Title says it. Apparently lemmy devs are not concerned with such worldly matters as privacy, or respecting international privacy laws.
GDPR is for companies/corporations to “respect” user’s requests about their data.
Lemmy (ActivityPub, actually) isnt a company.
What you are saying is the equivalent of saying that the concept of writing is in direct violation of GDPR.
What you probably can do is request that an instance remove your content… And then do the same for every single other instance of any platform that implements ActivityPub (and not all of them will even have data coming from you) and is federated with your instance. And the only ones that would really need to comply are those that are based or operating in the EU.
This is still the internet, not some magical place.
Use some of the most basic fundamental internet safety rules and don’t provide potentially compromising information for no reason whatsoever. Especially since this isnt a corporation such as Facebook or Google who require you do so in order to use their service.
You are slightly wrong. The GDPR applies to everyone dealing with personal data on the regular, which you always have to assume with open text boxes. There have been plenty rulings already imposing fines on individual, private citizens for their misconduct in violation of the gdpr.
While Lemmy as a system might be exempt, anyone running Lemmy for sure isn’t, as long as it regularly processes data of EU citizens, which it does.
As for the devs, the gdpr does require privacy by design. One could argue the Devs themselves aren’t running it at all, so their software doesn’t have to adhere to it, but individual instance hosts could still be hit with fines for running it as is.
thank you for the correction
There are some great replies here
I think it’s also worth putting in extra effort to educate users so they know early and not when they’re expecting otherwise. The system has a benefit, and it’ll be smoother if users aren’t surprised
Data deletion and public vote records are the two big things that come to mind
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It’s on the server admin to ensure that all exchanged data is taken care of appropriately.
“It’s on the server admin to do the literally impossible.”
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No. I think we mostly want federating instances to respect delete requests. But only the instance actually contacted has any onus to delete on their own instance and maybe, maybe try to send requests to delete elsewhere.
There’s no way there’s an expectation that the originating instance has a legal requirement to remove it from anywhere else.
It is impossible. Flatly impossible. Because you cannot see if they’ve really deleted it or not. You can rely on a “data processing agreement” which, together with $50, will buy you a small cup of coffee at Starbucks.
I federate with you here from China. I will agree to anything you like. And I will just attach an array of 16×16TB hard drives to slurp up all the data you send me. How will you know this is happening?
You can’t. It is impossible for you to know until it’s too late and I’ve used it for whatever purpose profits me.
An individual server admin can only ensure the data’s existence or lack thereof on their own server. Anything else presumes (rather stupidly) that bad faith actors don’t exist.
It gets worse: everything you post to Lemmy is sent to multiple other servers automatically. Those servers may be in jurisdictions that have very different privacy laws than the server you post from, or that hosts the community you’re posting to. You have no legal agreement with those servers.
We’re not done though. The ActivityPub standard makes delete optional, and other servers could be running anything, not just Lemmy. Some of them are probably running somebody’s janky pet project that implements half of ActivityPub, poorly, on a jailbroken smart light bulb or something.
Lemmy should implement proper post deletion, possibly with a delay to allow moderators and admins to inspect deleted posts, but expect anything you share via ActivityPub to follow the once on the internet, always on the internet rule even more than in the past.
Delete buttons are just a placebo on the Internet anway. At least activitypub is honest about that.
Almost like the entire platform is based on the idea that one server/owner can’t be in charge of the data.
Don’t get me wrong, not picking a fight, just what op said is kind of obvious to me. You’re picking a social media that is democratized and is federated with everyone. The natural tradeoff is that your data is not housed on one server… Which obviously means it’s not private.
Idk, the fediverse is a great place, but I would never post anything here I ever wanted to be private. It’s not an accident, it’s literally by design.
Lemmy should implement proper post deletion, possibly with a delay to allow moderators and admins to inspect deleted posts, but expect anything you share via ActivityPub to follow the once on the internet, always on the internet rule even more than in the past.
How would this be done? Like you mentioned, anyone can run a modified instance of Lemmy that does not honor delete requests. I suppose you could put something that retrieves content from other servers as a pull operation instead of a push, but that’s going to break Lemmy’s ability to work with other ActivityPub applications (at the very least).
How would this be done? Like you mentioned, anyone can run a modified instance of Lemmy that does not honor delete requests.
Delete currently renders posts invisible to most users. Delete should actually delete the post from the server.
It’s impossible to ensure that the post is deleted from federated servers, web caches, clients that cache things, etc…
There are no guarantees either way. Even if the delete was somehow enforceable in software, it can be defeated with a simple server backup/restore of any federated server.
I think federated servers should respect any user generated delete request, but as users we need to expect that they wont.
This is a lot like spray painting a message on a public wall in a neighborhood and then complaining because the community won’t paint over it (or destroy photos they took of it) when you realize how dumb it was.
You’re writing on a public space for free with no business behind it. You’re not the customer in this scenario.
From their history, maybe their comment is this one they wanted deleted:
“software engineer” is such a stupid, shallow and arrogant description. I’m not an engineer and neither are you. I’m a software developer, developer for short. All these fake “engineers” and “scientists” tend to be arrogant stuck up pricks.
Idk OP, maybe step one is to be less of a jerk to people. If you do that you won’t have to worry as much about if things are deleted
All your posts on the fediverse are effectively a public blog of your thoughts that will be scraped and stored in servers you have no control over.
If you care about privacy, which I understand, you probably want to leave quickly.
Here’s a rundown from someone who got fed up with the fediverse and kinda rage quit: https://blog.bloonface.com/2023/07/04/the-fediverse-is-a-privacy-nightmare/
Another example of this is that it’s not just about lemmy. One way in which lemmy actually federated well worth microblogs like mastodon is that users can be followed from mastodon etc.
So any number of servers running a number of open source easy to run platforms could be taking up everything you specifically post.
If you care about privacy, which I understand, you probably want to leave quickly.
Just because you care about privacy it doesn’t mean that you have to stay indoors all the time. You can still hang around on the town square you just have to be conscious about what you do where.
A big part of caring about privacy is understanding how the platforms you use work and using them accordingly. With proprietary platforms this is often opaque and the rules can change. Open platforms are transparent and you can actually understand them - if you make the effort.
It’s not like deleting your comments or posts off of Reddit would magically remove them from all the various Reddit archives that exist around the Internet, either. Reddit only controls what happens on Reddit, and that problem is now generalized across the whole Fediverse.
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That difference doesn’t make a difference to the point I was explaining. It doesn’t matter how or why those public posts are being replicated into archives from which deletion will be difficult or impossible. All that matters is that it is getting replicated.
Reddit still has to ensure what is deleted on their end, is actually deleted (which they don’t, as we saw during the whole protest thing with delted comments being restored)
The fact that archive websites exist doesn’t change that. A request under gdpr to such a site would have to result in deletion as well.
Sure someone who doesn’t host or specifically target EU citizens can ignore it at their leisure, but I doubt every Lemmy instance is hosted somewhere in non EU areas.
You’re misunderstanding my point, I think. A Lemmy instance within the EU can theoretically be fully compliant with EU laws and delete whatever they’re told to delete, but it’s not going to make a difference because non-EU Lemmy instances can retain that data. Likewise, Reddit can delete whatever the EU tells it to delete, but that won’t make a difference either because of those archives outside of Reddit;s control.
I’m not saying anything about what’s legal, just about what happens. When you post something in public, be it on Lemmy or on Reddit, that public post is not going to easily “go away” when you try to delete it regardless of whether your instance is following EU law. Arguing “but it should go away” isn’t going to make a difference, it isn’t going to go away. It’s important to understand this when making use of a forum like the Fediverse or Reddit.
Yes, and my point is, that the person running an instance has to comply with the gdpr if they are within the EU.
It doesn’t matter if data has already been propagated somewhere else. On that instance, data needs to be able to be fully deleted. For the matter of deletion, it is irrelevant where the data might have been pushed or mirrrored to, that is a seperate issue, which still needs to be dealt with. But one cannot argue that deleting is pointless or needn’t be implemented, just because “public” data is already mirrored elsewhere. The people running “elsewhere” have their own compliance to deal with.
that is a seperate issue, which still needs to be dealt with.
And my point is that expecting this to be “dealt with” is unrealistic. It’s going to continue existing on servers that are outside of your control and outside of the EU’s reach. No matter how hard the EU legislates or how hard you believe it should be possible to delete that data, it’s just not going to happen. Not without turning the world into a police state dystopia in the process, at any rate.
I’m not saying “don’t implement post deletion.” Go ahead and do that if it makes you feel better. But making you feel better is all that it’s really going to accomplish, in the grand scheme of things. If you’re concerned about stuff you post “sticking around” even after you want it gone, nothing is going to actually solve that. The only option is to not post that stuff in the first place.
There already is federation of deletion. It’s not even something that needs to be implemented.
I have less of a defeatist attitude about privacy. Same way I don’t think absitence is the only true way of contraconception. Privacy, yes, even if public spaces is possible. It’s not easy, it won’t just happen, but it is achievable. Needs a lot of work from a lot of people, but it is doable.
I don’t expect you to change your mind on that.
Thank you for posting that link. I’m not fed up (completely?) yet I suppose but it was eye-opening. I’ll have to be a lot more careful about posting, possibly not post again.
OP is simply incorrect.
I’m coding a Lemmy alternative right now and have been testing this functionality out extensively. Deletes of posts and comments certainly federate, I’ve seen the AP traffic to make it happen. Also, the docs: https://join-lemmy.org/docs/contributors/05-federation.html#delete-post-or-comment
I haven’t tested what happens when the ‘delete account’ button is clicked… Mastodon solves this by sending a ‘delete this user’ Activity to every fediverse instance so there’s nothing about ActivityPub that makes removing an account and all it’s posts in one go impossible.
Deletion of entities is optional in ActivityPub. That, by definition, makes known-removal of an account and all its posts in one go impossible, because a server can just ignore the deletion activity.
Yes, although the server will not ignore the deletion activity if that server is running Lemmy. We’re talking about Lemmy here, not the fediverse as a whole. OP singled out Lemmy in the post title and said “lemmy devs are not concerned with…”
I’m sure there is more to be done in this area. It’d be great to know for sure which software treats deletion activities properly (I’m really unsure about Kbin, I think it does not) and which does not so instance admins can make informed decisions about who they federate with. Perhaps this information could be made available right within the UI that Lemmy admins use to control their instance, rather than an obscure documentation page somewhere…
IMO having deletes federate should be part of a minimum standard all fediverse software has to meet (plus mod tools, spam control, csam filters, etc) before it is allowed to federate but obviously we’re nowhere near having that sort of social organisation.
How would you even know if deletes federate?
“Does your server respect delete activities?”
“Yeah. Yeah. Delete activities. Definitely. We totally respect them. Scout’s honour.”
Tell me: how much closer are you to knowing if the server is caching or not?
This is likely why deletion is optional. The people making the protocol know there’s no way to enforce it.
As long as a deleted post is no longer visible in the publicly-accessible parts of the site, that would be enough verification for me.
I don’t know how the GDPR authorities verify compliance with mainstream proprietary closed source apps, do you?
I think in terms of gdpr, if you notify a site that is providing service (allows users to register from I guess) to EU countries you want something deleted, they need to comply.
But I think in terms of federated content, you cannot be expected to do more than send information about the deletion out. If other instances don’t respect it, it’s not the originating instance’s job to police it.
Now the user could go to these other instances and chase it up. But I wonder if a third party instance doesn’t allow users from EU countries, if they’d be required to comply? Federated content opens up a an interesting set of scenarios that will surely test privacy laws.
I also wonder what the EU powers are to sites in non EU countries that allow EU users but don’t respect GDPR. what can they even do? Companies like twitter, Facebook, reddit etc have presences in EU countries that can be pursued, but John Smith running a lemmy instance on a $5 vps might be out of reach.
But I think in terms of federated content, you cannot be expected to do more than send information about the deletion out. If other instances don’t respect it, it’s not the originating instance’s job to police it.
It actually is.
When delegating the processing of PII to someone else (like another instance), you’re supposed to initiate a data processing agreement with them: https://gdpr.eu/what-is-data-processing-agreement/
Unless Mastodon has somehow automated this process in inter-instance communication, they are just as liable as Lemmy is.
But pii isn’t being sent. A user’s nickname and the domain of their instance plus any content they create is. If they choose to put their pii in public posts or user info, that’s their choice but is not pii solicited in order to operate the service, it was volunteered.
It’s a crucial difference. I considered this when writing the terms and data retention information for my own instance. Federation is very frugal about the information shared.
Short of having someone inspect the databases, they can’t. The GDPR is a threat, basically, that says “if (or, rather, when) the truth outs, we can nail you later”. Which is why it’s really only effective on big players anyway.
And it’s only effective on players that have some kind of EU presence, otherwise there’s nothing the EU can put that nail into.
Remind me again how things can be deleted from the internet?
Exactly, this is not specific to Lemmy as it applies to the whole internet.
Also, Lemmy is not a website : it would be somewhat like saying the language Python doesn’t obey GDPR !
seems weird this expectation of privacy on public sites built for public consumption of public content posted by people publicly.
i mean, i get wanting to control your data. the software i use allows for this ( the 'bins offer a user-level purge).
but privacy? seems weird
I mean, to have a Lemmy account you already decided to put your trust in total strangers with questionable security credentials.
but… im not using lemmy
Mastadon works the same way, all ActivityPub services work the same way.
By being Federated that means data is being sent to remote servers. Sometimes that data doesn’t always make it, like a delete request. So someone on their own home-server deletes their post, but on some remote server where that post they made is cached, it’s not deleted, because the delete request never federated. For example, say you made a post on your own box, which you clearly have, and you delete a post, but it doesn’t get deleted over on say, Lemmy.world. That’s not purposeful, that’s something the developers also trying to fix, so I think it’s disingenuous to say they don’t care.
This is literally a consequence of how federation works. It’s not a purposeful violation of GDPR.
sorry, i was just being snotty.
i know full well and am on the side of pointing out the futility of attempting privacy in a public space.
You may not be directly using it, but this is part and parcel of the entire point of federated social media. Other software will be accessing the pool.
Kilroy was here -U-
Thats why I stay as anonymous as possible.
always remember to throw in false information to throw others off your tail
completely unrelated, but I am a 45lb chihuahua with alopecia from Reno, Nevada.
This is definitely a con of Lemmy for me. I like to be more privacy focused but Lemmy gives you 0 privacy on whatever you do on the website. Anyone who wants more privacy on Lemmy is told you have no right to privacy, don’t expect any privacy, everything you do is public on the internet, etc. A massive boner killer for me. I think basic things like deleting your own post or comments should actually get removed from all servers, PMs should not be viewable by anyone except the recipients, and what you vote on or subscribe to should be private. Lemmy doesn’t sell your data but that’s because anyone can take the data for free. I thought this stuff was because Lemmy is still new and will get to it eventually but the push back seems to say this was a choice or is not broken. I ended up exploring different social media alternatives but I like the style of Lemmy better since it is more reddit-like with an active user base plus has different android clients. I don’t like kbin because it shows who upvoted or downvoted something to everyone - it’s not accountability when it erodes your privacy.
I used to comment on Lemmy more but then I ran into this problem when juggling multiple accounts, Liftoff sucks ass at letting you know which account you are logged into (I use Summit now and it is better at it) so I ended up getting my accounts’ wires crossed when I thought using the drop down on your accounts changed your account but no you have to go to manage instances to switch which was not intuitive. I ended up abandoning the accounts when I couldn’t figure out how to actually delete the post from the server.
Edit: man I wish I saw this sooner, might be time for me to either stop posting again or look somewhere else.
While I didn’t find any factual issues in a quick skim of that article, I really don’t agree with its tone.
The Fediverse is radically public. That’s the nature of a protocol like ActivityPub, not a bug to be fixed. Using it for anything you’re not comfortable with being public forever is a mistake.
Effect of ActivityPub, not Lemmy. All federating systems function similarly, because it’s a feature of the protocol.
If instances want, they can ignore delete requests and your content stays in their cache forever (remember Pleroma nazis from couple of years ago?) - now, that is an instance problem that might be a GDPR issue, but good luck reporting it to anyone who cares. At best you can block and defederate, but that doesn’t mean your posts are removed.The fediverse has no privacy, it’s “public Internet”. Probably a good idea to treat it as such.
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That argument doesn’t hold up when actual laws are being violated
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The GDPR is a required to comply EU law for all websites in their jurisdiction. You can’t get away with claiming “but people choose to join the website”.
Many other websites and even major social media sites have gotten fined and other sanctions put against them already for violating it.
I … think you have a deep failure to comprehend even the basics of how the software you’re on works.
“Lemmy” is not a fucking web site. Lemmy is a piece of software. It can be running on a site in the EU, in which case the GDPR applies absolutely; those running it on sites outside the EU … not so much.
The EU doesn’t have global jurisdiction.
No, it has jurisdiction in the EU. And Lemmy is a part of the EU jurisdiction.
Unless the devs want to block everyone in the EU from accessing the site.
Lemmy instances are hosted all over the world, by people in a wide variety of jurisdictions. A particular instance of Lemmy might be risking trouble, but Lemmy as a whole (and the Fediverse as a whole) is not.
If I were to write up a simple forum server and post the code, and it happens to lack the ability to delete comments, I’ve done nothing wrong. Someone running that software in the EU might run into some trouble, but I’m not on the hook for that.
Silver already answered you. The fact that you can’t fathom it is on you
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Whose law?
The GDPR applies to servers running in Europe.
It does not apply to servers running in, say, Canada¹. Or China¹. Or South Africa¹. (If you try to claim European law is extraterritorial to non-European citizens, be prepared for the Nelson Muntz meme.)²
The very nature of the protocol in use makes any content anywhere on the Fediverse, no matter what the software, distributed. (It’s almost like that’s the very point of it! Almost…) And it could well be distributed into a jurisdiction where the GDPR is best used as toilet paper¹. If this bothers you, fuck off back to sites hosted entirely in Europe where the GDPR holds sway.²
Only wait! That’s not true either! Because that other protocol you’re likely to be using—HTTP(S)—also allows anybody who has access to the site from anywhere in the world to store it without being beholden to the GDPR!¹ Oopsie! Better make sure that site blocks any kind of access from outside of the EU as well!²
Only wait! That won’t work either because VPN’s are a thing as well! I can be sitting here in China with my IP address coming at you from, say, the Netherlands. (It doesn’t. It comes at you from the USA 'cause that’s where my Great Firewall-crossing back door is hosted.) And again, any post you make, were I to go to your web site in Europe through my (currently-hypothetical) European VPN endpoint, could be stored and held permanently with the GDPR being able to do precisely a) Fuck and b) All to about it.¹ Because European laws are not, in fact, extraterritorial to non-EU citizens, no matter how much wanking the EU parliament does about it.²
So it sounds like you should just shut off your Internet access. Or, you know, you could post knowing the reality of the world and moderate your content accordingly.
¹ Note: I am emphatically not saying that the GDPR is a bad thing. I think the GDPR’s goals are laudable. It’s just that the GDPR is ludicrous in the face of how literally every piece of technology used in web sites of any kind actually works. It is a regulation that is a nice idea but that has absolutely no meaningful way to get enforced. As the EU will find out over the years. Hopefully not the really hard way.
² Any claim of EU legal extraterritoriality is risible and needs to be rebuffed in the strongest possible way up to and including punching EU politicians who claim it in the face with a spiked gauntlet.
“You went into the Walmart that steals your liver by choice” 🤓
If it’s a Walmart that’s surrounded by dumpsters filled with corpses missing their livers, and the occasional bloody survivor comes running out screaming “they’re after your liver! Don’t go inside!” Before being dragged back in by Walmart greeters wielding meathooks, then even if what Walmart is doing is illegal I’d still be very unsympathetic if you walked in that door anyway.
if it was any other social media like reddit doing this, everyone would be up in arms about it. no one is forced to be on reddit either. we’re on lemmy bc we value our privacy (no ads, tracking, etc.) so it should be held to the same standard too and not given a free pass.
“We” aren’t on Lemmy for any one uniform reason. We aren’t even all on Lemmy, I’m on a kbin instance for example.
I, personally, understand how federation and ActivityPub operate and so I’m not surprised by this. I expected it, I accept it, it’s just the way the world works. When I say something in public I lose control over who will hear it or how long it will last, and any laws that mandate I should have that control are just a placebo or illusion in the grand scheme of things.
fair enough. allow me to rephrase, whatever reason we’re on the fediverse, it should be held to the same standard. for context, the initial commenter said something along the lines of “you don’t have to be here”
I’m also not on Lenny—I’m reading this on Kbin—and just to make sure, I also looked this thread up on Mastodon as well.
Pixelfed found OP—but they don’t have any photo posts yet.
So…
Mods and admins can remove posts and they don’t stay on the server. If you delete it yourself, then it stays. Comments stay deleted, though and is replaced with a ‘deleted by creator’ message.
I noticed a lot of clients like sync try and hide that fact. Poorly
GDPR is international now? Do I need to break out Nelson Muntz when some Euro type thinks European law is extraterritorial?
Don’t make me break out Nelson Muntz, please.
It’s mostly important for when you wanna do business in the European markets.
The alternative is to be blocked by most of Europe entirely. Happens usually to tabloid news sites as they are often in violation of anti misinformation and hate speech laws. It’s also why they could sue Facebook so easily as otherwise Facebook would be non-GDRP compliant and be blocked there.
Lemmy however isn’t exactly for profit, so sees much less scrutiny. This is primarily for business after all. Lemmy doesn’t have ads, doesn’t take users money, nor does it sell products. It also does not actively distribute illegal media either.
(it should be noted that it’s usually not the EU doing the blocking but rather so websites choosing to block viewership from the EU because they’d rather do that than get sued to hell)
“Lemmy” doesn’t do ANYTHING. Lemmy is server software. It has no agency whatsoever.
Individual Lemmy sites might be beholden to the GDPR (or not, if individually run). But any site hosted outside of the EU can wave its ass in the faces of EU officials trying to enforce the GDPR.
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India? China? Japan? Vanuatu? …
Know what? I think I’ll just link instead of list because I can’t be arsed to type out all the names.
So it’s “international” as a technicality, but the context he was using it in implied he meant “universal”. And it barely qualifies even as international against the sheer weight of non-EU, non-US states.
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I have a ridiculous judgement against me in Germany. (Complicated shenanigans around an inheritance where the authorities’ legal representatives did shady shit specifically to unload an estate that would have cost them.) Technically I owe the city of Frankfurt something like 50,000€ in fines.
I’m comfortable with this.
Why?
Because good fucking luck enforcing a European fine on a Canadian citizen resident in China. Even if they catch me out when I visit Germany (which I have done a couple of times without incident since the judgement was levied against me), watch the judge make grumpy-faces at attorneys who sent legal documents in German to a Canadian in China whose repeated requests for translated versions was denied. Their case will vanish in a puff of legal sanctions and I’ll make fucking sure on top of it that it becomes a press circus.
EU types are almost as bad as American types for thinking their laws are extraterritorial. I love rubbing the fact that they aren’t in their faces.
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It’s not really as simple as that. Businesses in countries outside the EU have to follow the gdpr rules if they have or want customers from the EU because the EU can hit them financially in their EU operations.
Normal people offering a free service that are not based in the EU probably cannot be pursued at all. I doubt the EU considered people that might not be some business wanting to profit from EU citizens.
Lemmy lack of central control is a feature. But it can still be GDPR compliant. GDPR did not make useNet illegal. GDPR does not make peer-to-peer illegal.
As an EU citizen you can still write letters to the editor of newspapers, and those letters can be published in those newspapers of record. Sending a message to Lemmy is akin to publishing publicly and opinion piece in a newspaper.
Certainly you can use GDPR to talk to an lemmy admin to remove your data on the instance you registered and account on. But due to the nature of Lemmy, it’s architecture, you can’t go out and retract all of the newspapers that have been published. That’s a physical impossibility.
Even if you could somehow talk to every administrator of every instance, you can’t prove you were that user who posted that data.
