From Lemmy documentation:
We don’t delete anything from our database, just hide it from users. Deleted or removed Communities/Posts/Comments have a “restore” button.
But don’t take my word for it. Try it out yourself. You can make a comment, delete the comment (your username appears to remain) and then restore its content.
Not from a privacy perspective, that’s for sure. There are already a couple privacy downsides in federated services in general, but the decision to intentionally retain user data after deletion is requested… If that’s the case, Reddit may offer more privacy
deleted by creator
Reddit is even worse. When you delete your comment, it’s not really deleted and still visible to the mods of the sub
That is not true.
No, if a user deletes their comment on Reddit, it is visible only to admins, not to mods. If a mod deletes a user’s comment, it is visible to mod and user, and even on that user’s account page. If an account is deleted, still all the data is retained by Reddit admins.
Reddit and their admins are an absolute nightmare. In comparison, Lemmy has a transparent modlog, transparency in “deleted” comments, transparency in your data actually being purged when account is deleted, an incomparably better moderation squad, no third party or contracted spying (see domains in uBlock Origin), xenophobes and racists are actually taken action against, vote manipulation is more transparent, brigading of accounts and instances is taken care of… these are just obvious benefits.
Do you really think public platforms are private, and that Reddit is more private when ChatGPT, DataDome, Google et al scrape it?
When you delete your account, there’s an option to purge all your data.