Mastodawn

Some additional reading:

How do I delete a post? https://fedi.tips/how-do-i-delete-a-post-on-mastodon/

Who can see my posts and replies? https://fedi.tips/who-can-see-my-posts-in-mastodon-how-do-i-send-dms-in-mastodon/

Fediverse never Forgets https://berk.es/2022/12/23/fediverse-never-forgets/

Provide a mechanism for acknowledgements of Delete activities https://github.com/w3c/activitypub/issues/406

Improve UI/UX copy for "Automated Post Deletion" to clarify data persistence https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/discussions/37955

How do I delete a post on Mastodon? | Fedi.Tips – An Unofficial Guide to Mastodon and the Fediverse

An unofficial guide to using Mastodon and the Fediverse

Why "Delete" is complicated in the #Fediverse

Unlike X or Facebook where one company owns the only copy of your post, Mastodon and other Social Web apps use the #ActivityPub protocol.

When you post, your server (e.g. toot.wales) sends a copy to some number of servers (e.g. mastodon.social) - anywhere from one to 40,000 depending on a bunch of stuff.

When you delete, your server sends a Delete request to all those same servers.

However, your server can't force the other 40,000 servers to actually erase the data.

Most servers honour the request instantly, but if a server is offline, over-capacity, or malicious, that copy may stay on their hard drive, and visible online, indefinitely.

In the decentralised world of the Social Web, "Delete" is a request, not a command.

audioflyer79 Mar 9

@jaz so why do some people make a point of setting their toots to delete after some period of time?

@audioflyer79 some percent, maybe 100 percent, of those toots will be deleted.

Jérôme Mar 9

@audioflyer79 @jaz some people also do it as to save disk storage on their instance.

Josh

@jaz people also need to understand this about things like training LLMs, and search indexing. There is absolutely no way to stop someone from using your toots for those purposes, as long as they can follow you.