My theory is difficult to test but I want to believe that users unable to delete their accounts isn't from malicious intentions.
For those Phukers who have tried and failed at deleting their account; did you post or comment in disabled subverses?
My theory is that the deletion code can't run properly if you posted in subs that are now disabled.
Have no idea how a coder would fix that problem without reopening all the disabled subs.
I had a random account I made over a year ago that I never used and was easily able to delete within seconds.
My main account is stuck in the global ban and after investaging I looked deep into that account's history and saw posts in disabled subs. That's how I came up with the theory.
I'm now almost 99% sure this is the problem.
Of course it's impossible to prove if we can post in disable subs and then try to delete.
I'm pretty sure Putt is to burnt out to care.
Blows a big fat dick not being able to delete your account.
I don't buy it. Deleting an account should be a simple SQL command.
DELETE FROM table_users WHERE user="chmod";
Since your username is the key to all your activity just deleting the user should either delete everything, or it deletes the username but leaves all the activity in the DB without a key. Either way you should be able to delete your account.
Yes, another user said the same thing.
Ive pm'd Putt but I think I have a better chance of seeing a unicorn today then getting a response from Putt.
It's not that easy in practice. You want to make sure your database has no NULL references. And maybe one wants to keep the votes to comments on your post kept on record as well.
Also, your personal data is still in the backups and the providers backups. Sometimes for a time defined by law. Same with logs.
So often there is just a disabled flag on a user. And that has basically the same problems.
Well your inability to delete is what prompted me to start looking to delete mine.
Curious, did you post in now disabled subs?
I'm not sure, but it has been three years.
Then again, you may be on to something. I was just able to delete another account I forgot about over there that was older than my chmod account.
I didn't think I had posted in disabled subs until I really dug around.
Like I said above, I fully believe that this issue isn't of any concern to Putt.
I really hope you don’t mind my reaching out to you. I wanted to let you know that I really appreciated all of the very real, valid concerns that you voiced over on Voat that I (and I am sure others like me) were too timid to express.
I had typed out a big, long, rambling reply but I thought it too much and decided to delete it and try to start over keeping to the main points. Sorry, I think it’s still going to be lengthy, apologies in advance.
I had an old account on Voat that I deleted about a year ago when the overall tone and atmosphere changed. Thought I would give Voat another chance and created a new account.
I have always been a lite user anyway. This account was approximately 8 to 9 months old when this last outage happened. I wasn’t subscribed to a lot of subs, nothing controversial at all, and it was a relatively newer aged account. When I tried to delete it though I couldn’t.
I did not get the globally banned error message. I got an error message that pretty much just said my account didn’t exist. I tried deleting multiple times over multiple days and always got that same message. I haven’t seen anyone else mention anything about receiving this specific error message.
I did several searches using Search Voat and after a DDG search found a thread from about a month or two before the outage. In that thread another user was complaining about gettting the globally banned error when trying to delete the account.
Side note here - I was a lite user, only subscribed to a few subs (none disabled) and preferred lurking.
Put’s head cheerleader PS told this user it was a bug and to try entering an account recovery email option in order to delete the account. PS even recommended using a burner email.
I tried it with my account (used a burner email) and it worked for me. Account deleted along with my few submissions and all comments.
I thought it was odd that PS didn’t once mention this to anyone after the outage when there were a lot of people complaining about not being able to delete.
Also during the outage I stumbled onto the preview site where I tried deleting my account at that time but there wasn’t even an option to do so. Other users were making some comments that it wasn’t possible to delete from preview because something about it being a nine month old data dump for testing.
I am a completely and hopelessly non technical person.
After the outage when the main page came back up and after I was able to delete my account from the main site I kept lurking to see if an announcement had been officially made.
I saw another user commenting about being able to delete on preview. (I think the user was upset about an old account they had deleted from the main site months earlier, long before the outage, still showing up on preview).
I went to preview, logged in, and was really surprised to see an option to delete from that site. I was able to delete that same account from preview without receiving any errors. I don’t know if this was in some way tied to the fate of my account on the main page or what that was all about. I know, without a doubt, that the option to delete was absolutely not present during the outage on preview.
I don’t know what is going on over there but my nerves are completely shot and my anxiety levels are theough the roof. That place has gone insane.
I never have done anything illegal IRL or online and used that site primarily to chat about non political, non controversial types of topics. I know that I made some non PC comments over there but they were so tame and so mild it wasn’t even funny. Believe it or not I never once used a racial/religious slur, etc... so I definitely was surprised to find myself somehow having ended up in a group of extremists who seem to be becoming more radicalized by the day.
Like I said my nerves are shot, the paranoia from that website has infected me and I am done with it forever. I have actually decided it was such a toxic experience that I really need a break from online period. I just know how it made me feel not being able to delete my account so I made this throwaway because I haven’t seen anyone else say they has this specific error.
You may have already tried this entering a burner email as account recovery option and it not worked so maybe I am just wasting your time (and apologies if I am) but it did work on my account.
I have refused to log in again since Friday, April 27th, except for once, in another vain attempt to delete my account.
I have nothing to hide on Voat. I've done nothing, nor posted anything I'm even remotely worried about.
Based on conversations since my little tantrum, I'm convinced that the site has been purchased by a third party and Putt and Atko are under NDAs at this time. Which makes the canary meaningless because it's not Justin or Atif.
I'm actually not trying to delete my account anymore. Just so no one can grab /v/chmod. We all know sub transfer is broken. I may go back sometime in the far distant future.
Or not. Hell, it's the internet. Who knows. I like it here and will stay. This feels like the old Voat.
I understand completely and I am sorry if I made it sound like I was inferring you had anything to hide.
Personally the only thing that I am worried about would be guilt by sheer association and association alone. I mainly stayed in the Traditional Wives sub so my comments, posts, were definitely nothing controversial or political, etc...
I honestly just wanted to mention it to you in case you were still looking for a way to delete and in case anyone else was either. I don’t know if it would work for others, especially since I received such a different error message.
And, as I stated previously, even though it probably doesn’t mean much if anything coming from an internet stranger I just also wanted to say thank you for your posts over there.
I am done with Voat and I am pretty much done being on the internet at this time. My nerves can’t handle the drama.
I appreciate your taking the time to reply. Thank you.
I seem to have found at least two phuks who could delete and had posts in disabled subs so I don’t think my theory holds anymore.
My new theory is that my account is banned in an old and forgotten shitposting sub. I’m curious if that might be tripping up my account.
My account on voat was never used in any political subs, hate subs or any controversial subs. I’m pretty vanilla so I doubt I’m being “watched”.
I will test the sub ban theory with some new accounts later and see if it makes a difference. The fact that some accounts are deletable and some aren't is extremely odd though, it has to be caused by something like this.
It means that whatever process is actually going on when an account is deleted is unnecessarily complicated.
unnecessarily complicated That sounds like most of Putts work as of late.
I have messaged him about this issue but my chances of winning the lottery are better then hearing back from him.
I was able to fully delete my account and I was the owner of a disabled sub. I migrated to a different sub and stopped posting in the old one and it was subsequently disabled. I had at least 30 submissions in the disabled sub. The last submission to my dead sub was probably a year ago.
Well damn that blows my theory up then.
Did you request to open up your disabled sub when Putt addressed disabled subs about a month or so ago?
No. It was a music sub and I eventually created another, more all-encompassing sub to replace it. Once it was disabled, I never needed it back.
I don't see that it would be anything nefarious anyway.
Deleting accounts or posts does not delete the many mirrors that hold that stuff forever.
There is no 'taking it back' on the internet. All that does is remove it from easy reach.
Every post any of us ever made on Voat, since around the Fattening, has been archived.
Nothing you can do about it.
I understand that everything on the internet is archived and that there's an outside search engine not associated with Putt archiving it all.
I also thought it was odd that users were okay with v/searchvoat; seems like something the tin hat club wouldn't agree with or want.
I wear a foil hat at all times, but I'm ok with collating publicly available data.
Malicious forces are doing it, might as well reap the benefits.
It's also a good reminder, or eye-opener, for people that the trail of personal info they leave is not harmless.
The solution is to staple your foil hat on so none of that info leaks in the first place.
Treat everything you type into the interwebs as being forever public.
I agree that the internet is never private. I don't believe PMs are private either.
Even with all that said, I still find it fucked up that you can't delete your account.
This just started happening after the outage. It has nothing to do with disabled subs, if it did we'd have seen it before.
It is blatantly obvious that this is intentional.
Puttitout, or whoever took over, is preserving evidence is the the simplest explanation that makes the most sense. See Occam's Razor.
The unable to delete was an issue before the outage.
Here's /u/coopzy looking for answers a month ago:
https://voat.co/v/voatdev/2457309
Here's another 20 days ago
https://voat.co/v/voatdev/2497995
Edit:
Here's more
oh damn, that might be it. I didnt think of that. They would have to put personal deletions over sub status, but I dont even know how they're doing that, or how subs get "turned back on" for that matter.