Meta Question

JLeslie's avatar

Since there is no way to delete on fluther, what if someone wants or needs to erase their internet presence?

Asked by JLeslie (65412points) February 27th, 2022 from iPhone

Is there really no way?

What if someone uses their real name and then later has a serious reason to want to delete? I know there are companies that get paid to help clean up a person’s online presence.

If someone wrote something controversial at age 19 and then wanted to run for political office at age 35 that have to worry about something they wrote on fluther? I guess that’s the world today.

I was told the family of the covid denier, anti-vax, woman I know who died from covid was going to pay to have her false info covid statements wiped off of social media. I don’t know if it was done. I glanced at her Facebook page and there is a lot of anti-Biden stuff still, and also a ton of items that are blocked that I think are likely Facebook “censoring” or someone went through and changed the privacy on all of them to “only me” maybe.

Observing members: 0 Composing members: 0

11 Answers

rebbel's avatar

As far as I remember, the Fluther team is only willing to help you in a specific case/question/answer.
I can’t think of an example right now, but I guess it would have to be something that can be harmful.
Whole profiles, including all questions and answers is, again, as far as I remember, not something they’re willing to do (and they have reasons for that; deleting all one’s questions also means deleting other’s answers/whole threads.

The only workaround I can think off is asking to change your profile name, to one unrecognisable.

JLeslie's avatar

@rebbel I think when they change a username the old name is still intact on old answers.

rebbel's avatar

Oh, I had no idea about that.
I can check it, by searching for someone that used to have another name.
.....
Indeed, that is the case.
I used a certain Canadian Jelly’s name.

Brian1946's avatar

What they did with one user who wanted to mask their answers, was mark all of them as Spam.

Tropical_Willie's avatar

@rebbel he started a “New” account and left the old one behind.
I know of one person in New York that has changed their name from worried to lucky.

rebbel's avatar

And WorriedGuy is no longer (an) active (account, @Tropical_Willie?

Tropical_Willie's avatar

Luckyguy replaced the name and all the questions are still there.

cookieman's avatar

I can’t speak for the internet as a whole, but the Fluther Mods can help you disappear here.

My original username here was a variation on my name. After a while, one of my wife’s coworkers joined Fluther and figured out it was me. She would then make a point of talking to my wife about what I had written here. She did this in an oddly threatening way my wife did not like. She turned out to crazy in other ways, but did not give me a hard time on Fluther directly.

I simply asked @Augustin (head dominatrix at the time) to change my username so I wouldn’t run into that problem again with someone else.

KRD's avatar

The Fluther admins will help someone delete their account if that person needs to delete it.

Tropical_Willie's avatar

The account is deleted but all questions and responses stay showing the all activity.

Actually there is a “delete account” link on “account page” @KRD

Forever_Free's avatar

Been there. My old account is deleted but the comments and questions are still out there.
From what I recall, the ability to delete all the specific comments and questions on someone would require documenting there was a legal need to have this performed. That was then. I truly hope that the terms of service has been changed to allow this now as there has been such a rise in opprobrium in the world today.

Answer this question

Login

or

Join

to answer.
Your answer will be saved while you login or join.

Have a question? Ask Fluther!

What do you know more about?
or
Knowledge Networking @ Fluther