So very adult when people post critical replies here and then almost immediately delete them. Oh yeah, adult to the max.
@lauren Instances that don't offer the option to edit only offer the option to delete the post and re-create it later. If you choose that, deletion happens immediately, but recreation only after you finish typing the edit. Maybe part of what you're seeing is that?
@robryk Sure, but more often they never come back in a new form. It looks more like trying to prevent a response.
I'm confused by that motivation: their post is not public anymore, so what they've gained over e.g. posting a reply as a private message to you?
They may be using Twitter tactics.
1. Republicans post something awful, then delete it before a reply can go equally viral. They've successfully signaled the desired Qrazie narrative & kept their hands clean.
2. Getting you to waste your time on a response so that by the time you've posted a reply, the reply lacks context and therefore meaning. You end up wasting even more time explaining the context to your follows. The social media strategy of exhaustion.
More Twitter tactics:
3. In warfare, a common strategy is to test the enemy response time using a quick feint. In cyber warfare, a post & delete is the same. Watch for multiple narratives that're deleted by several sock puppets.
4. Testing trial balloons for a new right wing narrative. If the response is equally swift then they know the trial balloon narrative has holes. And that you have a well-prepared response.
5. The goal is to distract & derail counter arguments
@Npars01 @robryk Yeah, I've seen similar on Twitter. What I hadn't anticipated was that I'd get more followers here in 2 months than I got on Twitter in 14 years. And they're all pretty much real here, not so many ghosts as on Twitter or G+ (for the latter I had almost 400K followers, but I'm convinced they were mostly effectively ghosts).
@john1954moi @Npars01 @robryk As long as things stay polite, I'm good with this too. But if not ... it's over.
Manipulating follower metrics is one way cyberwar works.
By swamping you with low quality follows, they give the false impression that your views are unpopular. Bannon's flooding the zone with sh*t.
By using bots to ride the coat tails of a popular account, they amplify anti-democracy messaging.
A variant uses popular accounts to spread "both sides are equally bad" nihilistic anarchic messaging. Still anti-democracy messaging.
Reform is better than burning it to the ground.
The "Post & Delete" tactic is a favored strategy in targeted harassment campaigns. Republicans use it often.
The instigators get to evade the risk of suspension while their mob picks up the signal to go nuts on someone.
@robryk Damned if I know, but it happens quite frequently.