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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
The illusion of Privacy is Mastodon (or social media in general)
There's a reason why when you go to "private mentions" on Mastodon, this appears:
While yes, we should be able to delete our content if we want, but it's a bit naive to think there could be true privacy in any decentralised social media platform.
There's a reason why one of the think people tell you when you come to the fediverse is not to share personal and sensible information.
The only decentralised social media that has some level of privacy is Matrix, and that's why it has it's own protocol and only federates within/between its own servers.
In general I think we should go back to separating personal identities from internet identities on discussion forums like these. There are already platforms for promoting your personal identity that are way better than these types of forums
I completely agree. I'd add that. in general I wouldn't put any type of personal information on the internet, no social media site, is really private.
I was rather peeved I had to give an email to create an account on Lemmy. It shouldn't be needed.
I have an email that I specifically use for the fediverse. I wasn't asked to give email here, but otherwise it would have been hard to know when and whether my join in request was approved or not.
Unfortunately there has been a wave of fake accounts being created on lemmy. Requiring email on signup is one way to try to prevent this from happening.