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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[–] tofu@lemmy.nocturnal.garden 5 points 2 days ago

but usually when using social media we can operate under the assumption that the delete button works.

Not at public sites. There's several websites that mirror whole reddit where you'll find plenty of deleted posts and comments. There's Twitter archives as well that keep copies of all kinds of accounts and posts.

You may have better chances in semi-public social media like Facebook where you have to be logged in to see anything. But you really can't operate under that assumption as long as you're on public social media.