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.
This is true, but there are two exceptions: admins have a purge action which permanently deletes content. And like others already said, when you delete your account everything that you posted is permanently deleted.
I could see it being an issue if a user gets permabanned from an instance and wants to delete their content, since they won’t be able to access their account to purge it themself.
Besides purging your data (we mention how to do this below), we also have an open-source codebase, so you can verify that the actions are actually deleting your data. I could link the source code for that if you like.
Reddit does not have this. When they tell you they deleted your data, its a “just trust us” from an extremely untrustworthy company.
This isn’t too much different from how reddit works; nothing that’s “Deleted” is gone unless it’s actually hard deleted (purged) from the site.
It’s that way for a reason…so that appropriate moderators and admins can see behavior overall when appropriate.
For example on reddit if I “remove” your post from my subreddit (that I moderate); I can still see the post contents. The post is “[ removed ]” to the public eye; but still exists.
However; if you “delete” your post; it appears to me as a subreddit moderator, and to the public in general as “[ deleted ]”
I cannot be certain if reddit admins can see deleted posts/content on reddit.com; as I am not one.
It however appears that Lemmy takes one more logical step that aligns more with modern privacy expectations; and that’s to expose to the user that when they “delete” their own post that it can still be “undeleted” by either themselves or someone else who is authorized, like an Admin.
I’m guessing this is why every reddit purge scripts edit the content first and then remove, right?
Correct.
From what I understand, Reddit started keeping an edit history a few years ago to counteract those scripts.
That’s peculiar, considering that once you delete your account the content is purged.
Is it?
It is.
deleted by creator
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.
When you delete your account, there’s an option to purge all your data.
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?
You should open an issue on the github repo. IIRC deleting your own account should purge data, but posts and comments that are removed by mods will be kept in the database to possibly be restored unless they also decide to purge it.
