Nightmare on Lemmy Street (A Fediverse GDPR Horror Story) - Michael Altfield's Tech Blog - eviltoast
    • kernelle@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      Yet GDPR requires if you operate anywhere but allow European citizens to register, you have to be GDPR compliant as well, or risk being blocked by an entire continent.

      • Maalus@lemmy.world
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        9 months ago

        You can get fined by the entire continent. And you would need to pay up in that case, if living in the US for instance. The laws aren’t toothless, otherwise everyone would be abusing them, instead go to any US news site in Europe, and they’ll tell you they can’t serve content to you for legal reasons.

        • kernelle@lemmy.world
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          9 months ago

          Oh for sure they will try to fine, but being another sovereignty they have no authority to force a payment.

          • Maalus@lemmy.world
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            9 months ago

            Yeaaaah no. Look it up, you still have to pay up. It’s insanely good for EU citizens. Look at the top fines - Meta, Google, Amazon, Instagram, Facebook, with fines being tens of milions of dollars. The US works with the EU and you still get fined.

            • kernelle@lemmy.world
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              9 months ago

              Ofcourse they do, because they want to keep their business working in Europe. Which doesn’t apply to a decentralized system like the fediverse. But they do not have to pay the fine if they shut down all operations within Europe, which no company wants to do.

              • Maalus@lemmy.world
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                9 months ago

                Most servers are in Europe. Also, yeah, that’s my point - if you shut down access for Europeans, your worries fade away. The thing is - people want to have the cake and eat it too - not comply with GDPR and still allow people in Europe to be able to reach all instances.

                Right now, Lemmy is too small to be noticed by anyone. But all it takes is some a-hole reporting GDPR noncompliance, and the entire project will get hit, and it will get hit hard.

                • kernelle@lemmy.world
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                  9 months ago

                  “your point” was that the EU can force a fine on any foreign company operating outside the EU for not following local laws, which is ridiculous. But I agree with the rest.

                  • Maalus@lemmy.world
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                    9 months ago

                    It’s not ridiculous if you actually read up what GDPR is. They can place a fine on any foreign company. It probably won’t be enforced in China, Russia, Iran, etc. But GDPR isn’t a “local law”. Most countries comply with it, hence cookie notices and all that jazz

        • lambalicious@lemmy.sdf.org
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          9 months ago

          The laws aren’t toothless, otherwise everyone would be abusing them,

          Have you heard of such small indie developers such as Google, Amazon or Facebook?

          • Maalus@lemmy.world
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            9 months ago

            The exact same ones who have millions in fines racked up and are paying them? Yes, I have heard of those.

            • lambalicious@lemmy.sdf.org
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              9 months ago

              You said it yourself: Millions. Not Billions.

              For these companies, paying such a mundane fine is just the business cost of being able to do whatever they want. The execs figuratively (and perhaps literally too) piss out a fine payment every morning before reading the newspaper company whatsapp account.

              • Maalus@lemmy.world
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                9 months ago

                And you think that lemmy devs / admins being hit by thousands of dollars of a fine is going to go the same way facebook goes? That they’ll be able to ignore it and say it’s a cost of business? The giant corps get fined too. The US companies get fined too (for all the people saying “this EU law, me no care”.