Given a URL to an image on my lemmy instance, how can I (as an admin) permanently delete the image (and all cache/variants of the image)?
I operate a lemmy instance server. One of our users just submitted a GDPR Data Erasure request for an image. The image is orphaned, so it is not tied to any post or comment. We have a URL to the image only.
Images in lemmy are handled by the pict-rs service, which is itself distinct from lemmy. As stated in the lemmy documentation, there is a way to purge posts and comments, but there appears to be no way to purge a given image in lemmy through the WUI or lemmy API.
How can I entirely purge the image from my lemmy instance, given only the URL to the image?
This is a big problem. At the time of writing:
How to purge images in Lemmy
pict-rs is a third-party simple image hosting service that runs along-side Lemmy for instances that allow users to upload media.
At the time of writing, there is no WUI for admins to find and delete images. You have to manually query the pict-rs database and execute an API call from the command-line. Worse: Lemmy has no documentation telling instance admins how to delete images 🤦
For the purposes of this example, let's assume you're trying to delete the following image
There are two API endpoints in pict-rs that can be used to delete an image
Method One: /image/delete/{delete_token}/{alias}
This API call is publicly-accessible, but it first requires you to obtain the image's `
delete_token
`The `
delete_token
` is first returned by Lemmy when POSTing to the `/pictrs/image
` endpointTwo pieces of information are returned here:
Of course, if you didn't capture this image's `
delete_token
` at upload-time, then you must fetch it from the postgres DB.First, open a shell on your running postgres container. If you installed Lemmy with docker compose, use `
docker compose ps
` to get the "SERVICE" name of your postgres host, and then enter it with `docker exec
`For example:
Connect to the database as the `
lemmy
` userFor example
Query for the image by the "alias" (the filename)
For example
Now, take the `
pictrs_delete_token
` from the above output, and use it to delete the image.The following command should be able to be run on any computer connected to the internet.
For example:
The image should be deleted.
Method Two: /internal/purge?alias={alias}
Alternatively, you could execute the deletion directly inside the pictrs container. This eliminates the need to fetch the `
delete_token
`.First, open a shell on your running `
pictrs
` container. If you installed Lemmy with docker compose, use `docker compose ps
` to get the "SERVICE" name of your postgres host, and then enter it with `docker exec
`For example:
Execute the following command inside the `
pictrs
` container.For example:
The image should be deleted
Further Reading
Unfortunately, it seems that the Lemmy develoeprs are not taking these moral and legal (GDPR) risks seriously (they said it may take years before they address them), and they threatened to ban me for trying to highlight the severity of this risk, get them to tag GDPR-related bugs, and to prioritize them.
If GDPR-compliance is important to you on the fediverse, then please provide feedback to the Lemmy developers in the GitHub links above.
Attribution
This comment was copied from the following article: Nightmare on Lemmy Street (A Fediverse GDPR Horror Story)