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 1 week 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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[–] arotrios@lemmy.world 3 points 1 week ago

It's not really a fatal flaw as other users have pointed out.

The ATP protocol could be improved by including a published "delete" request for the content ID of an item, so that the receiving instance would get notification that the item had been removed. This could then be automated to push a delete action on the receiving instance, or manually removed by the receiving instance admin.

Regardless, however, you'd have to trust that the "delete" tag was being respected by your federating instances.

However, one interesting element is that editing your content is actually more effective in the Fediverse than deleting it, as it will overwrite the content on remote servers when they re-query your instance. You're still relying on that remote action before the old content changes, but at least it doesn't just stay up while the content is deleted on your site.