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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[–] RideAgainstTheLizard@slrpnk.net 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Sorry I forgot to address your point - migrating people to a more technical setup would be a challenge in itself, but then informing them that deletion across servers isn't guaranteed would likely give them cold feet.

[–] davel@lemmy.ml 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

FWIW, it’s fairly rare for a deletion to not propagate. And I’ve yet to come across a rogue instance intentionally refusing to honor deletions. If we did, our instance would defederate from it.