this post was submitted on 13 Apr 2025
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Serious Question - Is the ActivityPub deletion problem a fatal flaw? (slrpnk.net)
submitted 2 days ago by RideAgainstTheLizard@slrpnk.net to c/fediverse@lemmy.ml
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I've been using federated social media for a while now and I recently considered setting up an instance for my local community as a sort of Facebook alternative. However, as I thought about it, I wondered if ActivityPub's deletion problem (i.e. if a user deletes their content on their server it doesn't guarantee the content being deleted on other servers) is a fatal flaw. I worry that it would be difficult to secure buy-in from people if they were made aware of this issue, which they have the right to. It does make me wonder if the ATProtocol will be the better protocol if and when it becomes open source.

I'm curious as to other drivers users' thoughts. While it is an issue that we may be happy to live with given the numerous other benefits ActivityPub provides, is it a flaw that will ultimately prevent wide scale adoption?

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[โ€“] RideAgainstTheLizard@slrpnk.net 2 points 2 days ago (1 children)

That's fair. Say you were setting up a server and you planned to migrate users to it, and it was going to be their first experience of the fediverse, do you think this is something you'd feel obligated to tell them about?

[โ€“] tofu@lemmy.nocturnal.garden 3 points 2 days ago

Obligated? It depends on the users a bit (since you say migrating, I guess I already know them?).

But generally a reminder won't hurt. Not everyone gets educated on digital spaces and also we tend to forget which consequences our posts might have.

You mentioned young people as an example who should be able to fuck up without it being held against them too long and I agree. I think public social media might not be the best place for that in general, and certainly not with names that can easily be mapped to their offline id.