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! Mastodon new ToS from July 1 has a binding Arbitration waiver* !!r
(lemmy.blahaj.zone)
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this post was submitted on 19 Jun 2025
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Is it even possible to prove deletion of content if it has been distributed to hundreds of decentralized servers?
No. In fact, ActivityPub has no general mechanism for even knowing where content has been distributed to. So when you ask your instance to delete something, it can't actually know what other instances to ask to delete the mirrored content.
Mastodon tries its best by sending deletion requests to all known instances, in the hope that that will reach all instances that have fetched the content. But in fact, instances that are unknown to your own instance could have the content as well, though this is probably a very rare occurrence.
Bottom line: Don't write anything on the internet that you don't want publicly displayed. Anyone can save it and then you can't force them to delete it. That applies to the entire internet. It also applies to the fediverse.
The issue is potential copyright, the right to be "forgotten", and of course illegal porn (csam, "revenge", etc).
I actually would really love to hear how "right to be forgotten" applies to an email you've sent. I mean you can't force anyone to delete an email you've sent to them, so how does right to be forgotten even apply for emails?
The fediverse would work in the same way, I think.
There is no legal precedent, but most likely you would only have to prove deletion on your own server.
I think asking other instances to remove too is reasonable also
We are talking legal obligations.
If you remove content you posted somewhere in the fediverse, your server will send "delete" activities to other servers anyways. But your server does not know whether those other servers actually do delete it.