this post was submitted on 25 Feb 2026
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Lemmy.world Support

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Lemmy needs real deletion, not just soft‑delete/hiding (lemmy.world)
submitted 14 hours ago by Coleman@lemmy.world to c/support@lemmy.world
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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.

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[–] Bazell@lemmy.zip 1 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

There is no technical limitation to this. Only a software limitation. More specifically, as I suggest, the communications protocols and their interpretations on different platforms across the Fediverse. I suppose, that since this feature was not properly implemented from the start, right now its implementation is far more complicated due to large amount of existing content and separated servers. Thus, implementing such update requires a lot of willpower, free time, skills and coordination across the Fediverse to avoid data loss. This is my opinion and it may be incorrect since I do not participate in development of the Fediverse.

[–] Coleman@lemmy.world 1 points 13 hours ago

Thanks for the explanation — that actually helps me understand the situation a lot better. I get that federation makes things more complicated, especially when content is already spread across multiple servers.

From a user perspective though, it still feels important to have a way to fully delete posts, or at least send a federated delete request that other instances can respect. Even if it can’t guarantee 100% removal everywhere, having a proper deletion mechanism would give users more control over their own content.

I’m glad to hear it’s not technically impossible. Hopefully it’s something that can be explored in the future, even if it takes coordination across the Fediverse.