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
With all due respect: I think your analogy made a strawman of what was originally demanded.
Originally, several less-than-ideal “privacy” (or whatever you call it) issues were pointed out.
No one demanded perfect privacy like with E2EE messengers, but rather: sensible protocol implementation of deletions.
No one is demanding that people shouldn’t be able to scrape stuff from the internet.
Still: There is a possibility of doing everything in your power to delete stuff that’s supposed to be deleted when you’re a developer.
And they actually do implement this stuff. That is why it is important to point these things out! The squeaky wheel gets the grease, as they say. Or is this issue counterproductive too, because it gives people the illusion that you can delete things on the internet?
If you think that “privacy” is the wrong term: granted. But sensible deletion protocols are not too much to ask for.
Well, that is in a nutshell what I am arguing. I’m not inherently against the ability to delete things, as it can be quite useful as a quick means to say “I take this back”, or “this information I shared is wrong, so I’m removing it” (although in that case I would opt to use an edit). Even “I’m embarrassed about this, so I don’t want more people to look at it” is a good enough reason that I would respect, and for which I would delete the thing if it was in my possession. Essentially, I just don’t think it should be treated as a privacy issue, because that might give a lot of people the wrong idea.
Ok, so I guess it’s a semantics issue then.
Thank you for a more productive conversation than any of the one I’ve had on twitter. Take care.
Wholesome award 🐻