker news ~meta

5838 sats \ 117 comments \ @needcreations_ 22 Dec 2023 meta

If you @ delete reply to my post, there is a slim chance I'm zapping you. Jus' sayin'....why would I want the history of my post to have a bunch of deleted replies? This just makes it difficult to understand the progression of the discussion. If you want privacy, just use an anon account like most of y'all do anyway...I really dislike this @ delete feature. I think it hurts the platform immensely. Anyone else?

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2109 sats \ 18 replies \ @siggy47 22 Dec 2023 freebie

The nice thing about SN is we own our content, unlike other social media. That includes the power to share it or remove it. Once the power to delete is removed, you might as well be on facebook.

1158 sats \ 0 replies \ @Undisciplined 22 Dec 2023

I agree that the feature should remain available, but I share the negative sentiment towards those posts and replies. I'm not likely to engage with content that's just going to disappear soon anyway.

That said, this is how market incentives work. If people want to take the financial hit of making those posts that's up to them. If you want to undermine their efforts, just quote their posts in a reply.

832 sats \ 11 replies \ @kepford 22 Dec 2023

Not your keys, not your content. I know what you are saying and its true we have more power on SN but we do not own our content. As soon as we put it on someone else's server its not ours. Even if they give us some control.

1109 sats \ 2 replies \ @siggy47 22 Dec 2023

No doubt you're right in the bitcoin sense. I still have remnants of lawyer brain where ownership doesn't imply possession, like, for example, you can own a rental house though your tenant may currently possess it. That being said, I shouldn't have brought ownership into it at all. Your point is well taken. I think our ability to control the content we post is critical.

0 sats \ 1 reply \ @kepford 23 Dec 2023

Yep

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @nemo 23 Dec 2023

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288 sats \ 1 reply \ @franzap 23 Dec 2023

I would say, as soon as someone else has the ability to access it it's not ours anymore

354 sats \ 0 replies \ @kepford 23 Dec 2023

Exactly. IP is as absurd as believing you own the words you speak at the coffee shop. IP is only normal because of the state.

21 sats \ 5 replies \ @Undergotten 23 Dec 2023

So you're saying we will own nothing and be happy? ;D

223 sats \ 2 replies \ @kepford 23 Dec 2023

LOL. Actually what I'm saying is you cannot own "content". IP is a social construct. Its all about control and you lose control if it isn't your server. The people that control the server have ultimate control. But even they can't stop others copying things. The most logical position is that no one owns the content.

IP is a construct enforced by violence. It has no grounding in natural law or even logic.

Thankfully SN does want to give stackers control but it is theirs to grant. Our power is the ability to leave.

0 sats \ 1 reply \ @Undergotten 23 Dec 2023

Completely agree. Here's a great movie that illustrates the concept beautifully. All art is derivative. Copyright is bullshit.

5 sats \ 0 replies \ @kepford 23 Dec 2023

Thanks, Against Intellectual Property is what changed my mind on the topic. Short and helpful book written by an IP attorney.

15 sats \ 1 reply \ @nemo 23 Dec 2023

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21 sats \ 0 replies \ @Undergotten 23 Dec 2023

I thought that was rice-a-roni. haha. I'll see myself out.

402 sats \ 2 replies \ @franzap 23 Dec 2023

Not an SN vs facebook matter, siggy! Information, unlike physical things, can be infinitely copied at zero cost. This is precisely Satoshi's innovation: the ability to keep ownership in an informational realm.

One might have the power to remove their own copy but not the power to remove other copies. It's just a matter of time, someone will create a bot/scraper to copy all those comments marked with @ delete. This exact same thing happened with Reddit (see https://www.reveddit.com/ ).

The only thing it achieves is make it more inconvenient for others to read older threads - the information will be around no matter how you hard you delete it.

131 sats \ 1 reply \ @siggy47 23 Dec 2023

I'm not sure if it's evident from my prior post, but I agree with what you're saying. In essence we give up ownership, however it's defined, and control the minute we start posting. I value the inconvenience you talk about.

201 sats \ 0 replies \ @franzap 23 Dec 2023

👍

261 sats \ 1 reply \ @needcreations_ OP 22 Dec 2023

If you know you're going to delete something AS you are posting it, why do you bother posting it at all?

1 sat \ 0 replies \ @OneOneSeven 22 Dec 2023

Probably because it’s cheap, and highly probable you’ll make your sat back and then some. Maybe comment and delete costs should be up to the territory owner

22 sats \ 2 replies \ @kepford 22 Dec 2023

My thought on this feature is to possibly modify it to make it more costly to auto delete.

Then as stackers if you don't like it downvote people that use it

0 sats \ 1 reply \ @031ef7d322 23 Dec 2023

Does SN have downvotes?

11 sats \ 0 replies \ @kepford 23 Dec 2023

Yep. Downzap

227 sats \ 0 replies \ @ek 23 Dec 2023 freebie

why would I want the history of my post to have a bunch of deleted replies?

Because one day, you might want to delete your replies, too. Also, you don't "own" the replies to your post. Someone replied because they felt like it and when they feel like it, they should be able to delete their own reply.

If you want privacy, just use an anon account

@anon UX sucks if you're already logged in and anon has higher fees. Also, privacy is not binary.

i really dislike this @ delete feature. I think it hurts the platform immensely.

We've had it for a while now, I think it's great and I think it didn't hurt us at all. It empowers stackers which is what we want: More power to stackers.

239 sats \ 0 replies \ @gd 22 Dec 2023

I agree, if you don’t want the post to exist, just don’t post it. If removing it is not an option, let us have an option that hides all conversations with it?

5 sats \ 3 replies \ @BitcoinIsTheFuture 23 Dec 2023

First let’s be honest. Nothing is ever “deleted” on the internet! There are copies of it!

777 sats \ 2 replies \ @ek 23 Dec 2023

Privacy is not binary. Also, the faster you delete something, it's more unlikely that a crawler (or anyone else) created a copy of it.

0 sats \ 1 reply \ @BitcoinIsTheFuture 23 Dec 2023

On the backed they likely legally keep a copy of everything for x number of years is my guess.

77 sats \ 0 replies \ @ek 23 Dec 2023

We don't and we're FOSS.

We're not aware of any law (in any country) requiring us to keep copies. However, we're aware of GDPR which is about the opposite: the right to be forgotten.

777 sats \ 1 reply \ @Jackriddles 23 Dec 2023

I think your opinion is a subjective preference and not a universal resentment. Most people can see value just as well in temporary comments. You've simply chosen not to.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @nemo 23 Dec 2023

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22 sats \ 1 reply \ @boisechampion 22 Dec 2023

Yep, def not zapping people who delete there stuff. All great reasons.

1 sat \ 0 replies \ @nemo 23 Dec 2023

drama by author

12 sats \ 1 reply \ @Entrep 22 Dec 2023 freebie

It delete the whole conversation and kills dialogue

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @nemo 23 Dec 2023

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11 sats \ 0 replies \ @dtonon 22 Dec 2023

Agree

11 sats \ 0 replies \ @tomlaies 22 Dec 2023

agreed

10 sats \ 0 replies \ @AJ1992 22 Dec 2023

1000000% agree. @ko0b remove this awful feature please.

1 sat \ 0 replies \ @TwoLargePizzas 22 Dec 2023

I can only think of one valid reason to delete a post and that's if you've accidentally doxxed yourself.

That said, we already have the time limited edit feature. Ten minutes is plenty of time to decide if you want to keep content you've posted or not.

Besides, the internet is already pretty permanent. It doesn't take long for bots to scan and copy content. Even if you delete something there's a chance it'll be around forever anyway.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @elvismercury 23 Dec 2023

It's almost too meta to do this, but here's an earlier discussion about the same topic.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Scholarhacker 23 Dec 2023

I think its a great feature. I think it improves the platform - via control.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @franzap 23 Dec 2023

Yes, terrible and ineffective idea

0 sats \ 1 reply \ @ssaurel 23 Dec 2023

I really dislike this @ delete feature

It's the same thing for me, I never delete the content that I publish on the Internet, to leave traces of my possible past errors. It reminds me of how I have evolved and above all that in life, we evolve and nothing is ever perfect.

My content on the Internet is like the Bitcoin Blockchain: immutable.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @nemo 23 Dec 2023 freebie

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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Lumor 23 Dec 2023

I find it annoying when I get a reply that is already deleted by the time I reopen SN.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @satoshiplanet 23 Dec 2023

Freedom first, I think it is important that each user has the possibility to use the option or not to do so.

If the problem is only that the comments look ugly, maybe there could be a way to delete from the comments section the comments that have used the delete it option.

Would it be possible?

0 sats \ 1 reply \ @needcreations_ OP 22 Dec 2023

Someone who is using this feature, tell me why. What is the purpose of @ delete?

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @ek 23 Dec 2023

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2644 sats \ 66 replies \ @Eobard 22 Dec 2023 freebie

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410 sats \ 0 replies \ @legxxi 23 Dec 2023

@delete in 1000 years

174 sats \ 2 replies \ @legxxi 23 Dec 2023

With so many content scrapers, big tech, and now AI, do you really think your content is deleted? Anything you post might be stored somewhere else for good.

By deleting it from SN you are making it hard for Stackers to follow the conversations. I would agree that preserving the comment and replacing the author with “anon472844” for example (unzappable btw), is probably a much more useful solution.

Last but not least, I would like to point out that unfortunately the ephemerality of our face to face conversations is lost on the internet. We are obsessed about saving everything. It’s data, it’s the new oil, let’s save every comma.

261 sats \ 0 replies \ @elvismercury 23 Dec 2023

I would agree that preserving the comment and replacing the author with “anon472844” for example (unzappable btw), is probably a much more useful solution.

This is a reasonable compromise, I think. If you wanted to make it even "better" you could use Llama to paraphrase the post to remove distinctive styling features.

I would like to point out that unfortunately the ephemerality of our face to face conversations is lost on the internet.

This is the heart of it. I absolutely understand the desire to have ephemeral conversations -- they're so important! Our lives would be so much worse without them! But the internet has different affordances and we shouldn't find a realistic way to inhabit them instead of pretending they don't exist.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @franzap 23 Dec 2023

Second the idea of replacing the author!

614 sats \ 36 replies \ @Undisciplined 22 Dec 2023

You should be zapping content based on the value it provides, rather than being concerned about whether it gets deleted after a some time.

This is the crux of the issue for me. I abandoned reddit for Stacker News. One of the things I really like about this format is being able to dive into a conversation that may have happened long ago and learn from it or contribute to it. Unlike face to face conversations, these conversations are immortal and living (or at least I prefer them to be).

I'm definitely not judging what you value about Stacker News, but it is slightly at odds with what I value. At heart I'm a "let a thousand flowers bloom" guy.

Going forward, I think I'll engage with content like yours as I'm doing here: quoting the part I'm replying to so that the conversation can be followed. I also support your idea for being able to hide your username instead.

an option to hide the user who wrote the post instead of deleting the actual text could be a win-win

The more ways to enjoy Stacker News the better, as far as I'm concerned. It's a new community and we're all still learning how to coexist.

672 sats \ 35 replies \ @elvismercury 22 Dec 2023

One of the things I really like about this format is being able to dive into a conversation that may have happened long ago and learn from it or contribute to it.

Agreed -- that's the second-most special thing about SN, imo, after zapping. There's a chance for useful things to accrue and worthy conversations to unfold over time.

Going forward, I think I'll engage with content like yours as I'm doing here: quoting the part I'm replying to so that the conversation can be followed.

This policy makes sense, and I actually am a giant fan of more targeted quoting and responding; but I'm also sad at the idea of people having to do this defensively because of a privacy LARP.

Seriously, people: the nature of digital communication comes with certain technical affordances. Deal with them.

650 sats \ 8 replies \ @ek 23 Dec 2023

but I'm also sad at the idea of people having to do this defensively because of a privacy LARP.

I don't think it's a privacy LARP. Sometimes you share something and then you realize later that someone could combine this tiny little bit of information you shared about yourself with all the other tiny little bits of (known or unknown) information you shared on the Internet to build up a profile about you which can be used for all kind of malicious purposes.

At some point, you just don't want to think about "am I leaking information about me" anymore? If you care about your privacy enough, you're just going to delete it. For some, a loss of ~privacy is directly related to a loss of personal ~security (doxing being the maximum loss of privacy) so I think we shouldn't judge people who care about their privacy.

446 sats \ 3 replies \ @elvismercury 23 Dec 2023

Sometimes you share something and then you realize later that someone could combine this tiny little bit of information you shared about yourself with all the other tiny little bits of (known or unknown) information you shared on the Internet

I'm not against targeted deletions when a person makes a mistake, or says too much, or even just behaves in a way they later regret. That's part of being human. I'm against the generic deletation-as-a-course-of-action policy that some are demonstrating here.

When you publish something online, it's out. The UTXO of that utterance is spent and the key is exposed. I could write a bot in a few days that scrapes everything that appears on SN. Any adversary who cares enough about you to be digging through your words will have that info and they will have it whether or not you delete the post in a day.

This is why I call it LARPing -- believing you're safe because you're deleting everything is a fiction. If it's giving you a sense of security, you're fooling yourself. I'm not trying to be mean (@nemo) and I'm sorry you took it that way, but the only way to have the total safety some of you seem to want is to say nothing. That would be a loss for us and for you; but this current behavior isn't protecting you and it's bad for SN.

737 sats \ 2 replies \ @ek 23 Dec 2023 freebie

I'm against the generic deletation-as-a-course-of-action policy that some are demonstrating here.

I don't see this to be much of a problem right now. I can count the nyms that I am aware of that regularly delete their comments on less than two fingers. How many fingers do you need?

However, it could become a problem, yes, but I don't think it will be. If there are enough people who value evergreen content, these people will create that evergreen content themselves. As some say: "Be the change you want to see in the world"

I could write a bot in a few days that scrapes everything that appears on SN.

You could. But would you? And how would you feel about it?

Any adversary who cares enough about you to be digging through your words will have that info and they will have it whether or not you delete the post in a day.

That's part of threat modeling. Deleting comments now saves you from such a serious threat actor in the future. When something like this becomes your threat model, your past will not be as much of a vulnerability.

This is why I call it LARPing -- believing you're safe because you're deleting everything is a fiction. If it's giving you a sense of security, you're fooling yourself.

I don't think people who delete their comments believe they're safe from everything. I think they believe they are safe against their current threat model. I think they are pretty aware of what kind of level of security they gain or lose by deleting / not deleting comments.

the only way to have the total safety some of you seem to want is to say nothing.

I agree. But I guess sometimes, you are willing to sacrifice a little abstract safety for some fun if it's worth it :)

~security is not binary just like ~privacy. It's all just personal preference (and threat modeling, as mentioned).

1407 sats \ 1 reply \ @elvismercury 23 Dec 2023

This is a really thoughtful reply. A bunch of rapid-fire responses are occurring to me, but when I get this feeling it makes me alert to arguing because I'm trying to win vs arguing because I'm trying to find the truth. So I mostly won't.

You could. But would you?

No.

As some say: "Be the change you want to see in the world"

I'm trying. But not hard enough, so it's good to be reminded.

But I guess sometimes, you are willing to sacrifice a little safety for some fun if it's worth it :)

The human condition in one sentence.

I'm glad this discussion (and the other one) exist and the points that are made have been made. It will be useful as part of the ongoing public dialogue about this topic, which is bigger than SN, I think.

902 sats \ 0 replies \ @nemo 23 Dec 2023 freebie

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11 sats \ 3 replies \ @Eobard 23 Dec 2023

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177 sats \ 1 reply \ @ek 23 Dec 2023 freebie

I used to have the same (or at least similar) opinion on this topic as most others here seem to have though :)

But I changed my mind. We're here to serve stackers, not to steal their content the moment they click on "reply" and pretend it's completely ours now and you have no rights anymore.

33 sats \ 0 replies \ @nemo 23 Dec 2023

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21 sats \ 0 replies \ @nemo 23 Dec 2023

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880 sats \ 24 replies \ @Eobard 23 Dec 2023 freebie

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1951 sats \ 11 replies \ @elvismercury 23 Dec 2023

It's already happened abundantly in my own posts; and I do it abundantly on the posts of others. If you design for it to happen, and get the incentives right, it can and will happen.

SN is not Reddit.

11 sats \ 10 replies \ @Eobard 23 Dec 2023

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988 sats \ 0 replies \ @Undisciplined 23 Dec 2023

I'd say you're more or less right about all of your points, but SN is young and those are all works in progress.

582 sats \ 0 replies \ @satoshiplanet 23 Dec 2023

Bookmarks are great to reread posts n comments

10 sats \ 7 replies \ @needcreations_ OP 23 Dec 2023

You'd be surprised, lots of people go straight to the comments before reading the main post. I'm guilty of that sometimes, more so for videos, but sometimes articles and forum posts like these on SN too. Reading the comments can give you a quick feel of what the main post is about and you can decide if you even feel like taking the time to dig into the main post. It'd be a shame if some of the comments are deleted and the flow of the conversation is interrupted all over the place...

121 sats \ 6 replies \ @Eobard 23 Dec 2023 freebie

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445 sats \ 2 replies \ @0fje0 23 Dec 2023

@Thawne wrote:

After being an active Reddit user for years, I can assure you that people returning to old posts or commenting on them rarely happens, and I doubt that it will be any different with Stacker.news.

The more you want to make SN like reddit, the more it becomes reddit.

And we're all abandoning reddit, no?

1 sat \ 1 reply \ @Undisciplined 23 Dec 2023

I think that's too simplistic. There were things we all liked about reddit, too, or we wouldn't have been there in the first place. There's no problem with trying to reproduce and improve upon those features here.

445 sats \ 0 replies \ @0fje0 23 Dec 2023

There were things we all liked about reddit, too

Of course, you're right.

It just struck me as odd that a 4-day old account ¹ on SN was making so many references to reddit, while seemingly unaware (or maybe unappreciative?) of how often old reddit posts and comments are revisited.

improve upon those features here

That should be the aim, yes.

Excluding anonymous posts. ↩

10 sats \ 3 replies \ @needcreations_ OP 23 Dec 2023

people returning to old posts or commenting on them rarely happens

Isn't that because old posts are archived on Reddit and can't be commented on?

0 sats \ 2 replies \ @Eobard 23 Dec 2023

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1 sat \ 1 reply \ @needcreations_ OP 23 Dec 2023

The majority of people are primarily interested in recent/fresh posts.

How would you know that? The more posts there are the more "older" posts there will be to look at and review. Would it be convenient for a user to look at these posts with a bunch of deleted content?

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Eobard 23 Dec 2023

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0 sats \ 4 replies \ @Undisciplined 23 Dec 2023

I'm glad SN is providing you all with that option. Most likely this is just my ignorance, but I thought you could delete posts on nostr. Does it just delete your copy of it essentially?

There's a real interest in developing mechanisms that would help resurface old content here, so I think community interest will generate something functional.

415 sats \ 3 replies \ @Eobard 23 Dec 2023

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50 sats \ 2 replies \ @Undisciplined 23 Dec 2023

Thanks for the explanation.

333 sats \ 1 reply \ @Eobard 23 Dec 2023

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111 sats \ 0 replies \ @nemo 23 Dec 2023 freebie

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106 sats \ 0 replies \ @needcreations_ OP 22 Dec 2023

You should be zapping content based on the value it provides,

I am doing exactly that. I don't value posts that will be deleted, so I don't zap them and I will not be engaging with them at all.

21 sats \ 16 replies \ @clr 22 Dec 2023

I don't get it. If you don't want your posts associated with your username, why don't you post as @anon?

From my side, I am not zapping posts from users who routinely delete theirs (auto or manual). It's a shame because often the content is worthy of a zap.

1125 sats \ 1 reply \ @nemo 23 Dec 2023

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777 sats \ 0 replies \ @Eobard 23 Dec 2023

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0 sats \ 12 replies \ @Eobard 22 Dec 2023

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228 sats \ 2 replies \ @clr 22 Dec 2023

That's what I do. Content that gets deleted is less valuable.

To me, it feels like you want the benefits of using an identity (collecting sats and being known) but without the responsibility (letting people scrutinize what you say and being responsible for your words). To be clear, I don't mean responsibility in the way a government means, but as in reputation. The good thing of sovereign voluntary identities is that if you screw up you can start over with a new one.

821 sats \ 1 reply \ @Eobard 23 Dec 2023

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100 sats \ 0 replies \ @ek 23 Dec 2023

Unfortunately, SN does not offer a similar feature

Not yet :)

6 sats \ 8 replies \ @needcreations_ OP 22 Dec 2023 freebie

Why should we value something that is going to be auto deleted??? Temporary value doesn't exist in my book. Would I buy a toaster if it's just going to disappear in one week?

0 sats \ 1 reply \ @ek 23 Dec 2023 freebie

What about renting stuff? Renting something has no value to you?

0 sats \ 5 replies \ @Eobard 22 Dec 2023

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22 sats \ 2 replies \ @needcreations_ OP 22 Dec 2023 freebie

How could it possibly lose its value?

By being deleted

Stacker News is a public forum, not a dm group among friends. You're making an apples to oranges comparison. Of course posts will lose value if fragments of the discussion are auto deleted. Nothing will make sense to the reader. I don't value that at all.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @ek 23 Dec 2023 freebie

To be honest @needcreations_, you sound quite entitled in your arguments against this @delete feature.

You don't own the content of other users. People are here because they want to. If they (or you) want to remove their content, it's theirs to remove.

If SN becomes hostile to some kind of users, they would probably not post at all. And I think that's worse than someone deleting their comments after some time - even if it's just seconds.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Eobard 23 Dec 2023

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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @legxxi 23 Dec 2023

A chat is usually within two people or a certain group through the use of an app. Unlike a public forum as this one, where you don’t even need an account to read. Very different things!

Also in the chat the disappearing configuration is valid for every participant, not only for a few.

Otherwise I would agree with the ephemerality of it’s for everyone, just delete all content after 90 days. Saves space and bandwidth for SN.

Nostr should be doing that too, delete all from everyone after a certain amount of days/months. Let’s get back to real conversations.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @031ef7d322 23 Dec 2023 freebie

Most messenger apps have an option to automatically delete messages after a certain period of time. Would you stop chatting with your friends just because their messages disappear after a month?

You’re comparing private direct messaging (which often only has value in the moment it was exchanged) to a public forum with a search index?

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Eobard 22 Dec 2023

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0 sats \ 1 reply \ @fishyness 25 Dec 2023

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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @needcreations_ OP 25 Dec 2023

a public forum isn't akin to a conversation in real life lol. Apples to oranges

0 sats \ 4 replies \ @Eobard 22 Dec 2023

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2 sats \ 0 replies \ @needcreations_ OP 22 Dec 2023

Just to be clear....by "anon account" I'm not referring to a user who isn't registered with stacker news....I'm talking about anyone who uses a pseudonym on here which is basically everyone....I just don't get what the purpose of deleting a post is if no one really knows who you are. Like, why are you even posting in the first place if you just want to delete it? Make it make sense

1 sat \ 2 replies \ @031ef7d322 23 Dec 2023 freebie

I think one easy solution is to make the anon acc earn sats and reward, and lower the posting costs to be the same as regular accounts.

Based on the comments here, it seems like the majority of users would consider a better solution to be de-monetizing all auto-delete comments since they don’t add lasting value to this site.

Footnotes