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?

  • @[email protected]English
    -1•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.

      • @[email protected]English
        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?

          • @[email protected]English
            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.

              • @[email protected]English
                -1•1 year ago

                Personal and public is not mutually exclusive. My public posts are still my personal data.

                  • @[email protected]English
                    0•1 year ago

                    Nothing you posted here is personal data according to GDPR.

                    According to the very first paragraph I would say my posts and comments are indeed personal data:

                    ‘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;

                    “by reference to an identifier such as […] an online identifier”

                    My username is my online identifier here on Lemmy, isn’t it?

                    But then the third-party apps also store that “personal data” (aka your public posts) on another server. That is what they do, post your posts to another server. Just like Lemmy.

                    They don’t. They tell the Lemmy server to do so, just like your browser does. It’s just a different interface.