Do spam posts’ personal information need to be redacted?

Question

I recently flagged this spam post (visible to 10k+ users) with a in need of moderator intervention flag with the following message:

Redact post history please

It was declined with the following message:

declined - its spam, no need to redact

We want to remove all advertising. The post content is replaced with This answer was marked as spam or rude or abusive and is therefore not shown - you can see the revision history for details for a reason.

As of time of writing, we have 82 users who can view deleted posts. We don’t want to promote the product by not removing the phone number or email. It’s personal information and we don’t want to violate rules by not removing it.

I know redaction takes 2 moderators, and in this case it isn’t necessary. But still, shouldn’t the flag have been marked as helpful?

Answer 1

I'm the mod who declined the flag. While I do acknowledge that the spam post is still visible to all 10k+ users, its generally of little concern as 99.99% of our visitors will never have access to it. As for redaction - this is something that is reserved for removing PII accidentally posted by an innocent user, not something that was added on purpose to promote a commercial product.