Once you publish something publicly it’s not your data anymore… it’s our data, it’s everyone’s data. For better or worse you only truly control what you don’t post and have limited control to where you post it initially.

It is literally impossible to guarantee your data is truly gone because it may have been already replicated over by hundreds or thousands of independent network participants. Either a direct copy or a screenshot or whatever.

We just don’t have the authority to go on people hard drives and delete specific bits because the Internet is decentralized. This is not an UX problem specific to businesses or that Nostr must solve. People spends thousands paying lawyers to get stuff removed from the Internet, most go with little luck.

If this was something that was truly a problem people wouldn’t be using email today and we know that’s not the case.

I brought the government into the conversation because that’s the only entity that attempts to make the impossible somewhat possible for some by threatening with fines and jail time. They can do this because most social interactions in the past have happened on centralized systems like Facebook or Twitter (now X). And even with them there are no guarantees, you have to trust their word that they deleted your data.