2644 sats \ 66 replies \ @Eobard 22 Dec 2023 freebie \ on: @ delete posts...not a fan meta
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@delete in 1000 years
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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.
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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.
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Second the idea of replacing the author!
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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 :)
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Bookmarks are great to reread posts n comments
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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...
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That's why I suggested a feature - dissociate the comment from my account instead of completely deleting the text.
This does sound interesting. We could keep deletes but have another option "unlink nym" or something.
@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?
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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.
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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.
Footnotes
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Excluding anonymous posts. ↩
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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?
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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?
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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.
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Thanks for the explanation.
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Thanks for pointing that out, I hadn't looked at my bio in quite awhile.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Unfortunately, SN does not offer a similar feature
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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?
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What about renting stuff? Renting something has no value to you?
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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?
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a public forum isn't akin to a conversation in real life lol. Apples to oranges
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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
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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.