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
This is how I treated Reddit too. And Twitter. And everything else. I have two modes; public and private. And private is private; strong encryption and local storage. Having some middle ground is a recipe for disaster.