• idfk

our collective name is Ariane. Ariane Vee.


lorekeeper-zinnia
@lorekeeper-zinnia

I'm curious now, though. So here on Cohost you can't delete your account (yet) so what exactly goes into the code side of deleting an account. What happens on other websites when I click that "delete account" button? I always figured it just be pretty simple but if it was as simple as I thought it was, I have to imagine it would already be implemented here. So how does account deletion work from a technical stand point? In small words please I am not smart.


You must log in to comment.

in reply to @lorekeeper-zinnia's post:

If you're not careful with how you remove data associated with an account, other people's data that references your own (like shares and comments) could be left in a weird state, potentially breaking some part of the website when someone tries to access that data by opening a post or whatever. If you try to hide the data instead, you have to deal with what that even means and also never mess up and accidentally show it. If you have other interconnected systems like idk, billing, you need to track that account and also delete it over there. And if you forget about one of those systems, it can create a mess like with the comments - references to non-existent data and errors if something tries to look it up.

As for cohost, I'm pretty sure they can delete accounts with the click of a button in their internal moderation tools. I think implementing it on the public side is super low priority, deleting accounts is bad for business so they make you email support.

It depends a lot on the backend. Databases tend to be "relational"- that is, each table (the thing that holds data) in a database is related to other tables in some way. For example, my comment on your account is probably in its own table, related to my account, your post, and your account.

Data protection laws (like GDPR, though this may not specifically cover it) means that companies that operate in the UK have to provide the data they have on you, and typically this also means the ability to truly delete your account. The mechanism to do so is probably much more technical than I can speculate on, but it probably involves stripping any identifying data from your account, and giving it dummy data/a set up "deleted account" data so that the account doesn't mess up the relations it has in a database, but is still compliant with data protection laws.

That's my speculation anyway.

Pinned Tags