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.
Thanks for the detailed explanation — this helps clarify a lot. I understand that federation makes guaranteed deletion impossible, but knowing that admins can purge content and send out a federated delete request is exactly the kind of mechanism I was hoping existed.
From a user perspective, having some version of that available — even if it can’t guarantee 100% deletion everywhere — would still be meaningful. A user‑initiated delete request that other servers can respect would give people more control over their own content without undermining federation.
Editing before deleting is a good workaround, but it still feels like something that could eventually be built into the platform in a more direct way. I appreciate the insight; it’s good to know this isn’t a dead end technically.