Right now, deleting a post on Lemmy only hides it locally, but doesn’t fully remove it across the fediverse. I understand the technical reasons behind this, but from a user perspective it feels incomplete.
Platforms should give users the ability to fully delete their own content, or at least send a federated deletion request to other instances. This is important for privacy, safety, and user control.
Is full deletion planned, or is there a technical limitation preventing it? I’d like to understand what’s possible and whether this feature is on the roadmap.
Any feature relying on a willing cooperation of every node in the network is impossible to enforce.
Sure, it should be attempted, but don’t expect it to actually matter against actors that just don’t give a fuck.
You’re right that no federated system can force every server to delete something. But meaningful deletion doesn’t require 100% enforcement.
Lemmy already has admin‑level purge tools that send federated delete requests, and most servers respect them. A user‑level version of that, or a proper “deleted” ActivityPub signal, would give people far more control than the current soft‑delete model.
Even if a few rogue servers ignore it, the majority of the fediverse would still clear the content, which is a huge improvement over “deleted by creator” placeholders.
Federation doesn’t have to mean no deletion — it just means deletion has to be cooperative instead of enforced.
A user‑level version of that, or a proper “deleted” ActivityPub signal, would give people far more control than the current soft‑delete model.
This quite literally already exists.
When you delete posts, comments or PMs, the ActivityPub message is a deletion. How other servers handle this depends on the software, some immediately delete the data, others will retain it for some time and trigger a delayed deletion. Others may not delete it at all. Likewise, if you delete your profile in Lemmy, you have the option to select whether your content should get deleted along with it.
With Lemmy, some of these actions are not always instantly deleting data from the database. For example, if you delete a post or comment, you still have the option to undelete it to restore the original content. From a moderation perspective, it is crucial to not purge everything from the DB without a trace immediately, as this would easily allow abuse by bad actors.
The solution: A three‑layer deletion model This is the only model that satisfies both Lemmy’s architecture and user expectations.
Layer 1 — Local hard deletion (guaranteed) When a user deletes a post/comment:
the content is wiped from their home server
the object can remain as a placeholder to preserve thread structure
media files are fully removed
This part is already possible.
Layer 2 — Federated delete signal (best‑effort) When deletion happens, the home server sends a message:
“This content is deleted — purge your copy.”
Servers that respect federation will:
delete their cached copy
update the thread
remove the content from search
Servers that don’t care will ignore it — but that’s already true today.
This is the missing piece Lemmy needs to implement.
Layer 3 — User‑initiated purge request (optional escalation) Admins already have a purge tool that:
deletes content locally
sends a federated purge request
is accepted by most servers
Expose this to users in a controlled way:
rate‑limited
confirmation required
optional admin approval
This gives users real deletion power without enabling abuse.
You say you understand the technical limitations, then immediately ask if there are technical limitations in the next paragraph? And then this comment is clearly written by an LLM. Maybe if you tried to use your brain you’d have better luck.
I’m trying to understand the current behavior as clearly as possible, which is why I asked for clarification. The replies from others in the thread have helped fill in the gaps about how deletion works across different servers.
My goal isn’t to argue about federation limits — it’s to understand whether the user‑side deletion experience can be improved, even if perfect deletion across all nodes isn’t possible. That’s the part I’m trying to explore here.
