Lemmy Support @lemmy.ml The Baldness @beehaw.org 1y ago

Privacy questions about Lemmy

What information does a Lemmy server collect about its users?

When I delete a comment or post, is it truly deleted on the server?

Do deletions also propagate to federated servers?

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I'm going to run a quick test and see if I can't answer a couple of those.

Edit:

Results:

I posted two comments to this thread and then deleted one of them. When I checked the database entries corresponding to this post, the comment I deleted is still in the comments table but there is a delete flag set after I deleted it.

So, it appears that deleting a comment just toggles a "deleted" flag in the database. It seems to be intentional as I'm able to undelete the comment from the Lemmy UI.

I deleted and undeleted a post on my own instance, and yes, posts are treated the same: delete flag with the original post still available in the DB.

It's also worth noting that when a comment is removed by a moderator, the comment shows in the modlog. Again, I believe this is intentional.

@TheBaldness (or anyone, really): If you could, can you add a new comment to this post and then delete it? My instance would be a federated one to yours, so I can check the DB to see if it handles federated comments the same as one locally. I'm assuming that it does.
- Comment to delete in a couple of minutes
- Will do.
- I would like to know!
  I'll make another comment and delete it in a couple of minutes
  
  Edit: I deleted the other comment
  
  Is this the comment you deleted? I see it on my own instance in the thread.
  
  Yeah, on my instance it says it's deleted, I commented this in the github repo.
  
  Interestingly it doesn't suggest it's deleted at all for me. Im using the android Jerboa app so maybe that's why
- Created a new top-level comment and deleted it.

43 comments