this post was submitted on 21 Jun 2023
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Lemmy

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Everything about Lemmy; bugs, gripes, praises, and advocacy.

For discussion about the lemmy.ml instance, go to !meta@lemmy.ml.

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Lemmy (and the fediverse) and GDPR: a clusterfuck waiting to happen? (lemmy.ml)
submitted 1 year ago by infamousbelgian@lemmy.ml to c/lemmy@lemmy.ml
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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?

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[–] randomaccount43543@lemmy.world 0 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

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;

Every post and comment in Lemmy qualifies as personal data because they 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.

[–] ulu_mulu@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Ideas and opinions are NOT identifiable information, unless you're so smart 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.

[–] randomaccount43543@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Personal data is not identifiable information. Personal data is information about an identifiable person. The identifiable information is your username (“online identifier”)

[–] ulu_mulu@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.