If at some point you want to delete your account and have your posts and comments be gone, you better delete it all manually before you actually delete the account, because that deletion process does not really work as advertised.

For my main account on world (which runs an outdated lemmy version), it seemed like at least the account deletion was federated so that my user page was no longer browsable from other instances, but none of my posts, comments or images had been deleted, not even on the home instance.

The homie @[email protected] helped me by manually deleting my stuff, but it seems like that has only worked for the home instance, posts and comments seem to still be readable from other instances (except for some of the images that MrKaplan manually deleted too, but that was only possible up to a date not too far in the past because lemmy used to not associate user uploads with the accounts). So my old posts from the world account can be viewed just fine from other instances:

https://lemm.ee/post/1379925

For other instances that are more up to date the process is even worse imo, while locally things seem to get deleted, federation does not seem to happen at all. For example you can still browse my deleted slrpnk or lemmee accounts from other instances just fine:

https://slrpnk.net/u/[email protected]

https://lemm.ee/u/[email protected]

Account deletion in piefed works kinda like the old lemmy system (as on lemmy.world), and nothing gets deleted except the user page (which also seems to get federated), the posts and comments stay up.

Thought this would be interesting to some, if i had known what a mess this would be (obviously expected some federation issues, just not like that), i would have manually deleted everything. I deleted all these accounts in December, maybe this has been addressed somehow in the meantime, personally i'd have trust issues in this process.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 hours ago* (last edited 6 hours ago) (1 children)

When deleting the account did you mark the checkbox "Delete all posts, comments and uploaded images"? Lemmy.world is running an old version so its possible that this is missing. Without that it is expected that only the profile gets deleted, while content is still available.

As for federated account deletion this is implemented and covered by test cases and should work in theory. However it is always possible that there is a bug. It would be helpful if you could open an issue with exact steps to reproduce. Use enterprise.lemmy.ml and ds9.lemmy.ml to test the latest version.

[–] bonjour 1 points 5 hours ago* (last edited 5 hours ago) (1 children)

I get that world should be an outlier. World does not have the checkbox, it just says "esto eliminará permanentamente todos sus datos de esta instancia" :) Thought that would include posts etc, but if i understood that right, it was working as intended.

As for the other instances, i did use the checkbox and the accounts etc are gone from the home instance but not anywhere else - at least that is true for the slrpnk account on all the instances that i checked.

Now i'm surprised to find my lemm.ee account is actually gone from lemmy.ml and db0. But it is not from world, slrpnk.net, lemmy.ca, sopuli, blahaj, feddit.org, jlai.lu, discuss.online, infosec.pub, programming.dev, lemmy.nz, but at least something seems to have been federated with this deletion.

I deleted those accounts in late December.

I deleted a newly created account on jlaiu.lu two days ago, they're running 0.19.5 but i think they have the checkbox (which i have then ticked) and my comment and profile deletion has federated nicely over the instances that i checked.

I would not know how to reproduce all this. I just deleted my accounts and checked the checkbox if it was available.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 hours ago

Originally account deletion would always delete your posts, comments and everything. This was changed in 0.19 to make the content deletion optional (otherwise a lot of posts and comments would disappear unnecessarily). Unfortunately we forgot to add the new option to the user interface for 0.19, but it was added probably around 0.19.4.

Its hard to say why the federation didnt work properly, maybe there was a network error, or a bug in older Lemmy versions that got fixed in the meantime. Or there is still a bug which only happens in some cases.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 23 hours ago (1 children)

Your account is not your posts. Why would one assume that deleting the account would remove the posts? When a person stops speaking the things they said do not become unsaid. When they die their actions don't retroactively undo themselves.

[–] bonjour 2 points 23 hours ago

Thank you, Lord Mathias, for blessing me with this insight. I am now at peace. 🙏

[–] [email protected] 1 points 21 hours ago

That's why Lemmy is such a GDPR nightmare :(

[–] Nooodel 22 points 2 days ago

I don't see why people get so riled up in the comment section of this post.

Is the original post a legit psa? Definitely. Will this become problematic with European law at some point? Well at least it's going to be interesting. Should we care? Seeing as lemmy development is partially funded by the European Commission, definitely! Should we care for altruistic reasons? Also definitely. This place is supposed to be better than the centralized corporate social media to its users, especially also regarding privacy. It's good practice to set up new accounts every once in a while against doxing and seeing how much of the community on lemmy is built by people who are sensitive to their privacy this is sth we should respect.

Should we break down in squabbles here of one instance against another? Please, if I want to hear "all people from place x are bad" I'd just switch on an election debate. Show that your adults. Take your peers and their concerns here seriously. Make something out of it when people raise legit concerns. Thank you bonjour for bringing up this topic.

[–] [email protected] 59 points 3 days ago (20 children)

Nothing is ever really deleted on the internet, especially if it was automatically replicated to dozens of other servers.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

This is such a goofy take. Yes, obviously you can never be 100% there isn't some copy or archive laying somewhere, but wanting it to be deleted for 99% of the ways people would find it is reasonable. Don't let perfect be the enemy of good.

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[–] [email protected] 35 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (5 children)

Out of curiosity: What's a reason to delete all the content? I don't want to imply you shouldn't be able to do so... But I often find it very annoying when people delete large quantities of stuff. Because that also deletes the comments I made, which took me time to write. It deletes my bookmarks. And sometimes people wipe their history regularly, which removes technical questions along with the correct answers and other material that might prove useful to other people, if it weren't deleted... And I had things that I'd have liked to return to, vanish into thin air multiple times now.

I'd like to understand the perspectives and two sides of that coin. And since you say you'd like to delete content, I thought I'd ask about your perspective and the why...

[–] [email protected] 18 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Data privacy (the "right to be forgotten") I'd say is the main reason. Say you realise that you've built up a little to much linkable information about yourself over the years and don't want it readily available for whoever might want to make use of it.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (2 children)

Good use-case. Would it suffice to "unlink" the information in that case, instead of deleting it? I think that'd solve both problems. The posts and comments would stay in place for everyone to keep using them, but it'd say "by [deleted user]", so it's forgotten that you (or someone) wrote it.

I'm not sure. And we somehow need to present that to the user without overwhelming them with several options, delete account without data, delete account and unlink content, delete account and content...

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 day ago (15 children)

It doesn't matter. If someone believes they've linked too much and wants to delete it, they should be able to. If someone wants to delete their content for any reason they should be able to.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Probably a technical consideration (like what if they have an edit timestamp which would allow a dedicated person to find all the comments unlinked at the exact same time), a personal consideration (what if you actually want that information purged as thoroughly as possible), and a legal consideration (sounds like it violates the GDPR)

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

Tl;dr: Yes, it's complicated.

Hmmh. I think 1) just means it has to be implemented properly. But you're right. That sounds exactly like something a developer would do. Unlink the information and at the same time add a timestamp that immediately links it again 😅

And I'm not sure about 3) I'd have to read the GDPR again. Afaik it just mandates the user is provided with the ability to do so. Not that it needs to be the default.

And 2) is kind of my question. I suppose a user who is about to delete their account, might not be super relaxed and ready to deal with the intricate details. I mean they could be pissed and want out asap. Or something happened and they need to get it over with, quickly. Either way, it's probably not the right time to bother them with 500 questions and make them learn about the consequences. Though... They need to do the right thing. Once their account is gone, and it turns out they would have liked to delete more (or less), that's not really possible any more (without manual admin intervention). So maybe it's down to: delete everything in any case, and accept that it has a negative effect on the content on the platform.

It also has to be balanced with handling abuse etc since malicious actors use the same features to cover their tracks.

But I'm probably getting way ahead of where we are. OP said deletion doesn't even propagate through the federated network correctly. So realistically, we probably don't need to bother with the details several steps down the line.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago

Hilariously the soution would be facebook style "we won't delete your data if you log back in n days"

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 days ago

I hate it so much when people delete useful information.

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 3 days ago (4 children)

The fediverse is inherently a place where it's a lot harder to delete anything than on non-federated platforms. It always will be because everything you post here is instantly copied to hundreds (if not thousands) of other servers. Some of them may be actively hostile and intentionally not respect deletions. Some of them may just be misconfigured or for another non-malicious reason fail to delete things.

So don't post things on the fediverse that you think you might one day regret.

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I wonder if it might lead to some issues with European laws at some point

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

Yeah, that's what I also wonder. Lemmy is still too small to attract any attention from regulators, but I wonder how the GDPR would work with federation.

There are some differences with normal social media though: every instance is managed by different people, so in theory you would have to ask every federated instance for your data to be deleted.

Or, maybe, posting on the fediverse may be compared to spreading pamphlets with your messages to many different people; you can't expect a reasonable way to "recall" everything you shared with the public.

I don't know, I'm not a lawyer. But it's going to be interesting. Meta, in the meantime, decided not to risk it at all and their fediverse integration just doesn't work in the EU.

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