Mastodon thinks Lemmy’s privacy stinks. What say you?

elbowmacaroni@beehaw.org to Technology@beehaw.org – 160 points – Warning: Lemmy doesn't care about your privacy, everything is tracked and stored forever, even if you delete it
raddle.me

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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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:

Private mentions. Post on mastodon are not end-to-end encrypted.Do not share any sensitive information over Mastodon

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.

The line gets a little blurry if you start posting into a geographical community though. Sometimes it’s hard to stay 100% anonymous

I was rather peeved I had to give an email to create an account on Lemmy. It shouldn't be needed.

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.

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.

There’s a reason why when you go to “private mentions” on Mastodon, this appears:

Lemmy carries the same warning:

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.

Especially an email or "reddit" threaded conversation systems where quoting of messages is routine. Here I am, quoting you.

You are putting a billboard up in public, on a bulletin board in the center of the Internet, the assumption should be that anyone can photograph it.

Exactly.

That with the addition that the function of thread-like social media is being a place to discuss topic and share information/knowledge. So content needs to be kept even if the account that posted it exist no more. The contain remaining when the account gets deleted is a feature, because otherwise important information could be lost.

Content deletion should be an option, but the content remaining if you delete your account its a needed feature for this type of platform