I understand that very few (or no) websites actually delete anything. They just mark them as “deleted”. But this usually means that once something is deleted, users have no ability to see the deleted data. This doesn’t seem to be the case with Lemmy.

I’ve been trying out the Android app called Connect for Lemmy, and it shows the contents of all deleted comments with a “DELETED” word on them. See the uploaded screenshot.

This seems bad to me. Users expect that deleted comments are no longer viewable, and won’t be returned by Lemmy’s API. Lemmy still shows the username of the deleted comments, which was bad enough, but now I’m seeing that it doesn’t prevent apps from seeing the deleted comments.

What are your thoughts on this?

  • Barbarian@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    Yeah, that should be fixed. Currently best work-around is to edit the comment with just the word “Deleted” or similar in it.

  • wccrawford@lemmyonline.comEnglish
    0·
    1 year ago

    Because of federation, I suspect they can’t just disappear. But they should lose their content and be marked as deleted, rather than viewable.

    • FlagonOfMe@sh.itjust.worksOPEnglish
      1·
      1 year ago

      It’s not always about being decent. Sometimes people doxx themselves by accident, and should be allowed to delete their comments. Especially if they start getting harassed by some nut. Sometimes stalkers can piece together info from old comments.

      If they do delete it and it doesn’t make the content irretrievable, I’m not sure they can edit the comment at that point to remove the info. They will now have lost control of it.

      I realize that deleting isn’t perfect because of archive sites, screenshots, and whatever else. But at the very basic level, people should be able to actually delete their comments.