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?

  • @[email protected]
    12•1 year ago

    There is no tracking built into Lemmy, however servers log IP addresses by default.

    Posts and comments are not deleted from the server to allow restoring them later. However if you make an edit, it completely overwrites the content. Deleting the user account also deletes all content. Deletions are federated, but because this is a distributed system, there is no guarantee that deletions (or other actions) reach other instances.

  • Admiral Patrick
    4•1 year ago

    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.

  • OrangeSlice
    2•1 year ago

    It is possible that deletions will not propagate to other servers if they are running a forked version of the software.

  • @[email protected]
    2•1 year ago

    It seems simliar to how reddit handles it where the comments just get a flag attached to them and the text is still stored. There was some hubbaloo about it a few years ago where people were saying to edit your comments first on reddit before deleting them

    • The BaldnessOP
      3•1 year ago

      Yeah, that’s what it’s looking like. It’s a bit concerning because the Lemmy devs didn’t have to do it that way. They could just mark content as deleted and then zero-out all the fields to default values. I wonder what their reasoning was for not doing it that way.

  • teoria
    1•1 year ago

    Nothing on the internet is ever truly deleted. Surely you know this by now?

    • The BaldnessOP
      6•1 year ago

      Yes, but I want to know what the code actually says, and I probably can’t figure it out for myself, so I’m asking.

      • @Mac
        1•1 year ago

        And there is absolutely nothing wrong with that.

    • Admiral Patrick
      3•1 year ago

      That comment is still showing normally for me and isn’t flagged as “deleted” in the DB.

      I’ve had to restart my instance and block a spammy IP. I’m still learning how the rate limits work in lemmy, and my server logs were just flooded with rate_limit_errors for the last 45 minutes or so. Finally just blocked that IP as its traffic pattern didn’t match any other Lemmy servers/clients. That said, my server may have missed some announcement messages or something. I dunno.

      On another note, I did leave a comment somewhere the other day and deleted it because I realized I sounded stupid. Someone replied to it a day later. I also deleted, restored, and re-deleted a test comment in this thread that someone else said was still visible, so I’m guessing that one of a few things could be the case:

      1. Sometimes comment/post deletions don’t federate out/in
      2. There could be something up with my instance
      3. There’s some other factor at play.
      4. There’s a bug somewhere

      I’ve got to get to bed, so that’s as far as I dive into this tonight.