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?
Neil Brown did quite a good write-up on the legal standing of the Fediverse late last year: https://decoded.legal/blog/2022/11/notes-on-operating-fediverse-services-mastodon-pleroma-etc-from-an-english-law-point-of-view
There's a section part way down about GDPR, but the answer is "it depends"
Thanks! The info actually makes sense. Also, do note that every EU country has their own specific implementation of the GDPR law with very small differences. So this is written according to the UK implementation, but the BE implementation might be just a bit different.
All complicated stuff...