I noticed when you delete a post or comment on Lemmy it still shows up on my account with the option to “undelete” it which fully restores it and makes it public again.
Does this mean you can’t fully delete them and basically only “hide” them from the community but they will still stay on the server forever? Or is there any option to fully delete them or will that happen after some time?
That’s not the point I was making. If you’re an instance owner then yes you should abide by the laws, but most are individuals, and I’ll say I had to learn a lot hosting my own. I try to be in full compliance, but I say try because you’re asking one guy who knows how to run a server legal questions. If someone asked me to delete it I would, but you’re dealing with thousands of server owners. I wouldn’t bet that everyone will follow your request.
As for laws, well, no also. Say a 3 letter agency in the US sets up a server listening to you. They’re not in the EU at all. You send a gdpr takedown request. The listening server can legally ignore this. You sent them data, it’s outside of the jurisdiction of the gdpr, they don’t host anything. So no. I get your sentiment, but you’re quite literally blasting comments out to everyone who will listen, this is not a private space, this is as open as it gets.
You have a very “this is the way it should work” thought process, but I’m here telling you that’s in theory only. In practice anyone will be listening to anything, and you should not treat Lemmy or the fediverse as private. If you want private, use matrix.