Hexbear started during the 2020 BLM protests, where cops were using social media and internet presence to track down activists. They are still doing this, but with less vigor than when police stations were burning down.
This included things like using tattoos on naked bodies, etsy store receipts etc.
Just before the r/cth ban, there was also a problem with chasers and leering objectification, and steps were taken to reduce thirst-posting and the like.
These things combined means that people don't post selfies or direct identifying information. People post their pets and artwork, but I know I have to make a decision about where and when I post things to make things non-trivial for cops or random chuds. I feel like a unique pet name, breed, and rough region could be enough to track someone down.
Even so, I think I'm bad at it. I feel like if someone knew me and read everything on hexbear they could ID me pretty easily (and I know multiple people in person on hexbear, but we've never exchanged usernames).
Idk if there are any hard and fast rules beyond the selfies and direct ID though. I should burn this account.
Edit: removed reference to masculinity
Afaik the implementation of Lemmy this is a real problem due to federation to other instances, you can post things here that end up somewhere you don't want them to and if you delete them it's not certain if they will also be deleted there as well. It's been stated for a long time but it's one or the other really, you can't have a decentralized social media without federation, and you can't have full privacy with federation. I might very likely be wrong about the specifics of this, but this should be also taken in account when considering to post something more personal.
This is correct. Anyone can implement the activity pub specification (what Lemmy uses for federation) without implementing the delete parts. Sending delete to a federated site is nothing more than a "pretty please remove this"
Edit: to be fair, anything put publicly on the internet can be downloaded and saved forever, its just that activity pub also pushes (compared to normally where things are only stored on one entity's servers) stuff out to who knows which servers