The GPDR doesn’t require Lemmy to remove personal data from the entire internet. But when a Lemmy instance gives data to other Lemmy instance, there are legal responsibilities.

https://gdpr-info.eu/art-17-gdpr/ Where the controller has made the personal data public and is obliged pursuant to paragraph 1 to erase the personal data, the controller, taking account of available technology and the cost of implementation, shall take reasonable steps, including technical measures, to inform controllers which are processing the personal data that the data subject has requested the erasure by such controllers of any links to, or copy or replication of, those personal data.

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Maybe this is open to interpretation, but I feel that the same Federation protocol that federates out my personal data (my posts and comments), should also federate out my delete requests. I’m unsure why this would be controversial.

Archive.org (wayback machine) has a request page for removal. I don’t have any knowledge of how they do it.

https://help.archive.org/help/how-do-i-request-to-remove-something-from-archive-org/

I checked Mastodon briefly. It appears they are currently not in compliance. There are open issues on GitHub, but nothing looks close.

The CCPA (USA version) and GDPR (EU) both specify Personal Data, not Personally Identifiable Information. So the contents of my posts are my personal data, even if my username doesn’t identify to a real person. If I want my personal data removed from Lemmy, the GDPR allows for me to request it to be deleted.

Lemmy is still in the early stages. I’m not asking for changes to be made right away, or even this year. But I do feel that my personal data should be under my control. Lemmy should be programmed to federate out the the deletion of all my personal data, if I make such a request.

Where the controller has made the personal data public and is obliged pursuant to paragraph 1 to erase the personal data, the controller, taking account of available technology and the cost of implementation, shall take reasonable steps, including technical measures, to inform controllers which are processing the personal data that the data subject has requested the erasure by such controllers of any links to, or copy or replication of, those personal data

(*) Note the CCPA has a ton of exceptions, and only really applies to the larger social media sites.

Wouldn’t it be easier to fix the delete federation bug so Lemmy could comply with GDPR ?

The law specifically names “online identifier”.

The data subjects are identifiable if they can be directly or indirectly identified, especially by reference to an identifier such as a name, an identification number, location data, an online identifier or one of several special characteristics, which expresses the physical, physiological, genetic, mental, commercial, cultural or social identity of these natural persons. In practice, these also include all data which are or can be assigned to a person in any kind of way. For example, the telephone, credit card or personnel number of a person, account data, number plate, appearance, customer number or address are all personal data.

https://gdpr-info.eu/issues/personal-data/

Just say, we don’t provide or target EU individuals and you’re free.

Don’t allow users from the EU to sign up? Is that your plan?

See https://gdpr-info.eu/issues/right-to-be-forgotten/

Once the “controller has made the personal data public”, they have legal obligations. Gmail doesn’t make my data public, generally.

See https://gdpr-info.eu/issues/right-to-be-forgotten/

Once the “controller has made the personal data public”, they have legal obligations. When you send an email, you are not making it public.

See https://gdpr-info.eu/issues/right-to-be-forgotten/

Once the “controller has made the personal data public”, they have legal obligations.

Unfortunately, as one of those 3.8k daily users, I’m still using Reddit mostly. Lemmy has a long way to go before I drop Reddit all the way.