Under current GDPR laws, including quoted text in user activity downloads could be an issue for some people. Particularly if that quoted text contains PIA of another individual.
Other people’s PIA could be (and is likely) included in quoted text, especially since quote tags reference the original poster. Quoted text could also be taken from private forums where users had an expectation of some privacy of what they posted.
I don’t think something like the option to scrub quoted text from such downloads is possible currently, but I’d like to suggest it in case somebody has the ability and interest in creating it. Personally, I’d like to see this in core, but I understand not all will all feel this is critical.
Or is it an issue of preserving the additional computing power necessary to do so? Even so, what about the option (at a storage expense, obviously) to add a scrubbed column to the already existing raw and cooked columns? If data existed in the scrubbed column for a particular post, that’s what would be downloaded when the “Don’t include quoted text” in user archive download requests" option is enabled and if not, then the normal version would be called.
And of course, in pruning quoted text, context of the post would be lost, but somebody who is exclusively downloading only their own posts in the first place is already aware that context is going to be lost.
I maintain that users losing context within their own archived posts is less of a priority than making it easy to store records that likely include PIA of other individuals.