This might be a silly question, because you know, big companies tend to ignore laws, but this cannot be GDPR (or maybe more importantly for this the California equivalent due to jurisdiction) compliant right?
this post was submitted on 16 Jun 2023
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Copying my comment from another thread below. I have since realised that Reddit does have to be GDPR compliant so it must be applicable, but does it apply to all content?
Would this actually be a GDPR breach? I was thinking about the right to erasure/to be forgotten earlier in relation to a post I saw about how your posts aren't deleted on other federated instances, if you delete them on your home server. But I figured it wasn't applicable because it's not personal data and I'm thinking the same about this Reddit issue. Can anyone set me straight?
Yes, definition of personal data from GDPR:
'personal data' means any information relating to an identified or identifiable natural person (‘data subject’); an identifiable natural person is one who can be identified, directly or indirectly, in particular by reference to an identifier such as a name, an identification number, location data, an online identifier or to one or more factors specific to the physical, physiological, genetic, mental, economic, cultural or social identity of that natural person;
Ah, thank you. I didn't realise the definition covered so much but it makes sense especially with how the data could be used in conjunction with other identifying data. I should obviously brush up on my understanding of GDPR!
This is actually good. Mass-deleting posts and comments hurts users more than Reddit itself in the long term.
No, it hurts reddit more.
When you strike, the goal is to inconvenience or otherwise impact the users of the service. That's how you hurt the service provider.
When the bus drivers strike, who does it hurt more? The public transit office? Or riders?
When grocery store employees strike, that has direct impact on shoppers.
When the writers guild strikes, the most affected are filmnand television viewers.
The whole goal is to affect change by altering the behaviour of users. Otherwise, you just get scabs.
That is exactly why you should always edit your stuff before deleting it. Very few companies ever save more than the last version of your stuff, due to space and performance considerations. That way they can restore whatever they want, it'll simply come out as "x" or whatever you put in there.
I did this for this exact reason
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If this checks out, they may be in disrespect of a bunch of privacy laws including GDPR.
And you really don't want to screw around with GDPR:
- Non-compliance with an order by the supervisory authority as referred to in Article 58(2) shall, in accordance with paragraph 2 of this Article, be subject to administrative fines up to 20 000 000 EUR, or in the case of an undertaking, up to 4 % of the total worldwide annual turnover of the preceding financial year, whichever is higher.
https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CELEX:32016R0679#d1e6226-1-1
Now, that depends. Does the GPDR require a formal process to request to be deleted? They could claim that any activity that doesn't come in through that formal process doesn't count.
Sounds like all you EU Redditors that had your comments restored need to use that account deletion page.
Not familiar with or if they have a complain process, but anyone(European) can file a complain with their national data protection authority ... That should be enough to trigger an investigation.
Looks like it checks out. https://mstdn.games/@chris/110553477682106144
Damn with screenshots and everything. Reddit might be screwd
I have already sent a GDPR request to Reddit and they refuse to comply.
I asked them to delete everything they have about me, including my account and they told me that I need to login into reddit and ask it from there which:
- I don't have to since GDPR says that I can even do it verbally and I don't even have to write to a specific email, I can just let any employee of that company that I want this and they should honor it.
- They straight up don't even have the option to delete your data there, since I requested for the complete erasure of my data as that is also in my rights.
Reddit literally refuses to comply with GDPR rules and tonight after work I am going to lodge a formal complain about GDPR violations as I do have proof of this in my emails.
Fuck Reddit I hope it crashes and burns.
Mm mm sure does smell like EU legal action in here.
On a serious note, that is an absolute new low for Reddit and I’m sorry that you have to deal with it right now.
They are supposed to verify that the person requesting deletion or another right under GDPR is the same as the person whose data it is, or that at least the requester is authorized to act for the person whose data it is.
I am going to lodge a formal complain about GDPR violations as I do have proof of this in my emails.
This is the way.
Personally, I'd file the complaint with the Irish government. They seem to have a habit of going after big social media companies like Meta for GDPR violations.
@Alkalyon @shindig1457 I deleted my reddit account today. It's going to crash and burn and I'm here for it
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What script are you using to mass edit? Even if they revert it, I would like to try.
How are they even distinguishing between protest deletions and content that was genuinely deleted for a different reason?
Likely an algorithm that detects a large number of of quick deletions.
WTF!!!
Thx for raising awareness. This is crossing a line.
I guess next step would be not to delete posts but to edit them.
Another user said they restore edited content too. They blanket restore anyone's content which looks like it's deleted by a script.
I can't go on and manually delete twelve years of comments, I don't think anyone can.
This will only be resolved if enough people take them to court and reddit is forced to add a complete data deletion option for all users.
Holy shit! They restored my comments that I deleted the other day. What a crock of shit. Fuck u/spez.
This is wild. What the hell
This is why I edited all my comments to say that a certain CEO is a greedy little pig boy instead of straight on deleting them.
They're really scraping the barrel now.
But the main thing we can do is move quality content here.
"Nice". I deleted my account after that.. hopefully my articles stay deleted
thankful i used a script to mass-edit my profile, which seems to still be in effect (first and only time i visit a reddit URL post-spezdown, just directly typed my profile link so i don't give the front page any "views" or "engagement" or whatever the corpo hogs are calling it now)
So I overwrite my posts and deleted with power delete suite, then deleted my account, and I’ve gone back and looked for my most recent posts and comments and they are still indeed gone.
I’m wondering if some people ran it while subs are already private and it simply wasn’t able to remove those posts and they didn’t show up until the subs became active again?
Not sure, but it’s not everyone that’s affected apparently.
Rather than delete posts, I propose all rexxitors instead edit all of their posts and comments to say that they are leaving reddit for good to go to the fediverse instead. Such edits should provide links to major Fediverse sites and getting started guides, with advice for other redditors to abandon that place and join us here.
In another thread, someone mentioned that the scripts that delete comments don't work if the sub is private, so it could be that people are thinking their content was deleted, but the deletion didn't actually happen.
I haven't done it, so I can't validate that.
After reading this, I'm deleting my post and comment history immediately, but not my account. I will check regularly and delete again if reddit tries to bring it back. Might as well make them work for it.
you can schedule deletions with redact.dev app, in case you wanna set it up automatically
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