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
  • Zetaphor@zemmy.cc
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    1 year ago

    I had years worth of posts and comments that I deleted via the interface a while ago. Then as part of the reddit exodus I decided to run a removal tool that used the API, and it turns out 11 years worth of “deleted posts” were all still sitting out there, they were just hidden from me.

    I did find it strange when I received a reply to a years old comment that my profile page said was deleted, but I just thought it was a caching issue. Turns out all of that content was still out there with my name attached, I was the only one who couldn’t see it.

    • Ivyymmy@lemmy.one
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      1 year ago

      What about editing the comments? Do they keep any log of the original message and the subsequent edits or something? Maybe this would be a workaround to effectively delete them.

      • Zetaphor@zemmy.cc
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        1 year ago

        There’s no way to know without proper testing, and I’m gone for good. I did use redact.dev, which overwrote all of my comments before deleting them, so fingers crossed that the account is nuked.