New form of censorship?

submitted by magnora7 from self.censorship

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[–][deleted] 10 insightful - 2 fun10 insightful - 1 fun11 insightful - 2 fun -  (12 children)

Damn, good one man. This is pretty suspicious. I can't even see a trail of how often a user has done this. Edit: they are still here with an account imo, admins can see the OP

[–]magnora7[S] 7 insightful - 3 fun7 insightful - 2 fun8 insightful - 3 fun -  (11 children)

Thanks. Yeah it's odd.

I looked through my top comments in the last year, just do a ctrl+f for "[deleted]" and I see 3-4 threads where the users have deleted the thread (or the username) where I left a comment. So thankfully it's not super common, but I do have to wonder what percent of saidit posts are later deleted soon after... and what percent of those are important stuff like the maxwell thing. It also makes saidit look like we didn't have a big discussion on it, when in fact we did. Definitely seems a bit fishy and strikes me as a weird form of censorship

[–]AXXA 5 insightful - 2 fun5 insightful - 1 fun6 insightful - 2 fun -  (2 children)

A big weakness Saidit inherited from the codebase is that 99% of the time nobody looks at posts that are over a day or two old. Even the 1% of the time when somebody comments on an old post then nobody else sees it. There's no incentive not to delete old posts. An easy fix to the codebase would be to add a tab like hot but with cooldown from the last comment date instead of the post date. That way old posts that are worth discussing would continue to appear.

[–][deleted] 3 insightful - 2 fun3 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 2 fun -  (0 children)

Excellent idea!!

[–]magnora7[S] 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

There's no incentive not to delete old posts.

Sure there is, allowing community participation.

I think the real fix for the issue you brought up is to increase the "hot" ranking as a function of number of comments, instead of just votes. Then more commented stuff would linger around longer.

There's a careful balance between making the front page look non-stale (it needs to change regularly to keep people coming back) and having old threads with lots of comments being seen. But I wouldn't mind stuff with lots of comments hanging out on the 'hot' sort for a bit longer

[–][deleted] 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

This is tricky stuff, it's like you want to allow good faith users to retract a post that they messed up, but there's potentially this censorship attack vector as a side effect.

My fix ideas: admins should see deleted posts on a user page, or every damn feed gets an admin version that shows deletions. Or every user has a public deleted posts and deleted comments counter, shown on their userpage by their karma. That's it I'm clocking out. Fuck 2021.

[–]magnora7[S] 6 insightful - 3 fun6 insightful - 2 fun7 insightful - 3 fun -  (0 children)

Yeah it is tricky. I agree good faith users should be able to take their names off of things.

Like just an idea but maybe it can remain in the search results, but it can still say [deleted]? So the public can access the public comment section, but the user who posted it doesn't have to have their username attached to it anymore. Because honestly a comment section seems like a community asset, rather than something one user owns.

I'm glad 2021 is over too. Good riddance to it lol. Happy new years!

[–][deleted] 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (5 children)

or: just keep deleted posts in all of the feeds. it will have the content removed for non-admins as expected.

[–]magnora7[S] 5 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 0 fun6 insightful - 1 fun -  (4 children)

Sounds good. By 'the content' you mean the username and any selfpost text? Link posts would be unaffected (except username becoming [deleted]), I guess?

However it works out, as long as people can find the public comment sections later, I think that's the main deal.

Anyway, not a super pressing issue or anything, just wanted to bring it to everyone's attention. Back to celebrating new years :)

[–][deleted] 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

Yep, username and selfpost text would be gone. I'm just concerned that deleted posts being changed to be in search would not be enough. They are still effectively deleted unless you are highly motivated to find it.

[–]magnora7[S] 3 insightful - 2 fun3 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 2 fun -  (2 children)

I'm down for that.

Someone deleted a post yesterday and it still appeared on the "hot" list. So I think it's only the "top" list that's affected maybe? If you could just re-add them on "top" sort I think that'd solve most of the issue maybe

[–][deleted] 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

I captured it https://github.com/libertysoft3/saidit/issues/114

[–]magnora7[S] 3 insightful - 2 fun3 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 2 fun -  (0 children)

Nice, that's a good way to describe it