this post was submitted on 19 Jun 2023
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Technology

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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
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[–] furrowsofar@beehaw.org 7 points 2 years ago

It is all public just as most forums on Reddit. No real difference. No difference with Usenet either. Relax.

[–] GadgeteerZA@beehaw.org 6 points 2 years ago (2 children)

Not sure what the point of "Mastodon's" opinion is? Firstly, Mastodon is pretty big and decentralised, and it has no-one who really speaks on behalf of all its users. Lemmy is not a privacy central network like a direct messenger service. It never claimed to be privacy centric as far as I know. The point is to share posts in communities, and the more that see them, the better.

But it is federated which means posts do get shared to other servers everywhere, and deleting those is not as easy as for a centralised server. Whatever I post on any sharing type service, I consider to be public.

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[–] Prunebutt@feddit.de 6 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

I find all the "privacy isn't possible on the clearnet, lol" Commets quite troubling. Yes, the internet doesn't forget and we should always behave on the internet as if our moms could read it.

But that kind of "privacy realism" fosters an additude that doesn't care about privacy at all; no matter how it could be improved (even if it's never perfect). Just because anyone on the street can follow me home and therefore can find my home address, I'm not carrying a sign with my address when going to a protest.

According to this comment, privacy is worse than with mastodon. And while data always can be scraped, it still isn't too much to ask to properly federate deletions.

Yes, the internet is a public place and reddit is bad and you might not like raddle, but come on, people. Have you all given up on improving things already? And do only tech-savvy people with the knowledge and resources to run their own servers have a right to privacy on the internet?

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[–] Kushi@beehaw.org 6 points 2 years ago (1 children)

This is a link to Raddle.me, what does this have to do with Mastodon?

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[–] VexCatalyst@lemmy.fmhy.ml 6 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

In both services you are basically shouting into a giant megaphone. What’s so private about it? If you don’t want say it in public, don’t say it there.

If you need privacy there are much better tools available such as pgp encrypted email or encrypted Matrix DMs (a nonfederated Matrix sever would be even more secure but rather overkill).

Edit: specified encrypting Matrix DMs. I forgot for a moment that you can send unencrypted DMs over Matrix.

[–] MoshBit@beehaw.org 6 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (3 children)

As a life long anarchist, I personally find raddle to be a fucking embarrassment. The elitist bullshit is right up there with other political anarchist sites like anarchist news; they're all a fucking shit show and shows why anarchists will never accomplish anything.

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[–] agitatedpotato@beehaw.org 5 points 2 years ago

Am I missing something or isnt it that no matter what Lemmy does all those same problems would still exist, just from the internet archival sites instead. Sure the privacy could be better to deter some of it, but none of those issues are fully solveable so long as thise archival sites run. I guess the media not deleting is likely the biggest thing you could effect that archives would be less likely to store in the first place.

[–] HorseFD@beehaw.org 5 points 2 years ago (1 children)

So just to clarify this point:

Anything remains visible on federated servers!

If I delete a comment on beehaw.org, it doesn't get deleted when accessed from another Lemmy instance that federates with Beehaw?

[–] nan@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 points 2 years ago (11 children)

When you delete it your instance tells others that it was deleted, but it cannot force them to follow through.

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@elbowmacaroni if instead of linking to the post you had boosted it, would all the replies here appear in beehaw?

[–] j0s3f@feddit.de 4 points 2 years ago (4 children)

That's a non issue. You just cannot expect to be able to delete anything you post on the internet. Even the great reddit with the awesome deletion feature cannot help you. You might be able to delete your comment there, but there is https://www.unddit.com/ https://archive.is/ https://web.archive.org/ and many others, where your comment will still be available.

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[–] trent@kbin.social 4 points 2 years ago

The stuff listed in OP doesn't really seem like much concern. "What you put on the internet is there forever!" is completely true, and things like this should only make it more concrete that you can't rely on your service provider to delete information somebody else already archived.
With that being said, default privacy settings - at least on Kbin - seem pretty bad.

[–] ISometimesAdmin@the.coolest.zone 4 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Other people have already commented on how federated social media often requires certain data just for implementations to work and make sense, and there's not much more to add to that.

If you want private, end-to-end-encrypted, decentralized communication, the best modern solution to that is #matrix.

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[–] exoteefs@kbin.social 4 points 2 years ago

I'm not sure what this has to do with mastodon all I see are some salty idiots on raddle moaning.

[–] grizzzlay@beehaw.org 4 points 2 years ago

I don't think much of Mastodon as it is, so they're free to rag on Lemmy all they want.

[–] MrEUser@lemmy.ninja 4 points 2 years ago (8 children)

I’m at a loss. You’re saying that things that you said publicly are private? Or you’re saying that they become private because you delete your account? Assume you dox someone. I need to find out if that happened. As an admin I’d be able to see that

  1. you
  2. publicly posted
  3. their data

I would need to be able to provide this to authorities if they provided needed legal documentation. Why do you think that privacy dictates you should be able to commit a crime, and get away with it by deleting your account?

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