Reddit and Deleting User Posts on Sanctuary

[Arnox]

So apparently, Reddit has been caught red-handed in restoring user-deleted content. Now, let's get the obvious out of the way first. Spez is an asshole and he is also indeed in gross violation of the CCPA and blah de blah. Nevertheless, after all that, it does raise an interesting question. Am I, at Sanctuary, an asshole as well for not allowing for users to delete their own content (unless there is PI in it) in any way whatsoever? On the surface, it certainly seems so. Why shouldn't users, on a free speech forum no less, be allowed to delete what they contributed to the site? If they want to completely pull content, that should be their decision, right?

Well, perhaps one of the biggest differentiators is that Sanctuary isn't making me any money. At all. In fact, it is actually costing me money every year for the server with at very least a projected 3x more cost to support future file and video hosting along with continuing to pay XF for support and future versions, and maybe also the game server that is paid for as well if you wanna include that. There isn't even anyone to shoulder those costs with me. Further, Sanctuary is not getting planned to be monetized in any way anytime soon. So for the foreseeable future, this site is going to continue to be a large debit on my bank statement and nothing else, and the more users and content that is here, the more I actually am going to lose money. But that's okay. I accepted that right when I started the site. With this kind of deal, you go big or you go home and I'm really not ready to go home right now.

Legally speaking, we are not hosted in Cali. Hell, we're not even hosted in the damn United States even tangentially. The only link we had was Cloudflare, and that got shut down around last year, so we are now completely and utterly independent of US servers. There IS the GDPR, but that only applies to PI, which we already don't want, don't encourage people give, and provide a clear provision for deletion to anyone who wishes to have that removed. Houseman has even proposed that ANY PI should not be allowed to be posted by anyone, end of story, which may indeed be a route we might take. In any case though, the GDPR doesn't apply to any other part of what users contribute to the website.

So, I am actively paying to have this content available, and the GDPR and CCPA pretty much don't apply to us, but that doesn't really answer the initial question, does it. Is it wrong to not allow users to delete any content they contribute to Sanctuary? Well, let's look at the other side of this coin here. There are few things more infuriating than going to a post to find out information or to retrieve a rare file only to see that that post or upload has been removed either because the user wanted it gone or because the website staff decided it wasn't valuable enough to keep around anymore. That might have been the only place to get what you wanted too, but too bad! It's gone forever now! :) And all because some user had a hissy fit or the website administration couldn't spare the few dollars extra to keep the content around.

Furthermore, it also punches incredibly irritating gaping holes in conversations around the forum. And what's funny is that you will still probably not be able to delete everything anyway as people often quote a post in their own post. XF may have functionality to delete those too, but I'm not quite sure. What's more, some users may try to say or upload something shitty and then they'll try to delete it and force other providers like archive.org to delete the post too. "What post? I sure didn't make that post. :) You're misremembering! Hahaha, so silly!"

Allowing deleted content also gives attacking groups another avenue for disruption as they can just continually post a ton of content in incredibly rapid time and then demand later that it all be deleted immediately. If we don't go through with it or do it in a timely enough fashion, then they'll accuse us of lying or at least being incredibly inconsistent. "What, you don't respect your own rules that you wrote? LOL!!!!"

And finally, for what reason do you even want to delete your content here anyway outside of posting something in error? Just because you grew a hate-boner for the site? So that hate boner is going to justify butchering any threads you participated in and depriving other users of content? The content here is not even entirely the main draw of Sanctuary. We aren't like useless sites such as Reddit where the only value they offer is that everyone else is there. Sanctuary provides a service nobody else offers in a way nobody else offers either, even if there was no one here and no content whatsoever. Now, content is valuable, no doubt about it, but it's not what already exists here that we're really selling anyway. We're selling freedom of speech, reliability, and safety from so much other bullshit that is meted out on other websites.

The content we offer as well is definitely a very nice cool bonus, but you shouldn't be posting on Sanctuary just because you saw a kewl article or liked some files that we offer for download. You should be here because you believe in what we do here and because you want to be a part of this community and what we're trying so hard to accomplish. So no, in summary, we are not going to allow users to delete content as it's not justifiable when taken together with all the major issues involved with doing so. If you do not agree, that's totally fair, but you'll have to find somewhere else to post then.

On Sanctuary, assuming contributions are following the rules, either EVERYTHING stays or EVERYTHING goes. For your benefit, and for our benefit, and for everyone else's.

 

[Gauche]

Just so it doesn't come as a surprise, I will be deleting my card gallery posts when I feel like it
They'll be on the waybackmachine should someone want to to view them

 

[Arnox]

Just so it doesn't come as a surprise, I will be deleting my card gallery posts when I feel like it
They'll be on the waybackmachine should someone want to to view them

Well... I'm really torn on this, but we have talked about this before.

I guess I'll allow it. Just give me the thread URLs to remove. But also include an archive.org link for all the gallery threads you want gone.

 

[Myoxo]

I see your point, and I think your position is fair. However, there are some very valid reasons for wanting to nuke your user. Say you acquire the attention of the law, and that your internet activity on this site, while not strictly illegal, most certainly contain the kind of stuff prosecution loves to twist and exacerbate in order to undermine your character and credibility. If they can link your real name to a user name, and that user name to thousands of politically loaded posts, that is an issue. Or what about personal stalkers, who can be far worse than the cops?

Deleting it all may not be necessary to thwart their efforts, however. Some level of anonymization and obfuscation might just be the thing. If the CIA is after you, that is going to be insufficient, but for more low level and realistic adversaries, it might just do the trick. Bear in mind that I have little experience with programming fora, so I don't know if there are technical issues preventing the scheme I am about to suggest. From a database point of view, however, it should be fairly simple.

So, how about something like this: No posts are deleted, but the user profile is (registration email and all, obviously), and the user in question is replaced with a random username and ID in each thread they participate. So, if I nuke my user, I might be Alice in this thread, Bob in my introduction thread, and so on. This way, conversations are mostly left intact; you guys would just be discussing with seemingly different people, as if I had made a different user for every thread. There would be no glaring disruptions or any lost content.

I am not claiming this is perfect. There would be some discrepancies here and there which might cause some very moderate level of confusion, such as the user Alice suddenly being called Myoxo in a reply. Obviously, such discrepancies could be used to extract some content belonging to the user under investigation. But most of content created by that users created would not be so easily connected, and doing so would require labour intensive and error prone, hard work of the adversaries. While they might find some of my posts, they probably would not find all of them. When countering an adversary that scoops up vast amounts of information for careful sifting an analysis, reducing the volume is obviously advantageous.

Furthermore: If the nuking is left entirely at the discretion of the user, and the actions performed are not logged anywhere, then the owner of the website would not have any liability issues either - Arnox would neither be in a position to tell who actually wrote what, nor have anything to do with my choice of obfuscating my presence. As such, any allegations of perverting the cause of justice would fall flat.

All in all, I think this is a fair compromise. Again, it might be difficult to implement for reasons I don't understand. The relevancy of the use cases are debatable, but I will say this: Any useful platform dedicated to free speech will inevitably attract fringe elements of society. And a lot of the stuff that is just obnoxious today is going to be damning in the future. People know this, and it has a cooling effect: Even computer savvy people - ok, especially computer savvy people - knows that an anonymous internet presence may suddenly be unwillingly unmasked, despite everyone's intentions and efforts. As such, having a safety valve in the form of anonymization, even partial, may just give some users the confidence to be a little more open and honest than they are otherwise inclined to be.

My two cents.

 

[Scrawny The Ghost]

I think it's a fair decision on your part Arnox and your transparency over the costs are appreciated, I think it's fair because you are laying it all out here. Opinion of someone with no skin in the game that doesn't have files here and haven't been hanging at DA SANCTUARY - The last bastion of hope - But I actually did want to host a file the other day and when thinking about the best place to keep it I remembered you mentioning the file hosting idea

There is a gap in the market for good ol' file hosting of this nature I think, and I think your ideals are much more noble than some of the privacy/freedom oriented communities i've been around, who just assume anything bitcoin = good because 'F THE GOVERNMENT JUST PUT IT ON THE BLOCKCHAIN THEY CAN NEVER STOP US!!" I think more people would be interested in supporting this place if they knew about it but I feel like this is on the very fringes of internet culture, a culture that more or less no longer exists and is in constant rapid social, technological and political upheaval which doesn't make it easy for running a business and marketing something to people who could be mass banned and deplatformed for anything at any time and usually exist in the far reaches of the internet, not all over social media.

I see your point, and I think your position is fair. However, there are some very valid reasons for wanting to nuke your user. Say you acquire the attention of the law, and that your internet activity on this site, while not strictly illegal, most certainly contain the kind of stuff prosecution loves to twist and exacerbate in order to undermine your character and credibility. If they can link your real name to a user name, and that user name to thousands of politically loaded posts, that is an issue. Or what about personal stalkers, who can be far worse than the cops?

I assume all my stuff is being logged, if any site is being watched deleting won't change anything as there is cheap CHEAP imaging software that captures sites as they change live in real time with graphics to see the changes over time, all kinds of nifty features, did I mention how cheap it was?? Some of the forums I use don't even like using "SWIM" as you are basically admitting you broke the law and now are using code to hide stuff, cops aren't dumb, it's the system they follow that makes them act in hostile ways to innocent people, and the system should always be assumed to be bad in every aspect, from top to bottom.

If it's on the internet I think you already messed up, don't put things on a computer if you don't want it there forever because someone might have saved a secret backup nobody knows about and they don't care about you or your morality, or the government, some people just leak stuff and cause mayhem because it's fun and can be easy. I get threatened with my posting history quite often and I just laugh at the idea of a judge having to read out my 10,000 usernames and spam in court proceedings. I would have that entire court case video taped and put on youtube if that ever happened and enjoy every day in jail for saying swear words on da computer, lock me up!!!

 

[Arnox]

So, how about something like this: No posts are deleted, but the user profile is (registration email and all, obviously), and the user in question is replaced with a random username and ID in each thread they participate. So, if I nuke my user, I might be Alice in this thread, Bob in my introduction thread, and so on. This way, conversations are mostly left intact; you guys would just be discussing with seemingly different people, as if I had made a different user for every thread. There would be no glaring disruptions or any lost content.

XF does offer a way to just delete a profile and rename all posts made with that profile to something else, but it sadly doesn't put in a random name for every single post as you're describing. Only whatever I decide to put in. And that is of much more dubious use. Another issue is that if low-level LE is looking for you and you know they're looking for you. It's probably already too late and they've already combed the site for your posts anyway.

This is why I recommend right in the rules to not post evidence of any crimes or otherwise incriminate yourself. We're not gonna stop you from doing so, but LE might become very interested in you.

But I actually did want to host a file the other day and when thinking about the best place to keep it I remembered you mentioning the file hosting idea

There is a gap in the market for good ol' file hosting of this nature I think, and I think your ideals are much more noble than some of the privacy/freedom oriented communities i've been around, who just assume anything bitcoin = good because 'F THE GOVERNMENT JUST PUT IT ON THE BLOCKCHAIN THEY CAN NEVER STOP US!!" I think more people would be interested in supporting this place if they knew about it.

<3

But yeah, the more people I talk to about the file-hosting idea, the more I get the impression that people actually WANT this shit. Like, really badly. Sanctuary would have to massively level up though to get that done. To such an extent actually that there would be very little other places left for us to expand into. Sanctuary would cover pretty much every freaking base from short informational and entertainment literature and long-form discussions (forums) to videos to instant chat to software to code to maybe even a wiki (Because I guess at that point, with all that damn storage, why not).

The only area that we wouldn't touch is the marketplace sector because there is WAY too many issues to deal with on that front, even if we had unlimited money.

Also,

who just assume anything bitcoin = good because 'F THE GOVERNMENT JUST PUT IT ON THE BLOCKCHAIN THEY CAN NEVER STOP US!!"

This is definitely cringe, isn't it. Way too many sites who do "free speech" have either two things. Complete fucking anarchy (with usually some hypocrisy thrown in for good measure), or conservative justice warriors off their fucking meds. There's no professionalism. No attention to detail. No consistency. No goals. No beauty. Just wild immaturity just for the sake of it.

 

[filbs111]

Reddit is shitty because they claim to let you delete things, but in recent cases, have secretly put it back.
People might not have posted what they did, if reddit had told them they wouldn't be able to delete it.
Not sure what the rules are here - there's no delete button on posts, but there is an "edit".
What's a sensible policy for forums? I guess letting people anonymise/psuedonymise their posts, to replace their username with something, perhaps that is the same in a given thread, but that differs between threads, so that conversations remain intact, but the username is gone, and a profile can't be built up across multiple threads, making it impractical to deanonymise people (bar fingerprinting their use of language, posting times, etc)

 

[Arnox]

What's a sensible policy for forums? I guess letting people anonymise/psuedonymise their posts, to replace their username with something, perhaps that is the same in a given thread, but that differs between threads, so that conversations remain intact, but the username is gone, and a profile can't be built up across multiple threads, making it impractical to deanonymise people (bar fingerprinting their use of language, posting times, etc)

This seems to be a thing people may want. I certainly wouldn't be entirely opposed to it. I guess I just don't know how useful that would really be though to the end user.

 

[filbs111]

This seems to be a thing people may want. I certainly wouldn't be entirely opposed to it. I guess I just don't know how useful that would really be though to the end user.

How useful would it be? Though stuff you post on the internet is supposedly forever (especially if you say something really spicy and people start taking notes), deletion features might help people applying for jobs etc - stuff that only exists on archives, i suspect, is less likely to crop up in an internet search.
On the other hand, promoting the idea that you can just delete stuff later might lull people into a false sense of security, and deletion features enable the retroactive chilling of speech.
Up to you I guess!

 

[Arnox]

How useful would it be? Though stuff you post on the internet is supposedly forever (especially if you say something really spicy and people start taking notes), deletion features might help people applying for jobs etc - stuff that only exists on archives, i suspect, is less likely to crop up in an internet search.
On the other hand, promoting the idea that you can just delete stuff later might lull people into a false sense of security, and deletion features enable the retroactive chilling of speech.
Up to you I guess!

Eh. If I find enough people ask for it, I'll go ahead and add in a policy allowing users to delete their own profile on request.