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.
The user should not need to request all other instances to delete their data, their account is with a single server. It’s on the server admin to ensure that all exchanged data is taken care of appropriately.
If your European server shares data with an American server, that European server has A Problem. There’s a good chance lemmy.world federation with fedia.io may already be a violation. The issue isn’t as black and white of course, but the entire situation is legally dubious to say the least.
You’re right that the Fediverse isn’t like Facebook or Google where there’s one company in control. However, the downside of that is that there are millions of tiny instances, all with legal responsibilities. There are implications about privacy law, but also porn laws, propaganda laws, hate speech laws, child porn laws, and intellectual property laws.
We’re all just kind of betting on nobody ever taking any legal action here. One lawsuit can wipe out the Fediverse as we know it.
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.”
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.
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
This is incorrect.
I’m coding a Lemmy clone 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 that impossible.
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.
The difference is that Reddit doesn’t actively push those comments out to those archives, they’re scraped. ActivityPub, on the other hand, is push based; unless the server chooses to push your activity objects, other ActivityPub servers wouldn’t know about what you’re saying.
Someone could scrape the Fediverse the same way they do Reddit (although by design Mastodon is a lot harder to scrape than Lemmy so there are differences in what content would be archived), but for basic Fediverse operation, servers must make an active decision to send information out to other servers.
The fact most communities are off-server should help (because the user is actively deciding to publish information on another server that’s not in the home server’s jurisdiction) but when it comes to letting foreign servers subscribe to communities, I’m not sure if Lemmy servers can use the same defence. After all, ActivityPub is designed to have the ability do deny subscriptions.
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.
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 they’re also trying to fix.
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.
Thats why I stay as anonymous as possible.
That’s a pretty uncharitable interpretation, especially considering Lemmy is developed in and funded in part by the EU, and the “staying online forever” thing is a consequence of Federation (and one they’re working on remedying).
If you were worried about this sort of thing, perhaps you should have done your research about the platform before making an account so you could bitch about it here. You definitely don’t sound like the voice of reason when you couldn’t be arsed to figured this out before you made an account.
Lemmy may be developed partially by EU funding, but that doesn’t mean they’re necessarily following EU laws.
For what it’s worth, complying with the GDPR and other privacy laws is on the corporate instance owners, not on the Lemmy devs. It’s up to the instance devs to make sure things like data encryption and deletion requests are set up correctly.
That said, there are exemptions for personal use. Things become a little muddy when you get to the “personal server but donations” territory, but companies and people have very different obligations when it comes to privacy.
Lemmy needs better tooling for privacy compliance, though. As an instance admin, the only way to generate full takeouts is to go through the database manually. The export button helps a lot, but doesn’t contain all user data.
“Maybe check if the website you signed up with is following the law” is a ridiculous take. They may be overestimating their privacy rights (especially when it comes to small servers run by individuals) but that’s not how the law works.
So you can’t make an account on this platform if you don’t agree with how it operates? By that logic no criticism of the platform by its users is possible, which is a great way to ensure it never gets better.
I don’t agree with that reasoning. It’s entirely possible for someone to be personally accepting of the Fediverse’s privacy issues, but make an intelligent, well informed, coherent critique of them.
Like perhaps the OP did? Seems like they had to personally accept the TOS, or at least tolerate it, but they also have a critique.
I also still don’t see how “yet you participate in lemmy” is a real answer.
I mean, yes?
If you do not agree to the terms of a service, do not use the service. This is the case for essentially every system ever. You can go complain about it on Reddit or something if you like.
Okay, since you clearly carefully read and completely agree and support eveything in the Lemmy TOS, please tell me where it says it will keep your comments forever.
I’m not saying that the terms can’t be more transparent, because they absolutely can be.
But if you have become aware of this practice and you continue to participate, you have de facto agreed to it. You can of course agree to the terms and continue to criticize them, but you don’t get to sign up for a soccer game and then claim that the rules against using your hands don’t actually apply to you. If you don’t want to face the consequences of how distributed services like this fundamentally work, don’t use them.
It took this person 20 days to post this. They didn’t create their account to post it the same day or even the next day, ergo, they figured it out after the fact.
If they really had an issue with stuff like this, why pray-tel weren’t they already doing their due diligence to ensure that the service they were signing up for didn’t violate the GDPR in ways they didn’t like? That seems like a gross oversight by someone clearly incensed by it.
(Also, it continues to be questionable whether it’s actually breaking GDPR rules, and even in that regard, it would be individual server admins responsible for enforcing GDPR compliance.)
(Also, it continues to be questionable whether it’s actually breaking GDPR rules, and even in that regard, it would be individual server admins responsible for enforcing GDPR compliance.)
Wow I can’t believe you’re criticising the policy that you agreed to when you made your account. Sounds like you need to delete your account and take that kind of talk elsewhere.
You know, it’s clear you’re not arguing in good faith or taking what I’ve said in good faith, instead of choosing the most uncharitable interpretation you can to get a “gotcha,” so I think we’re done here.
Also, it’s not a “policy” it’s literally a byproduct of how federation works. Sorry you completely fail to understand the architecture of this service and how that influences how it works. All ActivityPub services suffer from the same issue.
Where’s the lie?
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.
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.
It’s been a problem for a while. Considering major social media companies have already gotten massive fines from the EU for violating the GDPR, maybe the lemmy devs will put more effort in setting up a deletion system once the EU sends them a fine for breaking the law?
The EU doesn’t have global jurisdiction, if an instance developer or admin has no EU presence then they could just ignore them.
Sure, but EU data protection laws may require EU based Lemmy instances to block instances that dont honour deletion requests.
This is why mastodon was built GDPR compliant by design.
Sure. Lemmy does have such a presence though.
Message your admin and ask for purging of that post/comment/user.
there’s a delete button
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 !
Yeah, the Fediverse is terrible for privacy. By design, I should add.
I’m pretty sure running a Lemmy server (or Mastodon server) in Europe in blacklist federation mode is illegal, as you’re exchanging data with external processors without any kind of validation about privacy arrangements. No DPAs, no competency decesions taken into account, data shared all over the world.
Lemmy lacks proper delete functionality (you can edit to replace the contents with an empty string, though). In theory you could exercise your rights and demand thst the administrator deletes all your PII, and instructs any data processors that PII was hared with to do the same. If they do not or cannot comply, that should be grounds for a complaint with your local DPA.
I’m not aware of any international privacy law, but this is going to be A Thing now that Meta and Tumblr and Foursquare are joining the Fediverse. My guess is that they’ll consult at least one DPA (probably the Irish one, they’re usually located there for tax reasons) for guidelines. I wouldn’t be surprised if data they severely restrict Fediverse activity within EU/EEA borders because of privacy laws.
Even more interesting will be what would happen if a user sued the instance admins of a European server that’s more than just a person. Several Fediverse instances are backed by organisations, which means they need to comply with the terms of the GDPR if they operate within Europe, and the way the open Fediverse operates just isn’t compatible.
This is one of the reasons I don’t see the Fediverse lasting long. Unless you add some kind of validation system to verify that you’re exchanging data within certain borders, the entire system as it stands simply cannot be run legally by anything bigger than private individuals.
However, it’s important to note that privacy law generally only applies to PII. Your works (blog posts, comments, etc.) are probably not covered by privacy laws. Your username probably is, though.
I think the fact there’s a privacy oriented community on Lemmy is pretty hilarious. Of course, privacy is irrelevant if you choose to share information willingly, but the entire protocol is a giant privacy violation.
As an added bonus: this applies to most other federated protocols as well (Bluesky, Matrix, XMPP, you name it) unless those servers are configured to only communicate with known-compliant servers.
Oh no, that’s not even the half of it. The admin for your instance has access to literally anything on their server, including passwords afaik. If you want privacy, this ain’t it chief.
They have access to your password hash, effectively the “infrastructure” admin(s) as I’ll call it (not admins of the site - they need to have access to the actual system that is running the instance) have access to the same things that infrastructure admins of another site would have.
including passwords afaik
Nobody has access to passwords. They have access to password hashes, which are not the same thing. It would be the absolute most half baked of solutions to still be saving passwords in cleartext.
Which isn’t to say it doesn’t happen. I still occasionally get my password emailed back to me from small handbuilt websites. Which is part of why you should at the very least never use the same password twice.
Every website has access to the password you use on that website. ALWAYS use unique and randomly generated passwords for every service.
