Comment by wavemode
12 hours ago
Soft deletion and privacy deletion serve different purposes.
If you leave a comment on a forum, and then delete it, it may be marked as soft-deleted so that it doesn't appear publicly in the thread anymore, but admins can still read what you wrote for moderation/auditing purposes.
On the other hand, if you send a privacy deletion request to the forum, they would be required to actually fully delete or anonymize your data, so even admins can no longer tie comments that you wrote back to you.
Most social media sites probably have to implement both of these processes/systems.
Imo there should be some retention period for moderation but then hard deletion after that. Why would a moderator need to look up a deleted post a year after it was deleted?
"Hi SchemaLoad, I'm Officer John from the Department of Not Letting Children Be Abused. I'm following up on something one of your users posted three years ago. Can you tell me the IP address(es) associated with the following deleted posts: A B C D"
You'd be required to show what you have but you aren't required to store everything forever just in case someone years later asks for it. Would be like showing up to fingerprint the scene 3 years after and being surprised it's too late.
“Hi Officer John, that data is deleted and is no longer possible to access.”
Unless there’s a regulatory requirement (which there currently isn’t in any jurisdiction I’ve heard of), that’s a perfectly acceptable response.
Think of the children! We can't have privacy because children might be abused if we have privacy!