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fc417fc802yesterday at 4:16 PM1 replyview on HN

> We're also discussing internally how to enable revocation of content at the network level.

Isn't that a solved issue? Or rather unsolvable. With ActivityPub there's just a deletion notification that's obfuscated so that you can't identify the item unless you already have a copy of it. What else can you do?


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lorenzleutgebyesterday at 5:05 PM

Right. Radicle nodes out of the standard distribution would be kind enough to delete. On the technological level you cannot do more (also not really less, funnily enough). But it would be possible to patch the code and remove deletion.

Often times I just take the "information theory perspective": You fundamentally cannot make something "more private". Once it's out, it's out. You cannot "untell" a secret. That's just not how it works.

But then other solutions also have this problem. Once I have `git fetch`ed from GitHub, or received that e-mail containing a patch on a mailing list, I have a copy on my filesystem. It's going to be pretty darn hard to remove it from there if I don't comply. Maybe you'd have to enforce some law.

In that context, it seems that people were led to believe that "removal from the server(farm)" is the same as "removal from the universe", but that's just not true.

Happy for any insight on how to approach this differently.

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