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this post was submitted on 19 Jun 2023
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Technology
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I understand the impulse but the way some people get so hung up on trying to make a way to permanently and universally delete posts made on public facing social media and framing it as a "privacy" issue feels kinda like saying something you regret on mic at a town hall and being mad that you can't permanently delete the memory of it from the minds of everyone present, and claiming that they violated your privacy by remembering it
it's an interesting idea, but it doesn't vibe with the reality of the laws in the EU which has "right to be forgotten" rules
The "right to be forgotten" rules are, with all due respect to the EU regulators, pretty shortsighted.
I think the initial "right to be forgotten" lawsuit that Google faced from that Spanish guy-- where he claimed bankruptcy years prior. People( potential lenders?) kept finding that information online through google searches. He sued to have Google remove those sites from the index. He won and the Spanish Judge told Google they had to remove those results from searches.
But it didn't change that the information was still on each site. Those sites, the ones that actually held the information didn't get sued, just Google.
It also opened the door for oppressive governments covering up human rights abuses or hide other information they dont want widely available.
Google appealed and won: https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-49808208
I also want to point out that this Spanish guy's situation is very different from "posting publicly on social media". He was getting written about by others and the courts eventually said "no, this can stand. This information should remain available". So I imagine, public statements made by an individual certainly wouldn't qualify to be forgotten.
At the end of the day, to me, this is a technical decision not a privacy one.
GDPR applies to companies operating in the EU, not every single entity on the internet. Posts on random forums are not subject to these laws, so I don't think Lemmy would count.
Now if a Lemmy operator began using user personal data for profit, then GDPR would apply. At the moment, I don't think that's happening anywhere in the fediverse.
It applies to every single public entity on the internet that holds data of EU citizens. No matter which country they're located in.
AFAIK, this world-wide nature of the GDPR is pretty unique and quite contentious.
The GDPR includes exceptions for private purposes but hosting a lemmy instance with public signups is most certainly not intended to be of private nature, so the GDPR does apply.
I can't comment on whether that means the right to be forgotten needs to be exercised by federated instances, I just want to set the record straight here.
The EU may claim GDPR applies to all data of EU citizens no matter where in the world it is stored, but if the entity storing that data does zero business in the EU, there isn't much that can be done to enforce that law. Its the same as US law firms thinking their DMCA claims apply in other countries, etc.
Federated Lemmy instances operating in non-EU nations with no business/holdings/etc in the EU, are under zero obligation to recognise GDPR requirements unless otherwise required somehow to do so by their own national law (say a treaty agreement or the like).
The EU can no more demand or enforce global adherence to their data laws than the US can.
They can just block access to the site, no?
Sure, but a VPN solves that handily. It's not really a big deal.
I think this is a great point. I would say its much less of a privacy issue and more of a technical issue.
I think deletions should propagate across all instances and there should be a level of trust between federated servers that they will make those deletions as requested. If only because we'd have a mismatch and orphan comments lingering in perpetuity and we could end up with wildly inconsistent data across the fediverse.
That's a strawman. No one demands mind-altering powers. Records to be deleted: that's another story.
Being able to delete tweets doesn't stop people from screengrabbing them. It's still good that the option exists.