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?

  • hardypart@feddit.deEnglish
    0·
    1 year ago

    edit: In the end, though, of course this is my opinion. IANAL.

    Same here. I’m not sure if I’m right, but neither should anyone else here be sure about this topic.

    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.

    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.

    • cwagner@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
      0·
      1 year ago

      What if the product is designed in a way that violates the GDPR?

      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).

      • hardypart@feddit.deEnglish
        0·
        1 year ago

        Which I completely disagree with.

        I never said that Lemmy is designed in that way, I just say that we can’t be sure.

        If this violates, then every tweeting software, every reddit third-party app would also be “designed to violate”,

        Where and how do Twitter or Reddit third party apps store personal data?

        • cwagner@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
          0·
          1 year ago

          Lemmy also only stores it on your instance. Both then allow you to post whatever you want to post to other servers.

          • hardypart@feddit.deEnglish
            1·
            1 year ago

            Lemmy also only stores it on your instance.

            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.