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For my main account on world (which runs an outdated lemmy version), it seemed like at least the account deletion was federated so that my user page was no longer browsable from other instances, but none of my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 @MrKaplan@lemmy.world 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/achtungdrempels@lemm.ee

https://lemm.ee/u/AchtungDrempels@slrpnk.net

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.

  • schnurrito@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
    1·
    16 days ago

    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.

    • bonjour@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      1·
      16 days ago

      That an account deletion on, say, lemm.ee does not get federated with anybody at all was kind of unexpected to me, i thought this might be interesting for others as well.

  • deegeese@sopuli.xyzEnglish
    1·
    16 days ago

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

    • JackbyDev@programming.devEnglish
      1·
      14 days 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.

      • deegeese@sopuli.xyzEnglish
        0·
        16 days ago

        My point is how could you ever count on deletion when the content is being federated?

        Even if Lemmy devs made account deletion easy and cascade deletes your content, all it takes is one server run by an archivist and that content is never going away.

        It seems inherently unfixable in a federated system, like trying to unsend an email.

        • kat@orbi.campEnglish
          1·
          16 days ago

          Eh, I rather things be deleted from mainstream instance at least. Don’t gotta be all or nothing to improve the current experience.

  • Nooodel@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1·
    15 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.

    • Scrollone@feddit.itEnglish
      1·
      15 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.

    • bonjour@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      0·
      16 days ago

      … of course you chime in with this take 🙄

      • MrKaplan deleted the images for me manually, which i am sure he would not just do for me
      • the process is even worse on other instances and they can also only delete images up to a certain point.
        • bonjour@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
          0·
          16 days ago

          I guess that is a bit nicer, although the contact with MrKaplan was totally nice too.

          And if your account deletion on your super cool tiny instance is only happening locally, you may not even delete it at all. At least on world you delete your stuff from a third of the lemmyverse in one go, but i’m sure you will be happy to spread some more bad news about world, all in the name to grow the fediverse 😂

            • bonjour@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
              0·
              16 days ago

              Maybe reread what i wrote and think about why i may find your dunk on world misplaced. That i was defensive about any lw criticism is just not true either.

              And yeah, your crusade against world (actually all the instance beefing, you can find examples of me being defensive of criticism of .ml too in my not-deleted accounts) was also part of why i lost hope in the lemmy project. And i did not agree that you create fake traffic in other communities to ask the world mods to shut down their communities, because yours now has more traffic (although it was basically all produced all by you). I thought that was dumb as hell, but you do you. I was more interested in actual communities interested in topics, not instance beef.