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Federated services have always had privacy issues but I expected Lemmy would have the fewest, but it's visibly worse for privacy than even Reddit.

  • Deleted comments remain on the server but hidden to non-admins, the username remains visible
  • Deleted account usernames remain visible too
  • Anything remains visible on federated servers!
  • When you delete your account, media does not get deleted on any server
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[-] 0xtero@kbin.social 66 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

First - we're all using alpha/beta software (Lemmy is 0.17.4, Kbin is 0.10.). None of these services are "production quality" software yet, so let's keep that in our minds - we're all early adopters.

The points mentioned in the OP are a bad look. Naturally. User should have expectation of their data being deleted on request - especially since this request might be regulatory privacy request (GDPR related). It's a clear failure from the software and should be improved and iterated upon.

The expectation shouldn't be "oh well it's on the Internet, live with it". While Facebook might keep mining your data after deletion request, our software shouldn't behave like that, we should strive to be better with this stuff.

And finally, ensuring privacy in federated system is hard. Mastodon suffers from same problems. We shouldn't give up on the idea though.

[-] YMS@kbin.social 16 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

It is an early stage software and such things can be worked out, you're right. But on the other hand, such basic elements should be based on a thorough concept before a single line is coded, and implementing something like a delete button with "Let's just make it delete the most visible stuff for now, we can always improve that later when there is time" is recipe for disaster.

[-] kresten@feddit.dk 5 points 1 year ago

Agree, it's a little late to change core architecture. But this is the philosophy the devs ran with, and it has the advantage of longevity when an instance goes offline, then it's still visible to everyone else.

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this post was submitted on 19 Jun 2023
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