Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Shutting Down Forum (GDPR)

discourse.drone.io

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 534 posts

Re: Shutting Down Forum (GDPR)

#141

Post by djsumdog »

jimnotgym wrote: post #26
crysin wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From one of his responses in the link "I do appreciate the links. The gdpr documentation is quite long and I lack the domain expertise to read and comprehend the document in full. Perhaps this is cultural, since the United States is a very litigious society, but I would not feel comfortable accepting liability for gdpr compliance without consulting an attorney. It is also unclear how I am expected to respond to DPA e…

I think you are right about one thing, the misreading of European law that comes from living in a litigious society. Just act in good faith and GDPR will not bite.

We've seen a number of lawsuits posted here on HN with EU companies, either going after other EU companies, or US companies, or other EU US AU lawsuits. Sure a lot of it involves the bigger shops like Microsoft/Google/Facebook, etc .. but don't go saying it's not a litigious society.

Lawsuits are used in a lost of western and eastern countries to try and right wrongs. Many of them use lawsuits to troll and money grab as well. It's not unique to the US.

Re: Shutting Down Forum (GDPR)

#142

Post by TomVDB »

DanBC wrote: post #62
bryanlarsen wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He received the "nightmare letter"[1][2] asking for everything possible under GDPR and then some. 1: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/nightmare-letter-subject-acce... 2: https://jacquesmattheij.com/so-your-start-up-receive-the-nig...

The nightmare letter is bogus scaremongering bullshit. THe forum owner should just i) post a link to the privacy policy (which surely explains things like legitimate needs) and ii) supplies a copy of the data being held.

This is so incredibly tonedeaf: do you honestly think that small hobby-scale websites have a privacy policy?

Re: Shutting Down Forum (GDPR)

#144

Post by TomVDB »

DanBC wrote: post #68
xori wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I ran a forum for a number of years, and a person decided to close their account, that'd be fine. But if they then said that I need to remove _all of their posts_, that's really shitty. It would destroy the usefulness of a forum.

> But if they then said that I need to remove _all of their posts_, that's really shitty. Why do you think GDPR forces forum owners to delete posts? Which bit of GDPR do you think introduces this requirement?

In order to reply to your questions, the mark would have to study the GDPR one way or the other to answer them.

That by itself is way too much hassle.

Re: Shutting Down Forum (GDPR)

#145

Post by TomVDB »

jimnotgym wrote: post #36
xori wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In this case, you are making work for a person that doesn't monetize the platform you're using. It was service that was offered in good faith, and is now, because of this useless request, not going to be available. Instead they are being forwarded to a service that does monetize their service.

>now, because of this useless request No, it is because of an overreaction to a request. If they are acting in good faith then just reply

Maybe the request is an overreaction?

Re: Shutting Down Forum (GDPR)

#146

Post by TomVDB »

DanBC wrote: post #96
bovermyer wrote: post #85

The GDPR seems to me to be just another example of nontechnical authorities trying to regulate what they don't understand. Why don't more technical people become politicians, or at least form lobbying groups or think tanks?

The response to the GDPR seems to me to be a bunch of people who fundamentally misunderstand how law works, especially in Europe, and who have a pathological relationship to regulators because their own legal system is fucked beyond all recognition. GDPR requires you to only gather the data you need; only keep it for as long as you need it; tell people what you're doing with it; and allow them to correct it if it's w…

Read the nightmare letter.

How hard is it to reply to just “a few” questions like that?

Re: Shutting Down Forum (GDPR)

#147

Post by djrogers »

zerostar07 wrote: post #112
DoreenMichele wrote: post #46

I"m not really a fan of the GDPR. I don't think it really protects privacy. I think it just uses the power of the EU, a fairly big and strong organization, to intimidate the rest of the world to comply with laws that it really shouldn't have legal jurisdiction to enforce globally. I think this is a scary precedent to set that the biggest bully on the block can de facto enforce such standards because the rest of the w…

> If you want none of your personal info on the web, I have a suggestion: Don't participate in forums, social media, etc. sensible regulation that defines workable limits of what personal information can be collected, combined with requirements for anonymization when needed is a better solution.

Some of the early results we are seeing from GDPR make one question how ‘sensible’ it really is.

Re: Shutting Down Forum (GDPR)

#148

Post by djrogers »

minikites wrote: post #60
DoreenMichele wrote: post #46

I"m not really a fan of the GDPR. I don't think it really protects privacy. I think it just uses the power of the EU, a fairly big and strong organization, to intimidate the rest of the world to comply with laws that it really shouldn't have legal jurisdiction to enforce globally. I think this is a scary precedent to set that the biggest bully on the block can de facto enforce such standards because the rest of the w…

>If you want none of your personal info on the web, I have a suggestion: Don't participate in forums, social media, etc. Facebook and other data aggregators build profiles of you even if you don't participate directly in those services. The web is different now than it was in 1996.

And GDPR doesnt help with that. I cannot send Facebook a request for my shadow profile, nor demand they delete all such data, as I have no way to ‘identify myself’ to them unless I have a Facebook account.

Re: Shutting Down Forum (GDPR)

#149

Post by Matticus_Rex »

Sir_Substance wrote: post #43
danShumway wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No lawyers required. Phrases like this just sound weird to me. If there's a risk that someone could sue you over something, from a business perspective I have always been taught that you avoid it, period, until you get a lawyer. I wonder if this is a cultural difference between the US and EU? Might explain some of the different reactions people have had to the legislation.

>If there's a risk that someone could sue you over something, from a business perspective I have always been taught that you avoid it, period, until you get a lawyer. Bad news: If you have a business, people can attempt to sue your business for whatever they want, and you might have to defend against it. There is nothing on the books that says lawsuits have to be reasonable before they can be filed, only that people…

Eh... this is way overstated. You don't have to be a lawyer to file a pretty solid 12(b)(6) motion, which gets you through the obviously idiotic suits. I'd rather file one of those than do GDPR compliance documentation.

Re: Shutting Down Forum (GDPR)

#150

Post by djrogers »

cpncrunch wrote: post #138
marssaxman wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does that continue to be true if the US citizen goes to visit an EU country? It'd really suck to get arrested on your vacation because you ignored some troll's GDPR-based harassment. I don't know how this works.

If youve ever dealt with the uk ico youll know its true. They refuse to do anything about individual complaints. The gdpr also states that samctions will be determinedby the gravity of the violation and number of users affected, among other factors. Nothing to worry about for people like the open source project in question. This is way overblown paranoia, but unferstandable given the current hype.

It’s not ‘nothing to worry about’ until the various enforcement bodies across the EU all establish predictable patterns of behavior and sanctions. Until then, nobody wants to be the first wrist slapped just to see how much it hurts.
Post reply on HN