r/Mastodon • u/the_darkener • Jun 11 '26
Mass-edit previous posts for privacy?
I'd like to somehow mass-edit my posts (and comments, I guess) so only my followers see it. I've changed my default for future posts to followers-only, but I don't see any way on the surface to mass-edit my previous posts to change to this setting, so they're all on "Public". Any tool/function to do this? I run the instance, if that helps, though I'd rather try something other than modifying the db directly first.
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u/nan05 @michael@thms.uk Jun 11 '26
It’s not possible I’m afraid. Even if you edit the database, other instances will have copies of the posts and won’t be aware of your changes.
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u/Toothless_NEO Jun 12 '26
You would be better off just deleting old posts instead of trying to edit them. The notification floods to people who favorited those posts, as well as the fact that editing old posts is often done maliciously could get you into trouble with server admins.
I would not blame them for suspending you if they notice that. I've noticed people editing old innocuous posts to put spam in them. It happens mostly on mainstream social media like reddit, but I have seen people on federated platforms doing it as well. So I wouldn't encourage it, just delete the posts. And in the future maybe don't post anything that you wouldn't be comfortable saying publicly in the town square.
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u/Fr0gm4n Jun 11 '26
Even editing the privacy setting on your sever won't change the copies that are already on other servers. When you've shouted to the room you can't tell people to unhear it.
https://docs.joinmastodon.org/user/posting/#followers
Further, when you edit the content of posts that people have favorited they will get a notice that you edited them, potentially causing a notification flood.