Federated services have always had privacy issues but I expected Lemmy would have the fewest, but it’s visibly worse for privacy than even Reddit.
- Deleted comments remain on the server but hidden to non-admins, the username remains visible
- Deleted account usernames remain visible too
- Anything remains visible on federated servers!
- When you delete your account, media does not get deleted on any server
The problem here is that your data is not only recopilated by your server and accessible to your server admins, the servers of the communities/magazines or people you interact with also recopilate any activity you have in relation to any community/magazine or user hosted in their server.
So, while the admin of your server has the obligation of deleting your data if you ask for it, the other servers admins don’t necessarily have that obligation.
Also, I’m reading the GDPR and the “right to be forgotten” that many are quoting seems to refer to personal information only.