YSK: Your Lemmy activities (e.g. downvotes) are far from private
i.imgur.com
Edit: obligatory explanation (thanks mods for squaring me away)...
What you see via the UI isn't "all that exists". Unlike Reddit, where everything is a black box, there are a lot more eyeballs who can see "under the hood". Any instance admin, proper or rogue, gets a ton of information that users won't normally see. The attached example demonstrates that while users will only see upvote/downvote tallies, admins can see who actually performed those actions.
Edit: To clarify, not just YOUR instance admin gets this info. This is ANY instance admin across the Fediverse.
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Then you shouldn't have uploaded it publicly.
The same was always possible with Reddit and was even implemented. Why is this a problem now?
Only if they don't have an API.
People can accidentally reveal there identity or post something, notice this is too private edit or delete it. The chance for someone to have seen it in 1 second is low. The chance for a bit to have crawled that thread, with that comment, is higher but still low as it requires infrastructure, that costs money and a little skill to setup. Something someone for a simple plugin won't do.
If anyone can host a Lemmy instance and you just need to filter that one line of code that's for forwarding delete or edit requests, you can just push that info into a separate view. You now just need a plugin that will poll from the instance that's not complying to delete requests and display them to the user. Hell that's something even I could do quickly if I ever feel bored.
Hosting (or simply just using) a crawler takes less resources and skill than hosting Lemmy let alone modify it the way you intend.
Yes, I know, every CS student can program a crawler. I explained in another comment why it's still a huge difference.
Maybe if hosting a Lemmy instance is that hard, it's enough? I don't know.
I found hosting a Lemmy instance pretty easy but I admit I have the experience to readily recognize how fucked the Lemmy docker-compose example is.
No clue whatsoever how to write a crawler.