Feature Req: Retain External Bookmarked, Boosted, etc Media/Posts

[Shanesan]

From an old Cache Retention Period post, @ClearlyClaire had a discussion with a user about keeping bookmarked, etc posts from being purged from the local database.

         Uncoupling bookmarks storage from post storage would be quite a large change and probably not worth it. I think it would make more sense for a feature that deletes only posts that are not faved, bookmarked, boosted and so on, but it's not what this particular feature has been designed to do.

Originally posted by @ClearlyClaire in #23261 (comment)

As this was not created into a feature request, it was lost to time, but many admins would like to be able to keep posts that were interacted on, by users of their own instance, or remote instances.

Examples:

1. Local User finds a post they like from a remote instance and favorite it. Posts like this can be configured by the local admin to never be removed, or removed with an alternate time table.
2. Remote user finds a post they like and favorite it, and it's from an instance with an aggressive Content cache retention period. That local admin can set a flag that posts that were interacted with like that are not aggressively purged.

[vmstan]

#27733 properly designates in the interface that the content cache is not a cache, and does not retain this type of content. This is by design. Having the automatic system do this has been deemed compute prohibitive, and admins are encouraged to use tootctl statuses remove which has this functionality integrated (https://docs.joinmastodon.org/admin/tootctl/#statuses-remove)

[Shanesan]

Referencing #26647, “the content cache is not a cache” sounds like a renaming issue that is being used as an excuse to close this feature request. The issue still stands that favorites are “optional” instead of important to store and I believe this deters users from staying on Mastodon.

[ClearlyClaire]

The particular content retention setting was only intended for a very specific use case, despite the description not being clear about it. The way this feature is described has now been completely changed to make it clear.

Favorites are not considered optional except in this very specific feature that is not meant for most servers.