This will be partially addressed in Lemmy 1.0 by making deleted posts and their comments viewable, but only by direct link (not via post listings).

https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/pull/6057

There's also someone, or some people, clearly practicing their creative writing or something. Usually they make an account, post something weird to asklemmy or a similar community, and then delete it within 4 hours or so.

Usually it's a "stupid" or obvious question, with some vaguely contreversial twist. Like "My boyfriend has problems with how many guys I've fucked... but I also used to be a sex worker". Stuff that's within the realm of possible, but not particularly common, or where you'd expect the asker to already be aware of the answer/reason.

They get a few hours of engagement, most of the time don't engage in the comments, then delete the whole thing.

What happens if you had mistakenly copy pasted some info that you didn't want to post? Do you want that to be at risk? I know I'm stupid enough to make a mistake like that.

Secondly what about the edit feature. One could just edit a post empty and then delete it, so the zombying won't work either unless you also remove the ability to edit.

One idea might be to update the platform to “zombie” a post when its author deletes it, leaving it exactly where it is, but removing the author.

How would someone remove something that should be removed? I have accidentally commented on the wrong post, and that should be removed. I think we have to trust our users at least a bit, although it may be a good option to give users the ability to delete a post/comment or simply remove them as the author

It’s super annoying, sure

And also, if I make a reply to the post, and then someone replies to me, then the post is deleted, I can't see their reply either. It's really selfish behaviour.

Two minds. I definitely think once you've put something out there it belongs to the community and it's really pretty selfish and self absorbed to delete a post. On the other hand I try to remember that nothing on Lemmy or any of these platforms is really that important and while it might suck to have wasted a bit of time on it, it just doesn't matter that much.

I thought this was a bug of Summit, the app I use.

Sometimes I see an interesting top-level comment, I tap on it to expand the replies while still reading, and suddenly the top-level comment is gone. Removed. I assumed it was a bug because it does not make any sense to me and I keep seeing this happening everywhere.

There is topic where I can totally understand why someone would remove them if they fear someone knows their username, and there is also tons of people semi-trolling with more or less real stories. But it's part of the life of a semi anonymous platform

I think the practice really took off with the arrival of AI & people not wanting their stuff harvested for training it. My personal feeling might be considered rather defeatist, but I don't see the point in doing that because they're going to feed whatever they can get their hands on to the AI beast, and so I'd rather have at least some miniscule influence over what it regurgitates to others.

It especially sucks when you're having a nice conversation with someone, then OP deleted their post, putting an end to all of those conversations. Or if someone posts some useful information that you want to save for later.

The OP should have the right to delete things they put up, but they shouldn't be able to delete everything associated with it too.

It's always been a problem. I BELIEVE that averaged out more people just keep their posts up.

I have seen this "problem" mentioned before, but in practice as far as I know, it's not actually all that common. Most posts that get deleted are by mods afaik.