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For my main account on world (which runs an outdated lemmy version), it seemed like at least the account deletion was federated so that my user page was no longer browsable from other instances, but none of my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:
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.
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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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Thank you, Lord Mathias, for blessing me with this insight. I am now at peace. 🙏
That’s why Lemmy is such a GDPR nightmare :(
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…
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.
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…
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.
Honestly? No, they should t be able to blanket delete everything theyve posted on the off chance it’s identifiable information
They should have the right to find that info and remove it, but I’m 1000% against people potentially taking down useful information from society and I do not care that people want to whine about their “right” to take their fucking ball back and end the game
So much useful info gone from Reddit because babies didn’t want to keep supporting the bad site and now good luck finding it anywhere else
Exactly. And I sometimes find myself in the position where internet enshittification and content vanishing harms me more than it helps. So I’d like to balance this with the other side of the medal, where people might have legitimate interest to do so. But so far the argument has been “just because”. And for me, that argument doesn’t tip the scale to their direction. I still have tangible arguments not to over-delete. While the other side seems to be very theoretical.
The thing is: if I cannot easily remove the information I want from what I produce, I might as well delete everything including what is useful.
And I’m not speaking hypotetically here. Everytime I struggle to find the comments about how my day went in a sea of “deleted by user” comment, I feel like I should just delete my whole history and start afresh. If Lemmy doesn’t improve that way, all the effort I put guiding new users and posting on small community will go pouf… Because I won’t take it much longer.
Sure. Question is: How can we improve? Is this a symptom for another missing feature? Or do we want to not address it and just provide one nuclear option? Would you for example like a feature for ephermeral comments, which auto-destruct after a week or so? PieFed has something like that for posts. Or the ability to categorize comments so you can find them later on? Or an option to (regularly) wipe your history, so you don’t have to delete the whole account…
That’s why I ask for exact reasons, and not just a vague feeling about how the platform is bad… I mean it is for some edge-cases like this. And I don’t see how Lemmy would improve on this in the near future. Seems some of the groundworks still don’t work properly. But this doesn’t have to apply to other Fediverse software.
And sometimes I struggle to relate. I for example don’t post anything on social media that’s very private in nature. So I don’t really have the use-case where I post someting publicly on social media, but then I want it gone at the same time. I suppose we just post different things, because I can see how you wouldn’t have your daily state of mind available forever.
You don’t get to decide what’s identifiable and what’s not. How do you know the useful information isn’t identifying?
@JackbyDev @gamermanh still you indentify as Netscape Navigator for me. ( First browser )
Great reading comprehension dude
You’re just assuming helpful information is somehow separate from identifying information. That’s not necessarily the case.
No, they should t be able to blanket delete everything theyve posted
They should have the right to find that info and remove it
Which is it? Or do you just have a problem with being able to easily delete the information?
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)
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.
- Hilariously the soution would be facebook style “we won’t delete your data if you log back in n days”
I hate it so much when people delete useful information.
Because i was bummed out on lemmy and i just did not want to have a presence here anymore. And honestly this topic feels like a reminder to delete my account again, haha. But i won’t, so that maybe one, two other people may delete their accounts better than me.
Hmmh, not sure if I’m experiencing a Déjà vu, or if this is just because I’ve talked to some people who were complaining about some aspect of the platform and saying they’re going to quit. Anyways, I wish that you’re somehow going to find what you’re looking for. Whether it’s on this platform or somewhere else.
Seems to me like you’re having an on-and-off relationship. And those often turn out to be… difficult?
Oh right, i think i was telling you that when you asked this in the world matrix chat, when I showed up there, talking about my problem deleting the account in December.
Interesting edit.
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.
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.
So don’t post things on the fediverse that you think you might one day regret.
I think they meant this as general advice for all lemmings and not your particular post, which btw is very much appreciated.
deleted by creator
Another reason why I suggest another instance than LW
Lemmy from 0.19.4 allows users to at least delete their uploaded images
… 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.
Seems better to be able to delete your uploads yourself than having to ask manual support from an admin
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 😂
You always seemed very defensive about any criticism against LW, I never understood why
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.
I thought you were leaving the platform?
Good luck, in any case
If you want me to be gone, don’t chat me up and don’t look into this topic. Easy.
I wonder if it might lead to some issues with European laws at some point
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.
That’s so weird, because comment deletions do get federated (mostly)
Its not like the alternative reddit is any better at least here someone could design a free app to do it, while reddit you gotta pay to access the api to delete all your posts/comments
I edit over and then delete all my comments every few days. I’ve never encountered a site that truly purges your account so as annoying it is it just feels necessary at this point
edit: interesting some of us are getting downvotes for this.
Asking out of genuine naivety, why do you do that?
Once you’ve been doxxed you tend to put more effort into covering your tracks lol
Is this automatic?
Nope lol
I do the same (though I have automated the process). I’m thinking of also undoing any votes just in case.
Edit+delete doesn’t remove content when servers defederate each other, unfortunately. I suspect this can be fixed if you control the Lemmy server your account is hosted on, but I haven’t bothered exploring that yet.
Oooo is this automatic process something that’s easy to replicate?
It’s a Rust program I wrote that runs on my Lemmy server, but in theory it should work with any Lemmy server.
I’ve thrown the code and a compiled version of the binaries on Github if you’re interested: source / binary downloads
Very cool. Thanks for sharing!
A reason why I never joined LW.
Lemmy.world is a trash instance.
But! Without it being the honey pot that draws all the dimwits/homophobes/transphobes/racists from elsewhere (same for whatever Hexbear/Chapo domain those dipshits have now) and keeps them there, I oppose defederating from them, we should only sandbox them so any comments they make stays on the .world domain.
Can you guys read?
Holy moly, this place seems to have gotten worse in the last two months lol.
Yeah, although in my mind it’s pretty much always been like this.
People on the internet are eager to say “something” even if it doesn’t actually address the issue at hand.
It’s sad, but it gets easier to deal with once we stop expecting more.
I just read your entire post, so don’t know what the fuck you are on about my reading comprehension.
I don’t know what you’re talking about, but lemmy.world definitely does not condone what you’re saying.
I wish a had the patience to go through my post history and link you the countless discussions there I’ve had with those types of people there.
