@sneak @kick one observation is that a conformant AP server is actually not required to care about deletes at all. the specification states that you *should* delete any local copy of the data, but does not say that you *must*.
and so even a Pleroma configured to drop delete activities is still conformant, even though that is clearly not the intended behavior in the spec.
and political compromises like this are why activitypub is a nightmare.
it is a compromise because the W3C could not decide whether or not to mandate a conformant implementation respect deletes.
note I say conformant here which is different than compatible. conformance is used in many specifications along with trademark licensing to ensure that implementations do not do naughty things.
"security considerations are non-normative" is another compromise in the AP spec that has basically set the protocol up for fragmentation and regulatory capture by mastodon and pleroma. and that's where we are today, isn't it?