Comment on [deleted by author] by witness

Parent Post: [deleted by author] · In Reply To

witness · 3/23/2025, 10:34:19 PM · permalink

The issue with reddit (and other social media) is the top down censorship. Your commitment to free expression is something no main stream platform is going to offer. That's great. What's not so great (imo) is how far away from user sovereignty over their contributions and account these decisions are leaning.   
  
This whole thing about "deleting is an illusion" is true in absolute terms. Like I'm sure all the social media accounts I deleted 15+ years ago still hold all my data, and if the CIA or Palantir or whatever really want my posts from 15 years ago, they will be able to get them. But most of us aren't playing those games at those levels, wayback doesn't index everything, we're just regular people with regular jobs who may need to dodge schizo keyboard warriors and keyboard activists or local LE.  
  
Being able to delete your account for privacy or any other reason seems like the minimum standard of care of a user-centric platform could provide.  
  
From your perspective I suppose I can see why this is a non-issue. You're already out there, everything you say on your pod/platform is irreversible. For people who do what you do, that's a good thing and it's also why not everyone can do what you do. That's your niche.  
  
So to hold casual users who just want to shoot the shit on social media to that standard. That's a big ask and for what reason. I think it's ultimately going to prevent widespread uptake of this platform.  I could be wrong, maybe people really do want to be held to the same level of radical accountability you are, it's still early days.  
  
I do think you could facilitate user deletion of accounts without removing posts and your radical accountability approach would still be mostly intact. Rather than asking people to go make burner email accounts, change email on the account then go back and delete the email burner account. Just let them delete the username (and email), you don't need to continue holding that if people want to leave.  
  
Anyway, I appreciate you taking the the time to put your thoughts down. For me there's just a fundamental sovereignty issue here, who owns an account, who owns a contribution. In the current model there's a significant asymmetry in the ownership dynamic. Not everyone is going to see it like that but hey, I wish you all the best! I think your heart is in the right place, so I hope it works out. 🙏

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kelspeth · 3/27/2025, 5:23:23 AM · permalink

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