Mastodawn

Mastodon thinks Lemmy’s privacy stinks. What say you?

https://beehaw.org/post/649715

Mastodon thinks Lemmy’s privacy stinks. What say you? - Beehaw

>>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

Sens Jun 19, 2023

I think this is a feature, well the media aspect anyway. Immutable media. The rest can be developed on.

sinnerdotbin Jun 20, 2023

It isn't truly immutable though, and could be dangerous to propigate the idea that it is 100% immutable

Communist Jun 19, 2023

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

It's not like they're doing it on purpose, there's a lot of things being worked on, and this is one of them.

db0 Jun 19, 2023

The same is true for raddle. They kid themselves if they think anyone can't record anything in there forever.

Anyway it's also inaccurate. Deleted accounts are purged from the DB, so they're definitelly not visible anymore

Likewise you you edit your comment, it's edited in the DB.

minkshaman Jun 20, 2023

So what your saying is that it’s just like Reddit in that respect.

Yeah, I can live with that, as long as everyone knows that if they really want something deleted, edit over it first.

flatbield Jun 20, 2023

For a humbling experience just seach for your Reddit and Lenny IDs on a seach engine. You will get a list of everything you have posted. Also some account info. It is all public. What happens when deleted, depends on who has scraped the data and their retension. This is just how public forums are and that goes all the way back to Usenet and listservs.

sinnerdotbin Jun 20, 2023

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

Black616Angel Jun 20, 2023

And it also assumes, no one made a screenshot or used the web archive, crawled it and stored it in their own DB or any other way of copying stuff. Of course!

If you post any thing publicly on the internet, there is no way to be 100% sure it can be ever deleted again.

ffmike Jun 19, 2023

In my opinion it's unreasonable to think anything can truly be deleted in a federated system. Even if the official codebase is updated to do complete deletion & overwrite, it's impossible to prevent some bad actor from federating in a fork that just ignores deletion requests.

Seems sensible to just not post anything that you don't want to be available for the lifetime of the internet.

alyaza [they/she]Jun 19, 2023

In my opinion it’s unreasonable to think anything can truly be deleted in a federated system.

yeah like. this is just a byproduct of how federation works currently. i don't even know how you'd begin to design a federated system where some of these critiques can't be levied

hemmes Jun 21, 2023

Yeah, but dick-pics…safe?

CoffeeBot Jun 19, 2023

Exactly. Even a server to just go down one day. Theoretically it has a snapshot in time

Maeve Jun 20, 2023

Yeah, I was thinking about jfs.

pkulak Jun 20, 2023

This is how I treated Reddit too. And Twitter. And everything else. I have two modes; public and private. And private is private; strong encryption and local storage. Having some middle ground is a recipe for disaster.

Zetaphor Jun 20, 2023

You don't even have to modify the code in a fork, just take regular database backups

ZILtoid1991 Jun 19, 2023

I think an option for full data deletion would be nice for those who want it, otherwise people should also expect others recording their data, which can be published later on.

anaximander Jun 19, 2023

Parts of it may actually be required under EU law. GDPR requires that anyone holding data on EU citizens comply with certain things, including a request to delete certain kinds of data. The EU has shown themselves willing to go after sizeable corporations for violations; most Lemmy instance operators are much smaller. This should probably be addressed before people find themselves on the wrong end of lawsuits.

Kichae Jun 20, 2023

Thing is, Lemmy is easily compliant with the EU's laws on this, because the laws state that the EU citizen merely needs to request the data be deleted. It says nothing about them having direct access to the lever to do it.

A basic Python script can be used purge the database after a written request and everything's kosher.

I don't understand why posts are held in reserve, rather than outright deleted. That's a design decision that doesn't totally make sense to me. I can see holding on to it for a period of time - 24 hours, 7 days, 30 days, what have you - so that users can undelete things, but just hiding it from end users and calling it deleted seems pointless to me.

It's not like anyone is trying to sell it to 3rd parties for model training. And while I could see a use case in academic research, the delete button seems like an implied revocation of a license to show or distribute the content, at least in the absence of a proper ToS.

And it just makes more noise for admins and mods.

CoderKat Jun 20, 2023

I don't think GDPR necessarily applies here, but I am not a lawyer. Quoting https://gdpr.eu/companies-outside-of-europe/:

Article 3.1 states that the GDPR applies to organizations that are based in the EU even if the data are being stored or used outside of the EU. Article 3.2 goes even further and applies the law to organizations that are not in the EU if two conditions are met: the organization offers goods or services to people in the EU, or the organization monitors their online behavior. (Article 3.3 refers to more unusual scenarios, such as in EU embassies.)

I'm not sure just what the definition of an organization is, so perhaps any server hosted within the EU is covered by the GDPR, but for servers outside of the EU that don't have ads (which seems like all servers currently), I don't think this would count. The example on the linked site about "goods and services" includes stuff like looking for ads tailored at European countries, so I suspect that simply serving traffic from Europe isn't enough.

The website also mentions the GDPR applies to "professional or commercial activity". There's also apparently an exception for under 250 employees. I don't even know how that works when something is entirely managed by volunteers like this currently is.

At any rate, I suspect we're a long way off from having to worry about the GDPR.

Does the GDPR apply to companies outside of the EU? - GDPR.eu

Under certain conditions, the GDPR applies to companies that are not in Europe. In this article, we’ll explain when and how the GDPR applies outside the EU. The European...

GDPR.eu

static Jun 20, 2023

Gdpr applies to servers within the EU, or for servers with EU clients. You can demand that they delete and stop transmitting data.

But you accept to transmit data all over the world, in the end that data could end up somewhere outside of the EU without any direct EU customers. Then all bounds are gone.

--
Do worry about GDPR in conforming to deletion requests, but only your own data, not anything you transmitted.

Umbrias Jun 20, 2023

GDPR likely doesn't apply to public facing forums in the way you're thinking, if you post actual personal data (which has a strict definition) yes it's murkier, but in general just posting on a public facing forum is extremely unlikely to qualify under right to be forgotten under GDPR.

Notably, GDPR is extremely unclear about this specific circumstance, and will likely fall to practicality. The user can make requests for their data to be deleted, those should in general be followed no matter who's server it's on, but they have to be given to each server by the user. Following the deletion requests is generally advisable, but again, it's highly unlikely GDPR applies here. Feel free to get a GDPR lawyer to actually weigh in though.

anaximander Jun 20, 2023

Part of it will depend on what data you're holding, and part will depend on who's running the instance. A lot of people won't be covered, but I'd wager there's some here and there who need to consider it.

lohrun Jun 19, 2023

It’s no different than me sending an email to someone and then sending a request to delete it. There likely is still a copy on the email provider’s server and the recipient could have potentially backed up their emails to something outside of the email ecosystem.

Unfortunately the only way to be absolutely sure that there isn’t information you don’t want on the internet is to not share it at all. There will always be an issue of making sure every system actually deletes content when you request it. Like I said, that doesn’t stop anyone from backing up the data to another system. (E.g. Reddit archives from 2005 to now are available to download, even content that has already been deleted)

CoderKat Jun 20, 2023

Honestly, I kinda question how good of a time investment it is to try and allow deletion from the public facing parts of the internet, given the numerous places where your content will be cached or otherwise stored.

There is certainly some value in simply making it as hard as possible to find things you want to delete. Why let perfect be the enemy of good, after all. There's plenty of types of content we certainly want to do our best at deleting even if we can't be perfect. Eg, do you wanna be the one to tell a revenge porn victim, "sorry, we can't make it harder to find the content that harms you because we can't delete all of it anyway"?

But at the same time, development time is limited. Everything is a trade off. We do have to decide what is most important, because we can't do it all immediately. The fact we can't actually delete everything does have to be a factor in this prioritization, too.

There is something to be said about ensuring people know and understand that nothing can truly be 100% deleted once it's posted on the internet. Not that Lemmy is doing good about that, either (especially since deleted comments apparently lie about being deleted).

All this said, I do think federated, reliable deletion is critical for illegal content. Such content needs to be removed quickly and easily from as many places as possible. Without this, instance owners are put at considerable legal risk. This risk poses a threat to the scalability of the Fediverse.

loving_kindness Jun 19, 2023

Anything put on the internet is forever. No one should be publicly posting anything with the expectation that they have any control of it after it goes out. If it’s not held by the server, there’s the way back machine or even just folks taking screenshots.

Scrubbles Jun 19, 2023

Whether is Lemmy, federated, corporate owned, or even your own private site - nothing you put on the internet is ever truly private. If you have a public profile someone can access it and copy it.

The only things I'll say that I have an expectation of privacy is health related, everything else I fully expect someone else to read, copy, and multiply.

I think there should be, but I never expect there to be. Did people's parents not teach them about putting things on the internet they didn't want shared?

DreamerOfImprobableDreams Jun 20, 2023

Did people's parents not teach them about putting things on the internet they didn't want shared?

They used to, then social media became a thing and they stopped. Suddenly, it was normal to put your entire life up online for other people to see, and if you didn't feel comfortable doing that you were the weird one.

My rule is, never post anything you wouldn't mind the media tracing back to you IRL and then making the top story of the day in your country. Because, while rare, that does occasionally happen!

QuestioningEspecialy Jun 20, 2023

My rule is, never post anything you wouldn't mind the media tracing back to you IRL and then making the top story of the day in your country.

So don't live, basically.
Or you can just maintain anonymity as best as you reasonably can and hope no one goes out of their way to identify you or the account(s). Making a new account after awhile is a safe practice. The goal is to decrease the likelihood of undesirable things, not make them impossible.

Sabzhero Jun 20, 2023

Odd response, you can still “live” without documenting your activities. Were people not living pre-Facebook/Instagram?

QuestioningEspecialy Jun 20, 2023

...Are we talking posting things anonymously or posting things with your irl name and photo?

Maxcoffee Jun 19, 2023

Exactly, when you put it out there it's out there on every single platform there is. It doesn't matter if you "delete it", the moment you share it you have lost control over it entirely.

For the same reasons I never understood why people post on Facebook with their own full name and life story out there in the open either.

Tyson712 Jun 20, 2023

I mean yes but it's still bad practice to keep deleted content. It'll be a bad look to people interested in switching to lemmy and more people is really what it needs right now

couragethecowardlydog Jun 20, 2023

True but you should still be able to delete your account and your comments and username leave the service. Online privacy isn't about completely disappearing, but making yourself so hard to track the average person won't bother digging.

QuestioningEspecialy Jun 20, 2023

Which in turn decreases the likelihood of something happening. Like locking a door.
The saying "If somebody wants to get in they will." is a terrible one when left as is.

loving_kindness Jun 20, 2023

Great points

cwagner Jun 20, 2023

Anything put on the internet is forever.

If only. Alas, it’s more "Expect anything put on the internet to be forever", I already spent a significant amount of time looking for treasures from the earl 2000s, and even from something as recent as 2009, without any luck. I’ve also uploaded songs to YouTube that for all I know have no other sources left, neither illegal nor legal.

Eufalconimorph Jun 20, 2023

It's the Internet Corrolary to Murphy's Law: your embarrassing posts will be available online forever, but any useful information you want to find later will have been deleted when you next look for it.

GiantBasil Jun 20, 2023

The internet is forever, except that one thing you really want to find from years ago. That's the rule.

binwiederhier Jun 19, 2023

The privacy stinks you say? Did you know that Likes and Dislikes are public too? That was the most shocking to me. Because it is very much not like Reddit or others.

It's still a fantastic piece of software, with all its flaws, though.

poVoq Jun 20, 2023

It's impossible to federate these without making them public in this way.

The up-votes are also mapped to favourites in Mastodon etc, so that was always public anyway.

You could argue that this should not be hidden in the Lemmy UI, but there are also good reasons to not highlight that much who voted on a post.

binwiederhier Jun 20, 2023

Hey 👋 I know you. Hehe.

trent Jun 20, 2023

I thought votes didn't federate yet anyways... but, yes, it is possible, and i can come up off the top of my head with three or four potential implementations.

poVoq Jun 20, 2023

Good luck with finding an anonymous system that can not be easily abused.

trent Jun 20, 2023

FHE solves that through and through, as has been documented widely, but that's overengineering when you could just use plain ZKP.
Zero-knowledge voting is here and has been for a while now.

bedrooms Jun 19, 2023

Kinda unsurprising as rumors have it that lemmy's developed by pro-China Tankies.

grte Jun 20, 2023

That said, anarkiddies rallying against federation and preferring to use a centralized service like raddle is very funny.

cavemeat Jun 20, 2023

I was thinking that. I can understand disliking lemmy for its developer, but then making it a call against federated media seems strange, as someone who also considers themselves an anarchist.

exoteefs Jun 20, 2023

I'm not sure what this has to do with mastodon all I see are some salty idiots on raddle moaning.

ISometimesAdmin Jun 20, 2023

Other people have already commented on how federated social media often requires certain data just for implementations to work and make sense, and there's not much more to add to that.

If you want private, end-to-end-encrypted, decentralized communication, the best modern solution to that is #matrix.

FrostBolt Jun 20, 2023

Use a pseudonym that you don’t use anywhere else and don’t dox yourself in your posts or comments

nevernevermore Jun 20, 2023

a good habit is also regularly abandoning/deleting an account and starting from scratch. I went thru 6 reddit accounts over my 13 years there

FrostBolt Jun 20, 2023

Same here. I had used reddit since 2010 and must have had close to a dozen accounts. I didn’t like too much info piling up under any one account. And I used a local city subreddit a lot.

1993_toyota_camry Jun 20, 2023

same. it also helped to separate interests. each hobby/interest would get a different account, local stuff another account, maybe an "engage in politics" account or three (so I can log off and not get hateful replies at random hours of the day)

If I stick around I figure I'll do the same with lemmy. So far local content, angry debate, and niche hobbies haven't been a 'problem'.

FrostBolt Jun 20, 2023

That's a great idea

KNova Jun 20, 2023

BTW, the OP on Raddle was spamming that message around Reddit last week and directing people to Raddle. I think he has a bone to pick with the developers' politics more than anything.

ivy Jun 20, 2023

i use kbin because I don't like lemmy's devs 🙃
bonus points that it actually deletes things

heartlessevil Jun 20, 2023

Do you think kbin is just reaching into other servers and pulling the bytes off the disk? You can't guarantee anything is deleted in a federated system, other servers can just ignore your delete request. So this makes no difference.

CheshireSnake Jun 20, 2023

This is being naive. Don't trust a server you don't run yourself.

NightOwl Jun 20, 2023

Did anyone use reddit thinking it was private? With stuff like push shift and way back machine people shouldn't be posting stuff they aren't comfortable sharing anyways on a wide open message board.

Always weirded me out the people who'd treat their reddit accounts like Facebook.

CheshireSnake Jun 20, 2023

With stuff like push shift and way back machine

So much this. I don't get why people don't remember this first thing when it comes to data storage.