"don't like GDPR"? What's not to like? Best thing that came out of EU regulation in a long time. And as others have noted you seem to be misinformed about what it actually says...
this post was submitted on 21 Jun 2023
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I also can't wrap my head around “not liking” GDPR
As a relevant example, seems like only citizens covered by GDPR will be able to request Reddit to remove all of their data from Reddit's servers since comment deleting tools and scripts are being bypassed, with loads of comments and even entire profiles getting restored by Reddit admins
Can you explain where I'm misinformed? I can surely be misinformed about the workings of Lemmy. However, for GDPR you will not "win" it with a simple TOS or something like that.
If even Google can't make their Workplace to follow rules in such a way that Workplace can be used according to the AVG rules in the Belgian (well, Flemish) schools, I'm pretty sure that just saying "it's in the TOS" is not enough...
But again, no expert so I hope that I am wrong.
I'm not an expert in GDPR and will leave the technical side to those who are, but the fact that the EU actively present at the Fediverse with among others the @EU_Commission represented at their official Mastodon instance, I would be surprised if the GDPR was suddenly weaponised against it.
GDPR was written with the intention of empowering users over corporations. The Fediverse has the same goal.
Wholesomely and fully agree... Just hope that Lemmy doesn't get sued over it...
all personal data from EU users must remain in the EU
Create your account on a EU server, problem solved.
Lemmy (fediverse in general) doesn't send account data away, and posts don't qualify as personal data, when you publish something to the internet, it's public by definition.
I'm not sure this is true. Like imagine someone posts their address in a Lemmy post - I'm pretty sure that counts as PII and they have the right to request its deletion.
HackerNews doesn't do this though.
GDPR Art 4.(1) 'personal data' means any information relating to an identified or identifiable natural person ('data subject'); an identifiable natural person is one who can be identified, directly or indirectly, in particular by reference to an identifier such as a name, an identification number, location data, an online identifier or to one or more factors specific to the physical, physiological, genetic, mental, economic, cultural or social identity of that natural person;
Posts in Lemmy do qualify as personal data because posts contain the ideas and opinions of an identifiable natural person (by their user handle). Therefore the Lemmy instances are handling personal data and must comply with the GDPR.
Ideas and opinions are NOT identifiable information, unless you're so smart to as openly writing your personal data on a public forum (something noone should ever do, it's even bannable on reddit), your comments and posts do NOT contain and personally identifiable info, only your account does.
Personal data is not identifiable information. Personal data is information about an identifiable person. The identifiable information is your username (“online identifier”)
There is no way someone can link your username to who you are in person, unless it's you who write it out.
Laws don't protect people from themselves.
An individual’s social media ‘handle’ or username, which may seem anonymous or nonsensical, is still sufficient to identify them as it uniquely identifies that individual
And personal data goes really far. Even an IP-address is personal data. An e-mail address is personal data.
Thankfully, Lemmy instances do not transport this kind of information about their users to other instances!
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IMO it's pretty much the same case as email. With email you send data to some remote server which may or may not reside in the EU.
I'm not really sure what argument you can make that fediverse apps but not email break gdpr.
Or even something as simple as putting your email on a public website that may be visited by someone in the US.
Since the entire goal of the fediverse is “transporting” all data to all servers inside the ActivityPub/fediverse world, the data of a EU member will be transported all over the place.
It doesn't work like that, think of your instance being a proxy to the fediverse
Is it? I read somewhere that data effectively gets "copied" to the different instances? But that might be wrong info :p
You're right. If someone from feddit.de subscribes to a lemmy.world community, the entire content of that community is going to be copied to the feddit.de server and that's the exact issue OP is referring to.
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Neil Brown did quite a good write-up on the legal standing of the Fediverse late last year: https://decoded.legal/blog/2022/11/notes-on-operating-fediverse-services-mastodon-pleroma-etc-from-an-english-law-point-of-view
There's a section part way down about GDPR, but the answer is "it depends"
Thanks! The info actually makes sense. Also, do note that every EU country has their own specific implementation of the GDPR law with very small differences. So this is written according to the UK implementation, but the BE implementation might be just a bit different.
All complicated stuff...
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