this post was submitted on 02 Mar 2026
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Are users data protected on the fediverse? (feddit.it)
submitted 10 hours ago by dontblink@feddit.it to c/fediverse@lemmy.world
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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.

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[–] fuckwit_mcbumcrumble@lemmy.dbzer0.com 59 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

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.social 21 points 10 hours ago (2 children)

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".

[–] homesweethomeMrL@lemmy.world 7 points 8 hours ago

So deleted everywhere except in the places you most wish it was deleted.

[–] GlenRambo@jlai.lu 4 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

What happens with servers that are defederared. Is that one of the 0.01%?

[–] rimu@piefed.social 7 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

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.

[–] nomy@lemmy.zip 8 points 8 hours ago (2 children)

I'd be willing to bet there's archiving going via software/servers that don't obey deletion requests.

Anything federated is public information.

[–] admin@scrapetacular.ydns.eu 3 points 8 hours ago

There's definitely a bot with a user agent like "fedi big data" doing some scraping in my server logs, does anyone know who that is?

[–] fuckwit_mcbumcrumble@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 6 hours ago

With how Lemmy handles deleted posts (and nuking access to the comments) I'm probably gonna make my own removeddit for Lemmy.