Alger#Mastodon & #Fediverse folks: honest beginner question — what motivates the choice to auto-delete posts after a set period?
Pure curiosity, not taking sides.
Chris Alemany@asanpin @socialmedia i don't auto-delete mine, but I think there is a general thought that impermanence is something valuable. We shouldn't be required to have a moment by moment recording of our lives. That's not how humanity has evolved.
Gabor Hrasko@chris @asanpin
Very interesting thoughts, that I never considered! Social media has blurred a once-clear boundary: most human communication was ephemeral, while writing was meant to last. Today, casual remarks are archived like publications. Records support accountability, yet it is deeply human to think aloud and revise our views without every half-formed thought permanently attached to us. The challenge is deciding what deserves to be remembered - and what can fade.
Very interesting thoughts, that I never considered! Social media has blurred a once-clear boundary: most human communication was ephemeral, while writing was meant to last. Today, casual remarks are archived like publications. Records support accountability, yet it is deeply human to think aloud and revise our views without every half-formed thought permanently attached to us. The challenge is deciding what deserves to be remembered - and what can fade.
@ghrasko @asanpin Exactly! We're not meant to have every thing we ever blurt out haunt us for all time. We are iterative machines, learning from our mistakes and evolving by trial and error.
As for the process I’m not entirely sure how it works. There looks like a good article at feditips here. Looks like there are a bunch of ways to mark posts for keeping.
https://fedi.tips/deleting-posts-automatically-in-mastodon-after-a-certain-time-period/
@chris @ghrasko Thanks so much for the thoughtful exchange — genuinely refreshing to read.
If I may add a small note: I’m not entirely convinced there’s a sharp divide between what we’re “programmed” for and what we end up doing socially. Yes, we learn through trial and error, and impermanence may not be a biological imperative in itself. But cognitively we’re perfectly capable of making sense of impermanence and building social narratives around it.
Writing is a good example: it preserves what would otherwise disappear. Yet the idea of immortality has been part of our cosmology precisely because we lack it. (Greek tragedy would have a lot to say about that.) The tension between finitude and permanence isn’t a glitch — it’s constitutive of how we make meaning.
And perhaps the most underrated capacity here is forgetting. Our ability not to remember everything may actually be what drives the desire to endure. If everything were permanently recorded, there might be less need to leave a trace — only an archive.
Anyway, just a few loose thoughts. And thanks again for the reflections and for sharing the guide.
*|FNAME|*
@asanpin
Two schools of thought that I’m aware of: (I’m sure there are more)
1) as an anti-abuse strategy to prevent someone from digging up a post from the past and posting it as a ‘gotcha’ or out of context.
2) out of respect for server admins who’s storage is being used up by posted content that is no longer relevant or useful.
Alison Meeks
Emanuele Cariati@asanpin Resources. Every post occupies space. My server has limited space. Deleting posts frees up space thus saving me some money in the process
@emanuelecariati Ciao Emanuele,
Gracie mille! I understand this point, and the truth is that when I asked, I already imagined that this argument was on the table, and I appreciate that you, among others, have explained the roots of this topic to me.
Grazie ancora e buona giornata! ^^
Edwin G. 
@asanpin I auto delete mine for cost management reasons.
Every post costs money to host: database, media (if any),
wordsmith‽ ⁂@asanpin saves my server on storage costs; I don't use this as a blog so after some time I recently decided to set autodelete. I can't imagine anyone wanting to read back to old stuff, unless I've faved it so it still hangs around.
@wordsmith I understand the point. Thank you for stating it so clearly. The only thing that “worries” me is when files are shared, etc., but I guess it's as simple as asking for it again, etc. And you're right, after a few months, no one wastes time searching through chats. If people prefer to download a document again rather than search for it on their computer! 😅