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For my main account on world (which runs an outdated lemmy version), it seemed like at least the account deletion was federated so that my user page was no longer browsable from other instances, but none of my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.
Nothing is ever really deleted on the internet, especially if it was automatically replicated to dozens of other servers.
This is such a goofy take. Yes, obviously you can never be 100% there isn’t some copy or archive laying somewhere, but wanting it to be deleted for 99% of the ways people would find it is reasonable. Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good.
Great info, thanks for clueing me in.
Is that supposed to be sarcasm?
Yes. I know it would be good practice to mark it, but that would just ruin it for myself. I hope clarifying on request is sufficient. Wish you a nice day.
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.
