I like sharing my thoughts and struggles here, but I don’t want it to be a permanent digital footprint and wish to delete all the posts and comments one day.
You can rotate throwaway accounts and/or use barcodes as a username
Aka. a combination of upper case i and lowwer case L
Aka
IlIIIllIlIlllI
Yes, but other instances or applications don’t have to honour your deletion requests. And internet archives exist to record every change to every website in the universe.
So you should always live under the assumption that everything you publicly say will be available for all eternity.
Nutomic, one of the original developers of Lemmy explains here that overwriting your post and deleting your account will remove the content permanently. Deleting a post individually will however leave its content in the database of the instance, for recovery purpose:
However, If I recall correctly, I think that when creating a post if you upload an image then it is immediately put into the database whether or not the post is actually made. As a result I don’t think there is a way to overwrite these, so some trace would still remain in such an instance if I am not mistaken.
Furthermore none of this prevents or rectifies snapshots or backups of data being created by pretty much any entity - I know that’s probably not in the scope of the question, but just something tangentially related to keep in mind.
You can delete uploaded media since v.19 iirc.
There’s a media tab in your profile on supported clients where you can see and remove uploaded media files.
Missed that update, that’s great to know. Thanks!
The best advice I got was to periodically delete your current account and create a new one. Then remove any association you have with the old account: history, password managers, etc. Yes, that accounts comments may live on for ever in some archive, but removing your association with it goes a long way towards plausible deniability. If your super paranoid only access Lemmy through tor going forward.
This is my approach. A new account once a year.
You will stay here, and you will like it!
No, you cannot meaningfully delete your posts or comments, but that’s not because of any issue with lemmy, but because you posted them publically. They will be archived and indexed in other services.
It is always best to remember that all your activity here is public, and will be linked to your username. Given that, you may wish to minimise any personally identifying information you post, and use several accounts to split up your activities by topic.
I’ve done it several times, when online debates pissed me off.
You react to heated debates by deleting your account? Several times?
No I just get sick of bullshit on the internet and delete my accounts. Also sometimes people on the internet aren’t really debating they’re just yelling their opinions at you. So yes sometimes I get sick of this fucking shit and just want to touch grass. This is especially true of some ML people sometimes.
Right, right. I get that, sure.
I guess the surprising bit isn’t the getting sick of bullshit, or wanting to touch grass. It’s the feeling of needing to delete your accounts in order to accomplish taking a break. I feel like when I get sick of someone I just block them and put my phone down.
If I deleted my account every time I had a discussion with a moron I feel like the morons would “win” by bullying me off the platform.
I guess? Sometimes I just want my digital footprint to be cleared as well. We don’t live in the safest time for free speech.
Understandable. 👍🥲
I mean, it’s not like we know who you are IRL, what exactly is the problem? Also, why can’t it comfortably be a permanent digital footprint? Have you been posting things that reasonable people would side eye you for?
