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I do understand such people. A lot of forums died, they were moved to Facebook groups, since this is so simple to create a group. As a result some communities a

I do understand such people. A lot of forums died, they were moved to Facebook groups, since this is so simple to create a group. As a result some communities are not accessible or annoying to use for those without Facebook. In Europe GDPR was the last strike, nobody is going to maintain forum while being forced to be responsible for "Integrity and confidentiality" of registered user's data. Who will risk huge fines because phpBB has some bug and "precious" user data like first and last name were leaked? Who will deal with "right to be forgotten" requests, who will respond with requests to download user data and so on - even if software has such capabilities, responding to user requests is time consuming and big no-no for hobbyists. End result is that everything that is happening, is happening on Facebook, maybe Reddit, obviously there are niches, like HN, but there is less and less of them.

bloak 5y ago
None of what you mentioned sounds particularly onerous. Just don't ask for personal data and advise users not to post it. Let people delete their own posts and have a way for an administrator to delete a post if it might in some way be illegal (probably nothing to do with GDPR), and if people want to download stuff, tell them to use "wget --mirror". On othe other hand, dealing with spammers and eccentric/mad troublemakers could be a real headache. The frequency of such people probably depends on the topic of your forum.
- Tabular-Iceberg 5y ago
  The data protection requirements themselves are not onerous at all. But the path to compliance is scary and complicated to anyone who isn’t a lawyer or is retaining one. What’s needed is a “fast track” compliance package for individuals, small businesses and online communities. Something like a cookie cutter privacy policy along with a rule book for simple applications without trackers and where all PII is personally and transparently entered, edited and extracted by the data subjects themselves, like in your example. That’s good enough for most applications, and great for entrepreneurs to not have to think about GDPR until they have enough momentum to warrant getting lawyers.

bloak 5y ago

None of what you mentioned sounds particularly onerous. Just don't ask for personal data and advise users not to post it. Let people delete their own posts and have a way for an administrator to delete a post if it might in some way be illegal (probably nothing to do with GDPR), and if people want to download stuff, tell them to use "wget --mirror". On othe other hand, dealing with spammers and eccentric/mad troublemakers could be a real headache. The frequency of such people probably depends on the topic of your forum.

Tabular-Iceberg 5y ago
The data protection requirements themselves are not onerous at all. But the path to compliance is scary and complicated to anyone who isn’t a lawyer or is retaining one. What’s needed is a “fast track” compliance package for individuals, small businesses and online communities. Something like a cookie cutter privacy policy along with a rule book for simple applications without trackers and where all PII is personally and transparently entered, edited and extracted by the data subjects themselves, like in your example. That’s good enough for most applications, and great for entrepreneurs to not have to think about GDPR until they have enough momentum to warrant getting lawyers.