sometimes I say something dumb then realize it's dumb.

Sometimes mine spins and then posts twice. Sometimes i realize that I'm replying to the wrong comment. Sometimes the typos and autocowrongs are so bad that it's unintelligible. Sometimes the written words don't come across the way i intended. 🤷

I’ve done it because I’ve realized I misread something in the comment I replied to, making myself look stupid 🤷‍♂️

Created by deletor

because i realize i don't want my inbox to be full of people mad at me.

Protip for lemmy devs: if there was a 'disable inbox replies' button I wouldn't do this.

Sometimes my first reaction to shit-takes is anger. I usually don't want that to be my comment. I'm trying to stay empathetic and have a constructive discussion, because I do not want Lemmy to become like Reddit and I think empathy and arguing in good faith is what makes the difference.

So I'm usually only letting the anger out when my opposite is arguing in bad faith.

I typically stick with what I say, for better or for worse. But I have deleted maybe two comments in the past; usually because I recognized how poorly I reacted and felt the person didn’t deserve my stupidity.

My top two reasons are realizing I posted somewhere I maybe shouldn’t and realizing I shared personal identifying information. A bit too late for the latter once it’s out there but you can’t win ‘em all 🤷🏼‍♀️

The other day someone posted an interesting boundary map of their farthest travels and I thought it was a fun idea, made my own and uploaded it and realized after posting that a Europe comm might not want Americans posting so I deleted it for example.

Sometimes I accidentally reply to the wrong comment.

I did it because trump won a second term and made some pretty threatening comments about people doing/saying the things I said. so I got rid of them.

that said, I stopped for two reasons;

1. it's a pita and my comments are federated to other instances anyway
2. 

Sometimes it's because I've said something stupid or that, in hindsight, comes off as stupid.

Usually it's because my comment has sparked an argument that I lose interest in continuing.

My dudes we can do the funniest thing ever

I usually only delete if I replied to the wrong comment or accidentally replied to the main post instead of a comment. There are some good reasons.

Also if I comment and then read down and I see I duplicated someone.

I don't usually delete my comments but mistakes happen. Even if I notice and delete them immediately, the trace of my comment lives there, because Fediverse. Basically you cannot put back in Genie once it's out of bottle.

Usually because I'm feeling strongly enough about something to comment, then I'm reminded that engaging the random public is akin to pissing into a fan, and that's not very pleasant

Only times I've done it it was because I accidentally replied to the wrong comment.

On piefed you can give a reason something is deleted. Nifty feature.

I habitually delete about a month back to try and reduce the number of things that taken together could ID me. I’m not a particularly unique person but I’m sure with enough comments someone could get close.

It is not common for me to see deleted comments. Do you tend to see this in certain communities?

because it remains as a notification, while removing any reportable trace

This.

It's a chickenshit hit & run tactic for hate speech.

Used mainly by those who decry hate speech online.

Go Figger. .

For me it’s because I: replied to the wrong comment, wrote a response that was wrong because I didn’t fully read or understand the subject, or I decided that it wasn’t worth it.

It happens more here, for some reason, that I comment on the post instead of under another comment, so I delete the one and writes a new.

I’ve only deleted when I realized I broke a community’s rules.

It’s unfortunately part of the the lemmy culture now. A lot of people instinctively react and post without thinking, which they later regret. We’ve lost a lot of critical thinking when it comes to the internet culture, so here we are.

Sometimes I do it because I comment in the wrong post or wrong comment thread.

there's a lot of paranoid mouthy kids here

I see a lot of differing reasons people do it, all of which are legit. I wonder if it might make sense for Lemmy to add an optional delete reason field.

DELETED

Just commenting to point out that all three of those people have commented and then deleted their comments on this post too 😂

Deleted.

I've been on Reddit for 10+yrs and can't remember getting a notification without a comment sitting there to read. Based on that, I assumed that if the comment was deleted, that would cancel the notification. *shrug*

I mean I know a lot of people on Lemmy are more privacy conscious and one practice I myself have done in that regard is periodically both purging all posts and comments and deleteing the account itself and making a fresh one.

Usually for me I say something that pisses people off and get tired of people replying to it. It often happens when I shit talk Canada.

I delete if I made the comment in error, otherwise no

[deleted]

I do it when I respond to the wrong person. Or rarely when I think better of what I just said. Usually the second one happens before I post though.

Every so often I'll go to the tail end of my acocunt history and simply delete anything that isn't particularly interesting.

Simply privacy.

In addition to other comments, I've encountered a few weirdoes on here that repeatedly ask the same question and then delete it afterwards. No one is quite sure why they do this but they're easy to block

There's a subset of fedi users who delete their comments after a while to save resources for their instance. It's probably not the majority of what you encounter, but there's enough that a lot of fedi software supports it as a feature.

So, why is this so common?

You know that social media makes the brain smaller and smaller.

So, when there's hardly any brain left anymore, but comments are still pouring out...

/s

If more downvotes than upvotes, it's unpopular. To the bin with it.