4 ms·

IAANAL, and I don't mean to single you out here, but this seemingly rational argument strikes me as subtle FUD. It's the type of argument that someone with a v

IAANAL, and I don't mean to single you out here, but this seemingly rational argument strikes me as subtle FUD. It's the type of argument that someone with a vested interest in collecting user data for profit might put forth in the hopes of polarizing the tech community and painting GDPR as out of touch with technical common sense. Again, I'm not accusing you of anything here, I'm just pointing out who benefits from framing the conversation this way. So far there is a lot of precedent for small operators shutting down their sites out of fear of GDPR, but there is actually no precedent for regulators having actually gone after small operators for anything resembling reasonable practices. The day may come where EU regulators try to crack down on forums for who are unwilling or unable to redact users messages post-facto, but we're nowhere close to that today and I don't see strong reason to believe that's where we're headed either.

tobr 8y ago
What about this is out of touch with technical common sense? If you export all your user data and syndicate it, why would it be so unreasonable to have a system in place to be able to syndicate requests to delete data as well? All of us here are users of this forum, so this concerns the legal rights to our personal information. It’s not FUD for us to discuss how those rights are affected by things like this.
- dasil003 8y ago
  Let's leave syndication aside for a moment; I don't think it's unreasonable for a forum to have terms of use that you are participating in a public forum that needs to maintain integrity. If people just go deleting their posts then it screws up the public discourse. I've actually had the experience of building and running a forum that allowed deleting your content in this way, and we had to remove the capability as trolls used it in a specifically destructive capacity. Now this position is certainly debatable, but I think it's at least a reasonable argument that you could take to regulators. Contrast that with the bullshit that Facebook, Google and a zillion ad-tech companies are doing with our data every day. You're free to object to the syndication of HN data, but personally I feel that is a distraction from the issues GDPR is meant to address, and I am hoping regulators feel the same way.
CobrastanJorji 8y ago
That honestly scares me, though. A law that everybody is violating but that is only rarely enforced is a law that will be used to go after whoever the government doesn't like. Imagine a European hate speech forum that gets a lot of press sometime. The government will just step in and say "oops, looks like you're not in GDPR compliance!" and sue them into nonexistence.

tobr 8y ago

What about this is out of touch with technical common sense? If you export all your user data and syndicate it, why would it be so unreasonable to have a system in place to be able to syndicate requests to delete data as well? All of us here are users of this forum, so this concerns the legal rights to our personal information. It’s not FUD for us to discuss how those rights are affected by things like this.

dasil003 8y ago
Let's leave syndication aside for a moment; I don't think it's unreasonable for a forum to have terms of use that you are participating in a public forum that needs to maintain integrity. If people just go deleting their posts then it screws up the public discourse. I've actually had the experience of building and running a forum that allowed deleting your content in this way, and we had to remove the capability as trolls used it in a specifically destructive capacity. Now this position is certainly debatable, but I think it's at least a reasonable argument that you could take to regulators. Contrast that with the bullshit that Facebook, Google and a zillion ad-tech companies are doing with our data every day. You're free to object to the syndication of HN data, but personally I feel that is a distraction from the issues GDPR is meant to address, and I am hoping regulators feel the same way.

CobrastanJorji 8y ago

That honestly scares me, though. A law that everybody is violating but that is only rarely enforced is a law that will be used to go after whoever the government doesn't like. Imagine a European hate speech forum that gets a lot of press sometime. The government will just step in and say "oops, looks like you're not in GDPR compliance!" and sue them into nonexistence.