What does it mean to have a social network where you can't delete anything?

I don't think we have quite grasped the implications yet

crypto social on Solana @tribedotrun | @aburra $FARTS

Is FC practically any different from X in this regard? 

In both, you can delete your content from the network, but people can preserve your content against your will be screenshotting or using APIs to download.

Technowatermelon. Elder Millenial. Building Farcaster. 

nf.td/varun

It's materially different. It's extremely hard, if not impossible for a third-party to archive everything from Twitter. 

But for FC it's so easy (by design) to have the full global state - I just need to run a hub (and make sure I don't delete anything)

Google also has indexes of all your old tweets

This. Web2 has a good illusion of privacy (as opposed to having actual privacy) while fc has a clear distinction of what's private and what's public.

Blockchain data analyst. Interested in data science and blockchain.

Analysis-
https://www.hypersub.xyz/s/yesyes-analytics-qr0v8onrvev4,
https://dune.com/yesyes

I'd expect future FC clients to collect similar amount of data as Instagram or Tiktok

Technically all the data that they don't collect on a protocol level that the other social apps collect( because you can make your own client if you want). Look at Instagram's privacy policy and see how vague it is about what data is collected. Everyone knows that these companies collect a shit ton of app usage data.