Federated services have always had privacy issues but I expected Lemmy would have the fewest, but it’s visibly worse for privacy than even Reddit.
- Deleted comments remain on the server but hidden to non-admins, the username remains visible
- Deleted account usernames remain visible too
- Anything remains visible on federated servers!
- When you delete your account, media does not get deleted on any server
The originating instance definitely cannot be held responsible for failing to force a separate instance in another country to delete its cached copy of user data imo. I think what is more likely is that EU courts could force European Jimmy instances to only federate with GDPR-compliant instances.