As the Fediverse grows more and more, rules and regulations become more important. For example, is Lemmy GDPR compliant? If not, are admins aware of the possible consequence? What does this mean for the growth of Lemmy?
Edit: The question “is Lemmy GDPR compliant” should mean, does the software stack provide admins with means to be GDPR compliant.
Edit2: Similar discussion with many interesting opinions on lemmy.ml by /u/infamousbelgian@waste-of.space–> https://lemmy.ml/post/1409164
Many versions of Lemmy haven’t been deleting data at all, merely setting a flag in the database that a post has been deleted rather than actually getting rid of the contents.
As for federated data, deletes do federate. I would say that a server ignoring an authorized delete request would be in violation of the law, but then there’s the matter of a lack of any data processing agreements with other servers.
I do wonder what the legal implications of servers ignoring deletion requests are. Would Facebook be on the hook for deleted data still being stored on a scraper’s server? Would LinkedIn be liable for all of those sketchy mirrors online? I personally don’t think so. On the other hand, federation is push based, rather than the result of responding to a request from a third party.
There’s not just ignoring the request.
An instance can simply be offline when the request is made. Or be defederated.
Defederation is an interesting issue. Perhaps deletes and updates should always be federated, as long as they’re authorized with the proper signature. I honestly don’t know how that’s implemented.
That said, I’m sure someone contacting the server admin will be able to get their data corrected or deleted.
Offline servers should get the deletes in most federated software. I’ve seen some slightly troubling modifications to Lemmy (disabling the retry queue because offline servers were clogging up the scheduling mechanism) but that’s not standard as far as I know.