In other words, can any user delete its data on its will and is there something that will remove its data from all the connected activitypub services? I believe this should actually be a basic feature and pretty much a requirement.

  • fuckwit_mcbumcrumble@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    2·
    14 days ago

    No, not at all. Any data that is federated out assume it’s impossible to delete. Sure you can delete stuff from the original server, but will the federated ones obey the request? Or even get the request in the first place?

    Nothing you post on social media should have any expectation of privacy.

    • Rimu@piefed.socialEnglish
      1·
      14 days ago

      You are technically correct but the fact is that 99.9% of federated activities, including delete requests, are processed normally and in the expected way. That is not “impossible to delete” that is “will be deleted except in exceptional circumstances”.

        • Rimu@piefed.socialEnglish
          1·
          13 days ago

          Good question!

          PieFed sends delete requests to every known server, including defederated ones. I’ve seen a ton of delete requests from Mastodon too, for accounts that don’t exist on PieFed so it looks like Mastodon does that too. No idea about other fedi platforms.

  • Zak@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1·
    13 days ago

    Well-behaved server software honors delete requests, but there are a bunch of ways for that to fail without anyone doing anything malicious:

    • If your instance shuts down, there is no way for you to generate delete requests
    • If a server admin has to restore a backup from before your request, the deleted data will be restored
    • Immature or experimental software may not work as designed; Lemmy itself has a version number starting with 0
    • Archiving services may keep snapshots of pages from fediverse servers; here’s your user page on lemmy.world on archive.org
    • Fediverse servers often make content available by RSS, and RSS clients may store that content; there’s no way for them to receive a signal that it should be deleted

    And then there’s malicious activity. It wouldn’t be hard to run a server that speaks ActivityPub, subscribes to a bunch of stuff, pretends to honor delete requests, and actually keeps everything.

    Deletion will always be unreliable on the fediverse as long as it runs on technology that looks anything like current implementations.