From Lemmy documentation:
We don’t delete anything from our database, just hide it from users. Deleted or removed Communities/Posts/Comments have a “restore” button.
But don’t take my word for it. Try it out yourself. You can make a comment, delete the comment (your username appears to remain) and then restore its content.
Not from a privacy perspective, that’s for sure. There are already a couple privacy downsides in federated services in general, but the decision to intentionally retain user data after deletion is requested… If that’s the case, Reddit may offer more privacy
Reddit is even worse. When you delete your comment, it’s not really deleted and still visible to the mods of the sub
That is not true.
When you delete your account, there’s an option to purge all your data.
Reddit retains deleted user data, including after account deletion, and they absolutely sell it.
I dislike the retention of deleted data here, but it looks like account deletion at least is total, so it’s better than what reddit does.