“The SCOPE Act takes effect this Sunday, Sept. 1, and will require everyone to verify their age for social media.”
So how does this work with Lemmy? Is anyone in Texas just banned, is there some sort of third party ID service lined up…for every instance, lol.
But seriously, how does Lemmy (or the fediverse as a whole) comply? Is there some way it just doesn’t need to?
I’m tired of Texas trying to expand their sphere of influence beyond their borders with shitty laws and shitty judges.
Texas wants what the EU and California have so bad.
I expect the usage of VPNs in Texas to skyrocket exponentially in the next couple of months.
Don’t think so
I’m petty sure everyone already started using VPNs when Pornhub was banned
The answer? Block Texas
Not joking. If suddenly hundreds or thousands of sites would become unavailable. It wouldn’t last a week
That didn’t work with porn, so it’s not a good idea for less popular websites.
Honestly only a couple of the big porn sites, of it hit more big things it’d cause more uproar, imagine if Facebook went down for a day
Who cares about porn
Enough that there’s a serious spike in VPN sales during the porn age restriction wave.
I doubt NordVPN and friends would see that if EVERY single lemmy instance got banned.
doesnt that happen every time it rains in texas?
Why would anyone mess with texas at this point?
Cause it’s funny
Why should it affect LW or any other (non-Texan) instance? Any rogue country with populists at the head can implement any arbitrary legislation. That does not affect Lemmy instances hosted in countries with reasonable governments. If Texas wants to enforce their rules (or punish for non-compliance), it is on them to approach instance admins or block the site in their corner of the global internet.
This is a fair view. I’m not sure anyone has gotten that far, especially outside the country.
Heres an article about a similar bill in Utah, that hasn’t gone into effect yet.
What’s not clear from the Utah bill and others is how the states plan to enforce the new regulations.
I mean if the general consensus is that it doesn’t apply, then, cool.
I live in Texas, and can confidently tell you the people writing these laws have no fundamental concept of what the internet is or how to implement or enforce such a law for consistent adherence.
I can also tell you with confidence this law will be wielded with impunity against specific companies/sites our corrupt, petulant AG decides to go after. Fuck Ken Paxton.
As far as users in Texas, this is nothing a VPN can’t fix.
I can absolutely see Texas looking at it the other way. “Your website can be accessed by our citizens? On you to comply with our laws.” They then spit out a bunch of criminal charges that make things rather inconvenient for some instance hosts. The US reach into international banking systems is uncomfortably long.
The real problem question is about federation. You can post to an instance from any federated instance. If an account is created in one instance and the user posts to a federated instance are both liable? You have to be able to create accounts AND post to be subject to the law. Can one instance not allow posts but host accounts for participation in other instances to skirt around the law?
That would require jurisdiction to charge them anyways. They do not have such power.
Don’t comply with tyrants.
I’m fine with Texas disappearing from the internet. Literally every site with a comment section now has to comply or just block Texas. One of those seems more feasible.
Comply?
“Is there some way it just doesn’t need to” = “Is there some scenario in which Texas laws don’t apply worldwide?”
Yes. There is.
To expand on this- In general you must comply with the laws of any jurisdiction where you have a business presence. This for example Meta is a USA company, but they have offices in the EU and they sell advertising in the EU from EU offices so they have to comply with EU laws for EU users. They can’t just wave off and say ‘we are a USA company, EU regs don’t apply to us’.
Lemmy is not a corporation. There is no business presence in Texas, unless an instance admin lives there or hosts the server there. So Lemmy, both as a whole and as individual instances, can simply give Texas the middle finger and say ‘we aren’t subject to your laws as we have no presence or business in your state. We are in the state of California (or whatever) and are subject to the laws of our home state. It is not our job to enforce Texas laws in California on servers hosted in Virginia.’
Thus Texas trying to enforce their laws on a Cali company is like Hollywood studios sending DMCA notices to Finland.
This has “DMCA notice to a Russian music site” vibes. Basically, we do nothing. They have absolutely zero authority outside of Texas. If the instance is inside Texas’s borders, that’s a different story, but if the instance is located outside, it has no obligation to follow Texas’s law. They can’t do anything. They can’t block Lemmy, because it’s federated. They can’t sue Lemmy, because it’s federated. They have zero recourse, except for slam their feet on the ground and cry like a petulant child.
It’s called the “Fuck Texas” response to such a garbage law. And good luck enforcing it especially with federated sites.
Lemmy isn’t social media. Ignoring that though, the law actually says:
According to the Texas Office of the Attorney General, this new law will primarily “apply to digital services that provide an online platform for social interaction between users that: (1) allow users to create a public or semi-public profile to use the service, and (2) allow users to create or post content that can be viewed by other users of the service. This includes digital services such as message boards, chat rooms, video channels, or a main feed that presents users content created and posted by other users.”
Which literally applies to every single site on the entire planet that has a comment section. This law is incredibly unenforceable.
Yep. This is another dumbass politicians trying to solve a problem that doesn’t exist with a solution that doesn’t work.
It’s not about solving a problem, it’s about exerting control.
Lemmy is absolutely social media.
Nuh uh! I’m a Sovereign Netizen and I’m not driving social engagement, I’m just a traveler on the information superhighway!
Social engagement has nothing to do with social media. If you define anything with social engagement as social media then you literally are calling the entire internet social media.
It’s absolutely not. It has none of the hallmarks of social media (personal relationship, feed of user activity, likes and shares). It’s a forum. Forums existed for decades before social media. If you define forums as social media then you are defining every comment section on every site, including news sites, help sites, things like stack overflow even, as social media which is clearly ridiculous and so broad as to be a useless definition.
They said its not but, I think the argument they were trying to make was that it’s not enforceable.
Lemmy isn’t social media.
What in the heck is it then?
It’s a social news aggregator. I assume the difference is, that this is to follow mainly news, whereas social media is to mainly follow people. In my 10 years of reddit and now Lemmy I never followed any account, I was just there for the niche topics and news aggregation.
You’ll note that Wikipedia has that article under the “Social Media” category.
I guess I disagree with “social media is to mainly follow people”. I think social media is for socializing, regardless of who it’s with. Sorry for the double reply.
I don’t know about you but I’m here for the comments sections, i.e. to socialize. That counts as social media IMO. Socializing with random users and not followed accounts, is still socializing.
Social News aggregator = social media.
Its a webforum.
Webforums are not social media.
I totally disagree on both counts: forums are social media, and Lemmy is not a mere forum. Lemmy is a platform where people can create forums, and many of those forums (communities) exist mainly to socialize.
I’ll give you that some forums (both on Lemmy and otherwise) that have a clear defined topic - such as tech support for a particular thing - are somewhat different from “social media”, but even in those three are often regulars who use the forum to socialize with each other. Any forum with an “off-topic” subforum is social media in my book, in a very real sense (not just technically).
But hey, we can disagree on this and it’s fine.
Engaging with people does not make it a social media platform.
A bathroom wall covered in graffiti messages is not social media.
an email is not social media.
text messages are not social media.
a brick with “Fuck You” written on it, thrown through a window, is not social media.
A restaurant you go to with friends is not social media.
A webforum is not social media.
IMs are not social media.
Just because you socialize on/in/at something, does not magically make it social media… Because Social Media is a very specific type of thing.
Stop trying to make everything into freaking facebook.
facebook is social media, therefor friendica is social media
instagram is social media, therefor pixelfed is social media
twitter is social media, therefor mastodon is social media
at the VERY least, all the latter platforms can interact with each other via activity pub, as can lemmy. by interacting with lemmy, you’re making interactions with social media
social media isn’t just big tech - social media is a way of interacting with a system
is reddit social media? most people would say yes it definitely is… and this makes lemmy firmly social media
Getting people to agree to a mistaken, misinformed premise does not mean you are right.
Lest you also believe the world is a flat pancake and other various nuttery.
Also, you clearly know what the difference is, since your list of examples is nothing but social media.
Again. Stop trying to make everything social media. You have all the social media you need to fuel your need for attention, as is. You don’t need to make non-social media into more of it.
Wikipedia: „Lemmy (social network) - Open source social media software“
Also: „Social media are interactive technologies that facilitate the creation, sharing and aggregation of content (such as ideas, interests, and other forms of expression) amongst virtual communities and networks.“ How does Lemmy not fit that description?
By your definition every single news comment section is social media, which is clearly a ridiculous suggestion. Webchat, irc, literally anywhere there’s a comment section. That’s just clearly incorrect and so broad as to be a completely useless definition.
There are degrees to social-media-ness. News comment sections have a very low amount of this. Lemmy has a lot.
To clarify why I think Lemmy is not a forum: in my eyes, forums are set up by the admins, only the admins can decide which subforums exist and what’s allowed in them. Lemmy and reddit are not simple forums because they allow any user to create a subforum and make those choices and decisions, that traditionally are reserved for admins. It’s an extremely important difference and makes Lemmy much more of a general social platform and not a focused forum.
Lemmy has the ability to lock down forum creation, like on programming.dev which is the 8th largest lemmy site.
Social media has always been defined as being about people, not topics. People just don’t even try to use the right words though so you get ridiculous things like people calling something coincidental or unfortunate “ironic”.
And Reddit is what?
Originally, a social news aggregator. Now? An abortion of that idea.
A forum?? Which have existed for literal decades before social media was a thing? If you define literally anything social as social media then you’re defining the entire internet as social media which is just a useless definition.
They can SCOPE deez nuts.
That’s right, get noSCOPEd
So much freedom that it hurts.
The same way lemmy works with GPDR. Lemmy completely ignores it.
That’s the vibe I’m getting. No problem.
At times like this I wish we had /c/LegalAdvice - would love for someone who says “IAAL” to chime in.
Some of the biggest lemmy instances - lemmy.world, feddit.de - are based in the EU. I don’t understand how EU based instances like these would be able to get away with not following GDPR.
Though, it may be more that GDPR doesn’t apply, as per https://decoded.legal/blog/2022/11/notes-on-operating-fediverse-services-mastodon-pleroma-etc-from-an-english-law-point-of-view/
[The UK GDPR] does not apply to … the processing of personal data by an individual in the course of a purely personal or household activity
But for those spinning up an instance of a fediverse service for them and their friends, for a hobby, I think there’s far more scope for argument.In any case it seems like asking a fediverse instance to be compliant with the GDPR is possible, see for an example at https://sciences.re/ropa/ and https://mastodon.social/@robin/109331826373808946 for a discussion.
They won’t be able to the second someone reports them and a spotlight is put onto them. It does apply. Devs just don’t give a shit and admins are hosting what’s available.
It does apply.
admins are hosting what’s available.After writing my comment above I realized that lemmy.world (an EU based instance) does in fact comply with the GDPR - their policy is described at https://legal.lemmy.world/privacy-policy/
So it’s possible for fediverse instances to comply with the GDPR. What makes one think it wouldn’t be doable?
They won’t be able to the second someone reports them and a spotlight is put onto them.
I mean, unless they give in and comply with the GDPR.
Devs just don’t give a shit
I guess you are referring to lemmy here. Considering who they are (they run lemmygrad.ml which is defederated from much of the fediverse) this isn’t surprising. But lemmy isn’t the only software on the fediverse - I’d check out piefed.social and mbin for starters.
The other thing is - if you think there’s some software improvement needed to better comply with the GDPR, instead of asking overworked devs who are donating their free time to fix it - why not raise a pull request yourself with the fixes? (Or if you aren’t much in the way of coding ability but have money burning in your pocket, hire someone to do the same and donate the result!)
So it’s possible for fediverse instances to comply with the GDPR. What makes one think it wouldn’t be doable?
That’s not even remotely enough, even assuming that the information is sufficient.
Mastodon is in a much better place, on account of how federation works there. It might still not be enough. Lemmy instances would have to stop all federation with instances beyond the territorial reach of the GDPR or equivalent. Federation within that territory should only happen based on a contractual agreement between the owners, probably with every user given an explicit choice to opt out.
That’s not even remotely enough, even assuming that the information is sufficient.
What’s not enough? lemmy.world’s privacy policy?
Mastodon is in a much better place, on account of how federation works there. It might still not be enough.
Hmm… what’s the difference?
Lemmy instances would have to stop all federation with instances beyond the territorial reach of the GDPR or equivalent.
Oof. This is indeed a tough one.
I recall that this isn’t universally true - in some cases a country or territory may be deemed as GDPR equivalent and after that data transfer is allowed without additional safeguards, see for example https://www.torkin.com/insights/publication/european-commission-approves-of-canada-s-data-protection-regime-(again)#::text=What%20does%20this%20mean%20for,authorizations%20to%20transfer%20the%20data.
Even so, this does impose significant limits on federation due to the risk of transferring data to non-complying terrotories.
Federation within that territory should only happen based on a contractual agreement between the owners, probably with every user given an explicit choice to opt out.
Uh - if this is right, then this is even more restrictive and seems to suggest a fundamental incompatibility between federation and the GDPR overall.
But, this has got to be an already solved problem. Usenet has been around since the 1980s at least, and NNTP was basically federating before there was ActivityPub. I’m missing something obvious here I’m sure, but what?
What’s not enough? lemmy.world’s privacy policy?
There’s way more to do than writing a privacy policy. And I don’t think the policy meets the requirements but getting that right certainly needs a specialist.
Hmm… what’s the difference?
On mastodon, you follow a person, which they can refuse. Only then the data is automatically sent to your instance. On lemmy, you subscribe to a community and everyone’s posts and comments are sent to yours. At least, that’s how I understand it.
seems to suggest a fundamental incompatibility between federation and the GDPR overall.
You could say that there is a fundamental incompatibility between the internet and the GDPR, but that’s by design. The internet is about sharing (ie processing) data. The GDPR says, you mustn’t (unless).
Take the “right to be forgotten”. Before the internet, people read their newspapers, threw them away, and forgot about it. The articles were still available in some dusty archive, but you finding them was laborious. With search engines, you could easily find any unflattering press coverage. So you get the right to make search engines remove these links and it’s like back in the good old days. The fact that the GDPR is incompatible with existing technology is a feature, not a bug.
Bear in mind, that few of the people who passed the GDPR have any technical background. Of the people who interpret it - judges and lawyers - fewer still have one. They are not aware of how challenging any of these requirements are.
The main problem for the fediverse is that compliance requires a lot of expert legal knowledge. There’s not just the GDPR but also the DSA and other regulations to follow.
Federation itself may also be problematic, since many more people get to be in control of the data than strictly necessary. The flow of data must be controlled and should be limited as much as possible. That would be much easier with a central authority in charge. But that’s not a deal-breaker.
It’s going to be a big problem when the EU catches wind. Gpdr is a nasty law, hard to comply with properly, and has harsh fines. And no, “we tried to comply” will not fly
It doesn’t exactly ignore it, but in a sense GDPR doesn’t apply to Lemmy.
Long story short, GDPR is made to protect private information, and EVERYTHING in Lemmy is public so there is no private information to protect. It’s similar to things like pastebin or even public feed in Facebook, companies cannot be penalized for people willingly exposing their information publicly, but private information that is made public is a problem.
That is entirely incorrect. It is general data protection regulation, not privacy regulation.
You are given certain rights over data relating to you. For example: you may have it deleted. Have you googled the name of a person? At the bottom, you will find a notice that “some results may have been removed”. Under the GDPR, you can make search engines delete links relating to you; for example, links to unflattering news stories (once you are out of the public eye).
Sorry, forgot about answering here. Although the name is General data it is about personal data. I was going to reply with point by point why it either doesn’t apply to Lemmy or it follows GDPR, but I think it might be easier to answer directly your point about right to be forgotten.
First of all Lemmy allows you to delete your posts and user so it complies with it, but even if it didn’t GEPR has this to say:
Paragraphs 1 and 2 shall not apply to the extent that processing is necessary:
Paragraphs 1 and 2 are the right to be forgotten
for exercising the right of freedom of expression and information;
Which one could argue is public forum primary use
for archiving purposes in the public interest, scientific or historical research purposes or statistical purposes in accordance with Article 89(1) in so far as the right referred to in paragraph 1 is likely to render impossible or seriously impair the achievement of the objectives of that processing;
Which again one could argue is part of the purpose of Lemmy as well.
I was going to reply with point by point why it either doesn’t apply to Lemmy or it follows GDPR
It does apply to lemmy and lemmy is not compliant. That is simply a fact as far as the courts have ruled so far.
Which one could argue is public forum primary use
One can argue a lot. But if such hand-wavy arguments work, then why do you think anyone ever has to pay fines or damages?
For this argument to work, you have to argue that erasing the precise personal data in question would infringe on someone else’s right to freedom of expression and information.
The original “right to be forgotten” was about links to media reports. The media reports themselves did not have to be deleted because of freedom of information, but google had to delete the links to them to make them harder to find. This is a narrow exception. Under EU law, data protection and these freedoms are both fundamental rights. They must be balanced. The GDPR dictates how. These exceptions will only apply where these freedoms are infringed in a big way.
At least, you have to do like reddit and anonymize the comments and posts. It could be argued that you actually may not even do more. Removing comments that someone else has replied to arguably makes their personal data incomplete. Reddit’s approach meets a lot of outspoken criticism on lemmy.
The problem is that the data is duplicated all over the federated instances. So, someone on your instance deletes their data, Other instances also delete their copies. What do you do if someone in the US refuses to delete and maybe gives you that argument about freedom of expression? That’s right. You pay damages to your user because you screwed it up.
Still, the archival nature of decentralized communities is one of the primary objectives of the technology. It’s arguably the defining feature of any decentralized thing that no one controls everything so things are meant to stay “forever”. Otherwise Bitcoin would be completely ilegal since there’s no way to delete information there.
What do you do if someone in the US refuses to delete and maybe gives you that argument about freedom of expression? That’s right. You pay damages to your user because you screwed it up.
Not really, again, the text of the law states that if the information has been made public the company must inform whoever they made the data public to:
Where the controller has made the personal data public and is obliged pursuant to paragraph 1 to erase the personal data, the controller, taking account of available technology and the cost of implementation, shall take reasonable steps, including technical measures, to inform controllers which are processing the personal data that the data subject has requested the erasure by such controllers of any links to, or copy or replication of, those personal data.
AFAIK Lemmy federated deletions, whether an instance acts on it or not is another matter.
But GDPR doesn’t work like you think, let me give you an example, say you sent an email from provider A to someone on provider B, then you decide to delete that email account, the email you sent will still be in provider B, even if company A deletes all of your information that email is still there and won’t get deleted. This is fine with GDPR, otherwise no email provider could operate here. Same goes for other federated or decentralized technologies.
Still, the archival nature of decentralized communities is one of the primary objectives of the technology. It’s arguably the defining feature of any decentralized thing that no one controls everything so things are meant to stay “forever”. Otherwise Bitcoin would be completely ilegal since there’s no way to delete information there.
Any number of people here will happily tell you where to shove your illegal technology. In truth, the GDPR is explicitly meant to limit what may be done with existing technology.
With crypto, one can make use of some existing exceptions and perhaps create compliant apps. I’m not familiar with those. Much that stuff is not compliant. There isn’t a lot of enforcement.
So that’s my bad. I pointed out the issue with the right to erasure to highlight the problem, In truth, the probable violation happens when the data is shared. With e-mail, the user sends their own data, just like while clicking links. The transfer of data for lemmy federation is under the control of the instances involved. It might still be okay, like serving the data over the web. But that requires the user to know what’s going on.
If you could hand-wave these problems away so easily, Meta would not be paying those huge fines. What do you actually think that’s about?
Data in Bitcoin is undeletable, it’s impossible for any law to force anything from being deleted on Bitcoin. Then the same exceptions that apply there would apply to Lemmy since the technology is similar in the relevant aspects (besides deletion being theoretically possible on Lemmy).
As for Meta, the problem is that the data they’re sharing is not public. Meta is not getting fined for sharing things you posted on your publicly, since they share those regardless by virtue of them existing and being publicly available, they’re fined for sharing things you put privately or data derived from non publicly available sources such as how you interact with Meta.
Any information that a user willingly makes public can be processed in any way, even if it includes identifiable medical information (which is the biggest no-no of GDPR). It even has a specific point about it in 9.2.e
processing relates to personal data which are manifestly made public by the data subject;
Essentially saying you can process anything that was made public by the person. GDPR is to protect people from companies doing shady things, not to prevent people from themselves. Because EVERYTHING is public in Lemmy, all data in it has been manifestly made public by the person who created it.
