So, I’m kinda new to this Lemmy thingy and the fediverse. I like the fediverse from a technological standpoint. However, I think that, if we gain more and more traction, Lemmy (and by extend the entire fediverse) is a GDPR clusterfuck waiting to happen. With big and expensive repercussions…
Why? Well, according to GDPR, all personal data from EU users must remain in the EU. And personal data goes really far. Even an IP-address is personal data. An e-mail address is personal data. I don’t think there is jurisprudence regarding usernames, so that might be up for discussion.
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. Resulting in a giant GDPR breach. And I have no idea who will be held responsible… The people hosting an instance? The developers of Lemmy? The developers of ActivityPub?
Large corporations are getting hefty fines for GDPR breaches. And since Lemmy is growing, Lemmy might be “in the spotlights” in the upcoming years.
I don’t like GDPR, and I’m all for the technological setup of the fediverse. However, I definitely can see a “competitor” (that is currently very large but loosing ground quickly) having a clear eye out to eliminate the competition…
What do y’all thing about this?
That's the interesting point. Do I really have to do that or should I be able to rely on my instance owner that's located in the EU to take care of that? I'm pretty sure none of us can answer this question. Decentralized services like the Fediverse are probably a new challange for GDPR experts.
I'm not supposing to have any answers either, but from a personal standpoint it seems rather selfish to even entertain the idea of making an instance owner do that. It's not like these people are getting paid for a service (aside from donations, in some cases); they're hosting in the spirit of the fediverse. Why would I pawn legal work off to them?
You and I are not. But if a certain giant site that is currently making not the... euh... best decisions goes in to action with a large legal team...
True... But if it should come to that, I think that people will pull the plug with a 20 million euro fine above their heads... 20 million seams to be the number that works, if you see the reaction of Christian from Apollo...
I think you truly underestimate the GDPR, which is fine, because you don't run a huge Lemmy instance. I just hope the admins of the big instances are taking it more seriously, otherwise this could indeed blow up in their faces one day.
You guys sound so confident, it's not even funny. GDPR is a huge topic and everyone who already had to deal with it even marginally knows that OP's fear is absolutely plausible. The GDPR doesn't give a shit about causing major inconviences or huge workload for platform admins. Ever heard about the GDPR nightmare letter?
Same here. I'm not sure if I'm right, but neither should anyone else here be sure about this topic.
What if the product is designed in a way that violates the GDPR? Again, I'm not sure about that, just like OP. We will see how things will turn out... But as an admin of a large instance I'd be carful for sure.
I never said that Lemmy is designed in that way, I just say that we can't be sure.
Where and how do Twitter or Reddit third party apps store personal data?
That's wrong. When a feddit.de user subscribes to a community on lemmy.world, all the data from the community is going to be replicated to the feddit.de server.
Personal and public is not mutually exclusive. My public posts are still my personal data.
According to the very first paragraph I would say my posts and comments are indeed personal data:
"by reference to an identifier such as [...] an online identifier"
My username is my online identifier here on Lemmy, isn't it?
They don't. They tell the Lemmy server to do so, just like your browser does. It's just a different interface.
My comment with my username above it. My comment is my personal data and I can be identified by my username, bam, personal data that is affected by the GDPR.
I'm by no means a GDPR pro, that's just how I understand all of this.
GDPR Definitions:
"Any information" includes texts I wrote as comment, the timestamp when I posted it and the titles of my posts.
"by reference to an identifier such as [...] an online identifier" includes my username.
How is this not personal data?
OK, you're right, it seems like a username is indeed not enough to be considered as an "online identifier". Maybe Lemmy comments are not personal data per se after all.