I’ve noticed something about deletion on Lemmy.world that’s been bothering me, and I’m hoping this is the right place to ask about it or suggest improvements.
Right now, when a user deletes a post or comment, the deletion is soft:
the content disappears,
but a “deleted” placeholder remains,
and some apps still show the original text in reply previews,
and federated copies may persist on other servers.
I understand this is how Lemmy works at the platform level, and that federation makes true hard deletion complicated. But I’m wondering if Lemmy.world could offer better user‑side deletion tools, or at least explore options that give users more control over their own content.
Here are a few ideas that might be realistic, low‑effort, and compatible with federation:
-
A “Classic Delete” option This would remove the content and replace it with a simple (deleted) marker — no preview text, no ghost remnants. Even if the placeholder stays for thread structure, the content itself should be fully wiped from Lemmy.world’s side.
-
Moderator‑assisted deletion If a user deletes their own post/comment, moderators could receive a small queue entry allowing them to manually hard‑remove the content from Lemmy.world’s database. This wouldn’t fix federation, but it would give users more control locally.
-
A “Close Post” option Instead of deleting, allow users to “close” a post:
hides it from their profile
prevents new replies
marks it as closed This avoids breaking thread flow while still giving the user an escape hatch.
- A privacy‑focused deletion mode Even if federation can’t guarantee full erasure, Lemmy.world could:
wipe the local copy
send deletion requests to other instances
and clearly communicate the limitations This is still better than the current ghost‑comment behavior.
Deleted posts still count toward my profile totals. Is there any chance Lemmy.world could switch to counting only active posts/comments, or offer a privacy mode that hides deleted items from the profile stats?