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…
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, other this could indeed blow up in their faces one day.
I once again say you are using a software to post your data elsewhere, to a place your instance operator has no control whatsoever over. Now, can the software support you? Sure, but I in the end it’s not their responsibility.
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?
The people who wrote it also sound overly confident.
In the end, GDPR enforcement (afaik done by DPAs, not some competitor) is interested in privacy, not suing people. The first step is contacting the entity in question.
So, like me? Who coded our complete GDPR compliance at work, and was in a call with our local DPA regarding issues they had with our compliance?
edit: In the end, though, of course this is my opinion. IANAL. But I also know that essentially all serious issues with GDPR are because of companies wanting to violate your privacy, not because a user is using a product as intended.
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.
Which I completely disagree with. If this violates, then every tweeting software, every reddit third-party app would also be “designed to violate”, it’s just slightly more obvious what they do which is why I mentioned the ToS thing (that should have said privacy policy).
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?
Lemmy also only stores it on your instance. Both then allow you to post whatever you want to post to other servers.
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.