I'm looking for answers from instance admins, if you're a regular user, you can still answer but it's more helpful for me to get answers directly from admins.

If a user on [instance A] asked another instance (Instance B) to remove their federated account and federated content copies from instance B (likely also banning it so content doesn't continue to flow) would the user on Instance A be in trouble with their instance admin for asking for such a thing.

Obviously it depends on the instance's rules but that's part of why I'm asking the question, to get answers from instance admins on this.

On one hand I can see how it would since, since it hurts interoperability and can create tension between instances, but on the other hand a user has the right to be in specific places or not be in those places, that probably extends to not wanting to be federated into an instance they find objectionable (assuming it is for good reasons).

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] -1 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Except that only applies to federated servers that exist in the EU. If your data gets federated out to a country outside of the EU, they don’t have to listen to your whines of GDPR as it’s not enforceable. And given that you could be federated with hundreds of instances across the world, good luck.

I said the same thing with AI scraping. All someone needs is to add their own instance that federates with everyone else and they can scrape data for AI training till their heart’s content.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

First, if you process the personal data of EU citizens or residents, or you offer goods or services to such people, then the GDPR applies to you even if you’re not in the EU. We talk more about this in another article.

https://gdpr.eu/companies-outside-of-europe/

https://gdpr.eu/what-is-gdpr/

[–] [email protected] -1 points 3 weeks ago

Cool cool, now realistically, do you have the time, resources and know how to find and contact every owner of every federated instance these comments have made to? Would you be able to deal with the legal resources of any number of jurisdictions to truly test whether that is actually enforceable?

My point basically is that it’s functionally impossible regardless of what the law says, and you should treat your comments and personal information as such that they won’t ever be able to be deleted or scrubbed.