this post was submitted on 22 Jun 2023
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Lemmy
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Everything about Lemmy; bugs, gripes, praises, and advocacy.
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Another potential privacy issue is that deleted content stays server and I believe it's similar with posted images.
I think this issue is overblown. Instances of Lemmy might run modified code and choose to save things that the user intended to delete, of course, but the default setup of Lemmy seems reasonable to me in terms of how it treats deletion.
Currently it keeps deleted posts forever to allow users to un-delete if they choose, but deleting your account clears everything. And I believe there’s work in progress to discard deleted posts after 30 days. Details here: https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/issues/2977
Thank you for pointing this out. I was looking into privacy in relation to Lemmy and came across this post where I got the wrong idea I guess. I couldn't find much else online at the time
That would be a nice addition
This keeps on being asserted but it is far from true. If defederation happens or your local goes offline, posts/comment history/profile/votes will remain on other widely used instances and out of your control.
A large instance has already defederated with 2 other larger instances. If you run a personal instance I feel it will be very, very common for you where you will be locked out of managing your data.
You can expect defederation to happen all the time as that is a deliberate part of the open federated model.
And that is to say nothing about federation simply breaking sometimes.
I already have content that exists on other instances that will remain forever and I've only been around a short while. I don't care personally, but people keep asserting this claim that only bad actors or scrapers will dupe your data. Federated data is very different than a non-federated copy for many reasons and that matters to some people. Everyone should understand deleting your account, or modifying your content will often not remove your content outside your instance, and many people engage outside their local. It will likely exist in federated, Lemmy searchable form forever in some capacity (in the current iteration anyway).
Not trying to spread FUD, but if we want to maintain users, they have to be educated as they will find out eventually and not be happy.
Yes, that’s a fair point. Just because you send a “I have deleted this message” signal out into the universe doesn’t mean that everyone will receive or obey it.
I assumed that was understood.
But that’s very different from instances intentionally and malevolently keeping data despite indicating to users that it was deleted, which is what I think folks’ privacy concerns are about.
EDIT: What I mean is that the federation model is inherently non-private in a certain sense (but in the same sense that someone could take a screenshot of your Reddit comment and your deleting your comment won’t delete their copy). But Lemmy is not egregiously misusing data.
This is largely assumed by someone like yourself or I who understands the implications. I am finding it evident that a lot of people are not aware.
There is also a distinction to a potential screenshot, a scrape or archive no one visits, and a federated copy on a widly used instance you have lost access to.
I edited my comment above to include a project I am working on to hopefully help admins get this across and educate users on how to appropriately engage to their comfort level.
I appreciate your commitment to this privacy consideration. I personally don’t think it’s the hill I’d prefer to die on, but I welcome your contributions.
Thanks! I'm for mass adoption and want admins to succeed. That starts with keeping users educated (and admins covered).