[PSA] Lemmy account deletion is a mess
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Please, call me Steve.
Reality holds no responsibility to conform to anyone's expectations. However, my decades in the reality of the internet have shaped my expectations. I never expect anything on the internet to be truly deleted. Accounts are locked, but they and everything associated with them still exists. If you contact support, and sufficiently prove you're you, they can reinstate your account. In the rare cases they can't, they make it abundantly clear, and explain why they can't, in the deletion process.
Unless Lemmy specifically states all changes are guaranteed to be federated, I'd assume by default none will. I'll reiterate, reality has no responsibility to conform to my expectations. Deletions may in fact be federated sometimes.
But that's immaterial, since I don't post anything with the expectation I'll ever be able to delete it. An expectation built upon reality, not the reverse. An expectation I'm trying to impress on you.
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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.
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You're still missing the fundamental reality of the situation.
Stuff online generally doesn't get deleted. And almost never because you want it to. I think the EU passed a law about the "right to be forgotten". But the reality is, that's like fighting gravity. The effort and resources it takes to truly break orbit are far beyond most people's, and even most government's means. Same with truly deleting anything online.
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If you want me to be gone, don't chat me up and don't look into this topic. Easy.
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I hate it so much when people delete useful information.
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My point is he's not asking for it to be deleted from the entire internet.
You're just here to jerk yourself off over "uhm, actually! nothing is ever deleted from the internet!" which also isn't true.
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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.
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I think Lemmy should display a simple warning on sign-up that everything you post on the fediverse can't be reasonably ever deleted, because it's going to be shared to possibly infinite different parties.
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Please, call me Steve.
Shut up, Steve.
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The current delete function states:
"Warning: this will permanently delete your account. The deletion may not always federate to other instances."The first part, I'm almost certain isn't actually true.
The second part basically confirms what you're asking for.Yah. That could be stated explicitly on signup.
But to sum up what I said in other comments here; Not being able to delete things, is like the Internet's version of gravity. Be glad it works, and don't waste effort fighting it. -
Actually he is. He wants his account deletion to delete all his comments and federate that out. However if that were how it works it would be very misleading to users because they would expect their posts to be deleted across the fediverse when that wouldn't be the case. Some servers would retain that data and not comply with deleting all the comments.
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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.
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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...
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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. -
Cheers to the lemmy.nz admin for misleading (very) their users with the futile idea of federation, all across the fediverse, to not just let this funny comment end up in a dead end locally.
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But that's not what is being talked about. I don't think OP is expecting an all or nothing situation. You're talking like you've never deleted anything online
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Yes.
Op isn't expecting an all or nothing. I'm suggesting they should expect nothing. All isn't even worth talking about.And yes.
I've never deleted anything online. Never had a reason to. If I ever imagined a reason I'd want to delete something, I wouldn't post it to begin with. Because I know I can't delete it. See how that works. So what if I was wrong, or embarrassing, that's part of being human, own you're mistakes and move on. Don't hide them. They are who you were. They are how you got where you are. They're responsible for who you've become. Take pride in the failings of your past. -
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)
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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.
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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.
