Hey folks, guy in the cross post. Thanks for doing that @hardypart@feddit.de , I feel it is an important discussion for people to be a part of across the Lemmiverse.

Seems there is some positive engagement on here, and maybe a couple that are a bit confused. I’m going to assume they aren’t just curmudgeons because why would you waste time commenting if you weren’t making an expression of interest in good faith, but maybe not ready to fully invest yet?

To expand on the TLDR; many new users are coming from monolith platforms (such as reddit; Meta; etc) into the brave new world of federated platforms (like Lemmy) without fully understanding the difference in privacy principles between these two models. Many, more experienced, users do not understand it fully themselves and they make potentially dangerous assertions, or at least ones that could mislead less experienced users into believing Lemmy behaves in a way that it doesn’t.

It’s all fine and good to say “Everything posted on the internet stays. Never post anything you don’t want public”, but in practice, and especially people coming from monolith platforms, they may make mistakes if they are not highly cognizant of some distinctions between the two models of public, social engagement.

If you are certain you’ll never, ever have any risk of making such a mistake, the subtle distinction won’t matter to you. If you aren’t sure (it is very easy to trip up here) you are going to want to be educated on where some of the potential hazards are, and you will want to be very, very, very careful. Like you never have been before.

Even some of the most confident, let’s call them, “perfectly private posters”, often get a little shook when I inform them their votes are entirely public, when they had previously made an assumption they were not due to familiarity with a monolith platform where votes are private. It seems intuitive that they should be private here, but that is not the case. This is a very prevalent misunderstanding right now, and very eye opening to some.

I much prefer the model of federated because it really gives the user the full control of their privacy to engage to the level they are comfortable with. But it can be very dangerous if not managed appropriately.

I also feel the wider community is not doing a very good job of communicating this, which is validated by the chord it seems to have struck over on Beehaw. But I come with solutions: a haywire, but comprehensive essay on some of the things a user should be aware of. I have also started a project that provides templates for privacy policies so that admins can add accountability to their instances while also protecting themselves.

Anyway, a very complex subject many are still learning to navigate, and not something easily reduced to a tldr; As it is, this version is half the length of the original, and you would have been half way through it by now if you just went to the source.

If you have any questions, I’m here to answer them.

That isn’t what I am speaking to, and the fact someone could make a copy or it is archived somewhere doesn’t make the statement that you can always remove your data from the platform true. And there is a difference between a potential copy and an original federated, distributed, and indexed version. There are also reasons someone might want to remove their data other than simply being worried about the actual content of it.

People need to be aware of the persistence of data, but people also have to understand the technology they are using to make their own informed decisions on how they engage.

This is assuming your local is still federated. If your local gets defederated you currently have no control over any previously federated copies of your posts / comments / votes.