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 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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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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[–] [email protected] -3 points 2 months ago (6 children)

Update: So far many of the responses point out that if you post anywhere on the internet you are prone to this issue, i.e. even if you delete something someone may have copied it etc.

I do believe this is different. Yes, we are always at risk from malicious actors, but usually when using social media we can operate under the assumption that the delete button works. That is not the case for ActivityPub. Even without bad actors, your content may not be deleted. I think it's safe to say that this is an unappealing issue for most potential users.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (4 children)

I think it’s safe to say that this is an unappealing issue for most potential users.

I don’t actually think it’s safe to say that. I suspect that most people wouldn’t be very concerned about ActivityPub’s “best effort” federated deletion. But without actually polling people, I don’t think that either of these theories holds enough water to call “safe to say.”

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago

I'd hazard a guess that ActivityPub users are a small portion of the population, especially considering the people I'm thinking of setting a server up for are Facebook users in a medium sized town - mostly people over the age of 40 who only started using social media in the past ten years.

It's no secret that onboarding is a barrier to entry for Mastodon for example, and even then most people likely haven't even heard of it. I am the only person on any of my social circles who is aware of it.

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