Is there a tried and true method to delete a Lemmy account?locked

GilgameshCatBeard@lemmy.ca to Ask Lemmy@lemmy.world – 7 points –

Looking to leave Lemmy and I’d like to erase my presence here if possible, can this be done? I’ve looked into it and from what I’ve seen, the suggested method is to just not post any more. Which is easy enough, but will I have to manually remove ALL content for all of my accounts in other to remove myself entirely from here?

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you make a big post about it, and announce that you're leaving, and we have a little ceremony where we celebrate the fact that you were here at all, and then we burn you

https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/issues/2977

According to the lemmy devs, deleting your account also overwrites and purges your comments and posts. This deletion is being federated - but other servers may choose to ignore it, be buggy, down or whatever, and therefore not fully deleting your content there.

Since lemmy is decentralized, that's as close to a full deletion as you'll get, and to quote your rationale, that'll be the only bridge you'll be able to burn.

Side note: Why are several of you so aggressive on a simple question? If they want to leave the platform and delete their content, why shouldn't they, especially since that is absolutely non-trivial on a decentralized platform?

It just internet being internet. I noticed a lot of user is very defensive on some topic to the point of being absolutely toxic about it when disagreement pops up. The general good vibe of lemmy has gone downhill compared to when the reddit migration started.

Totally agree. It’s seemingly everywhere too. Even on the positive communities. Aside from that I’ve had accounts banned from communities for simply disagreeing with the narrative of a post and providing a different perspective.

People don’t want to be shown that there is any other way, or that anyone believes differently that what the hive wants here and that to me, flies in the face of what Lemmy was supposed to be about and is incredibly ironic considering the types of things that sets these people off.

Thank you so much for the info. I greatly appreciate it. And the point you made about everyone being so aggressive is exactly why I’m wanting to leave Lemmy. They attack, then accuse me of being the bad guy when I defend myself like someone just did.

I was actually accused of being the asshole. Because i snapped back at the vitriol.

EDIT: was also just accused of something called “sea lioning” you cannot make this shit up.

The decentralization aspect of Lemmy is intended to reduce censorship instead of privacy or ephemerality of information.

The best thing you could do to accomplish what you wish is to edit your comments to instead read "Deleted". It's not perfect because changes may propogate slowly or not at all to some servers.

A script may be there to do this automatically but I haven't looked.

Like any public forum, either take ownership of what you say or don't say it.

It’s not about ownership. I don’t care much about that at all. It’s just that this place isn’t what I thought it would be and I don’t want to have had participated in it at all.

Think of it as a ceremonial thing. Burn the bridges so to speak.

Alright, I'm not here to judge your motivations for leaving, so I wish you the best in the search of a community that better fits your needs. I hope my answer was useful to you.

I appreciate that. Seems the general consensus is negative for my even asking such a thing- which is pretty much my reason for leaving. You’re and the few like you are the exception to the rule, but it’s really the arrogance and childish behavior of the hive-mind here that I’m wanting to leave.

I originally kept that to myself as I didn’t want to make waves and I didn’t think it was important, but take a look at how much shit I’m getting for simply asking a question.

I feel pretty similar, have you found a different site you think you'll like better?

Not really. I lurk in Reddit for some of the game-related content I need, and just get news from Reuters and such.

Sadly, everything is so polarized now that it’s impossible to find a comfortable place for voice of reason-based content without either being yelled at, called names, or flat out banned for disagreeing with the hive.

Man you’ve been arguing all throughout your post history and calling people names. While also being super antagonistic in how you engage discourse. Then this haughty post about deleting your account and wanting the related post gone as well. Why not just leave the account? If you don’t care who reads the posts and it’s nothing more than some symbolic bridge burning; I would have thought you’d just leave once you realise it would be a headache.

The next place you go to I hope you examine your own posting and language you use if you’re going to leave websites citing polarised politics and how toxic the discourse is. If you end up keeping on, block specifically political instances (and any instance you don’t care for its politics) and learn to leave a discussion when it descends into name calling/flaming. Internet based discourse is nearly always a waste of time for politics. You’re talking to people through screens; few of whom will feel any obligation to be civil because of that fact alone.

Point it out to me an instance where I was antagonistic where I wasn’t just defending myself from others attacking me?

This is exactly my point. You say something/ask a question, then people insult/ridicule, then you defend/explain yourself and become the villain to their victim.

It’s pathetic.

I don’t want to have had participated

I have something to tell you about the passage of time

Joined 1 day ago and 39 comments... Seems like you've put more work into trying to leave than you spent on the platform

You missed the part where I said I have other accounts. I’ve been here since before the Reddit API fiasco.

I never understood the multiple accounts thing...

Personally for me it's to keep different related areas of interest together

Ie some accounts for news, some for memes, some for general hobbies, etc

I did the same thing on Reddit while I was there more often

Also here on Lemmy with federation and defederation happening, sometimes having multiple accounts kinda happens as you abandon one for a more or less connected instance

Do you think you've posted anything that would be worth removing in the first place? Seems pretty unlikely, so could be just a case of deleting your account and moving on. Unless you went around posting stuff that could get you in trouble and left in easy way to connect that to you in other ways, I don't see why it matters.

This guy seems a bit sealiony. And that will be all OP, no need to prove me right

Edit: on its face its a valid question but this OP is a bit off in my view. focusing more on their reactions and editorializing than matter-of-fact how do I do this procedurally.

This is a How question more than a Why I would think, they seem to repeatedly drift to airing random grievances

No, nothing that could cause trouble at all. It’s more of a ceremonial burn the bridges on my way out sort of thing.

Even if you delete your account and posts they could still exist on other instances/some archiver somewhere

No. It will not still exist. It can exist.

When a user deletes an account, it federates to other instances. Other instances can ignore this request but by default it will deleted from other instances too.

So, there’s no way to just be removed entirely from Lemmy? Wish I knew this before joining.

Thats the case for every social website ever. This seems like an incredible oversight on your part

For the archiver, it's the same issue as any publicly accessible website or forum. Archivers are going to archive

When the user deletes their account, does it show up as a deleted account in the archive or does it still show their username?

Depends how the archiver works. Something like archive.ph would keep several snapshots of a page

Fair enough, but I hadn’t known that it would be impossible to remove any content from other instances. I suppose that’s on me.

Guess the best thing to do is just remove the apps from my phone and walk away from it.

Comment and post deletion should still work to some extent. I have seen people deleting their accounts, most of their content was deleted, with the exception of non Lemmy software like Kbin.

You can always give it a try.

Not only that, your upvotes and downvotes are completely public.

You might not see them through the lens of a Lemmy frontend, but using kbin you can see it.

It's something I wish I knew before I joined, but it is what it is and I'm getting used to it.

Anyway, take care, and feel free to check-in every year or so to see if the user base has expanded to levels where its a better community. That or check out a different instance of Lemmy where there might be a community that better fits what you're looking for.

Yeah, I think I’ll do that. Maybe even sooner than every year or so. Just just be that the extremism is because it’s a new platform (newish anyway) and it’ll even out after some time.

Anything you post on the Internet can be backed up by anyone and "deleting" something requires you to go to everyone who might have backed it up and asking them to delete it too. That goes for everything public on the Internet, but since lemmy is decentralized it's built into the system by design. You can send out a signal to ask them all to delete, but it's just a request. Any server can just ignore it.

If it's any solace, it's unlikely anyone cares about what you've posted.

I find it amusing and ironic that the overall sentiment seems to be "just leave your comments around or delete them all manually, which may not work; who really cares?" given the backlash reddit has received and continues to receive around account/comment deletions (and forceful restorations). And especially given the downright clinical paranoia around privacy that seems to permeate many areas of Lemmy.

Don't get me wrong, I've stopped going to reddit altogether over the fiascos of last year, so I'm in no way suggesting they're any better (and are arguably worse).

Truth is, anything published publicly to the Internet can be backed up and be made impossible to delete. With Reddit, it's more that they're a centralized corporation profiting off your content, so it makes sense to not want them specifically to profit off it. But if someone's goal is to have it be gone gone, then they're misguided.

Deleting your account in your home instance should remove all posts and it federated. But don't blame the instance admins when it doesn't federate well on every instance because Lemmy is buggy software.

Internet connections should come with the disclaimer that everything done on the internet remains on the internet forever. I'm still finding bits of myself from over a decade ago and I shudder at the dumb things I used to say unknowingly. At least now I tell them on purpose, or at least fully conscious they might be dumb as hell.

On the bright side, absolutely nobody cares about what you said a decade ago unless you're a public figure.

OP seems to be sealioning, I suggest not engaging further

I asked an innocent question and was attacked for it. How do you figure this is sealioning?

To prove I’m not, how about I block you so I don’t have to argue with you about it. If I were trolling- I don’t think I’d do that, would I?

I have nothing productive or helpful to say here other than: OP you are so unbelievably naive to think what you ever say is significant enough to warrant people caring what you say, but also dumb enough to think that anything you delete from the internet is ever truly gone. You deserve this. You will never be forgotten and you will always be reminded of your mistakes.

I have nothing productive or helpful to say here

You should have stopped here.

This is essentially the reason I want to get the fuck out of here. It’s the naive arrogance of kids like you that post here. I thought it would be an alternative to Reddit, but no- it’s just a bunch of whiny children playing at politics.

For what it’s worth-

I never said what I said was significant. And my reasons shouldn’t be important to you- or necessary to the end goal of getting an answer- but if you’d REALLY like to know, maybe read a bit of the comments before you knee-jerk yourself into embarrassment, because I explained it already.

Thanks though for further proving that I’m making the right call. You will be why this place never reaches its full potential.

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