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Discord fined €800k for failing to comply with several obligations of the GDPR

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Re: Discord fined €800k for failing to comply with several obligations of the GDPR

#161
post #147
post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It would at least force them to be honest about the fact that they're effectively turning the internet into a legal-regional network rather than a global one. This happened a long time ago. And it was started by the US, I'm quite sure. More than that, the American way to manage the "global network" is basically to impose US laws everywhere in the world. You can receive DMCA notices outside the US, for example. Or e…

> The case raised some concerns of civil rights and legal process in the United States, and ended in the charges against Sklyarov dropped and Elcomsoft ruled not guilty under the applicable jurisdiction. So it's an example of "law enforcement can and sometimes do illegally attest / cause other issues unfairly", but not really a good example of a law being imposed outside the country which made that law.

That's just an egregious example, but there were also literal international trade treaties where the US basically imposed adoption of the DMCA as a condition.

Also the fact that many major tech companies are American means that US laws are basically enforced on all of their users, which is super crazy.

Including stuff like...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CLOUD_Act

> The CLOUD Act primarily amends the Stored Communications Act (SCA) of 1986 to allow federal law enforcement to compel U.S.-based technology companies via warrant or subpoena to provide requested data stored on servers regardless of whether the data are stored in the U.S. or on foreign soil.

This includes foreign based subsidiaries!

So if the US Gov decides that Facebook needs to give something over, everything and everyone owned by Facebook, everywhere around the world, needs to comply. So Facebook Zambia needs to hand over the data to Facebook US. On paper there are some protections, but I'd really, really want to see how well they're enforced (I doubt it).

It's so bad cloud providers have pages about it:

https://aws.amazon.com/compliance/cloud-act/

Where they basically say: "yeah, it's true, we'll fight in a court of law on your behalf, because otherwise a huge chunk of you in other countries would never use us".

Re: Discord fined €800k for failing to comply with several obligations of the GDPR

#162
post #117

Sorry but the points are totally valid. If you delete your account your messages are still available with a userid that if someone has it can be traced back to you. They also don't delete files or pictures you uploaded alone for this they should get fined.

But it’s a chat application, those messages aren’t owned by just the user that authored them. Even if a user deletes their account I should be able to go back in my chat history and find their messages and know it was them. It would be stupid if someone closing their cellular account would somehow reach into my phone and delete their contact, their messages, and replace their phone number with all zeros and this is s…

I would say there's a real semantic difference between whether those files are stored and managed on your device, or on the provider's servers. If they're only on your device, have fun with them, but they are not allowed to store or touch data that I (as the sender) have instructed them to delete.

Re: Discord fined €800k for failing to comply with several obligations of the GDPR

#163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When a user logged into a voice room closes the DISCORD application window by clicking on the "X" icon at the top right of the window in Microsoft Windows, they actually just put the application in the background and stay logged into the voice room. However, in Microsoft Windows, clicking on the "X" at the top right of the last visible application window will exit the application for the vast majority of applicatio…

Importantly, Teams will leave a meeting if you exit the Meeting window. Keeping the meeting going in the background is honestly pretty crazy.

Its by-design, so you can voice with people while playing multiplayer games.

Re: Discord fined €800k for failing to comply with several obligations of the GDPR

#164
post #3

> When a user logged into a voice room closes the DISCORD application window by clicking on the "X" icon at the top right of the window in Microsoft Windows, they actually just put the application in the background and stay logged into the voice room. However, in Microsoft Windows, clicking on the "X" at the top right of the last visible application window will exit the application for the vast majority of applicatio…

Why do apps think it is necessary to start playing with the UI when we have a minimise button? When I click "X" I expect the application to exit as it did in Windows 1.0 and the minimise button to either put it in the startbar or the status bar but keep running. EDIT: I remembered incorrectly, Windows 1.0 did not have a X button but a close button on the right side of the window.

Minimize keeps cluttering up the taskbar. That's why all persistent-background apps go into the systray, be it chat apps, mouse drivers, graphics driver or whatever. You don't want them to fill up your taskbar for no reason. This has been common practice since the Windows95 days.

Windows could handle this a bit better (e.g. different symbol than "X"), but there is nothing wrong with the behavior itself. A clear icon to indicate that the mic is in use wouldn't hurt either.

This is a case of lackluster UI that everybody got used to over the years and never fixed, not some kind of evil dark pattern thing.

Re: Discord fined €800k for failing to comply with several obligations of the GDPR

#165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

The point of GDPR is to defend the user. Tech companies aren't your friends, they only want your money. What baffles me is people being outraged by this fine like they needed to pay that, not a billion dollar tech company. It is justified because what Discord didn't implement can harm the user. it can harm YOU. People easily forget that Internet is for everyone. Even for people that didn't grew with a computer, even…

Governments aren't your friends either

Re: Discord fined €800k for failing to comply with several obligations of the GDPR

#166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

[flagged]

> against its own culture

Could you elaborate what that culture is supposed to be exactly, and why it should require us to side with Discord here?

Re: Discord fined €800k for failing to comply with several obligations of the GDPR

#167
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is this UI design? Wouldn't this fall under UX or just basic functionality? I press X, program close. If I want it minimized I press the minimize button.

How discord works is the expected behaviour for many users, including myself. I do not want to minimize the window (keeping it in the task bar), I want to close the window, while keeping the background worker running. My experience with applications that show a notification/tray icon is that about 80% of them do not shut down when closing the main window. And the ones that don't follow this pattern by default can usu…

I don’t think the background worker is the problem. It’s the fact that the user remains in a call, with their microphone hot, potentially against their expectation

Re: Discord fined €800k for failing to comply with several obligations of the GDPR

#168

Sorry but the points are totally valid. If you delete your account your messages are still available with a userid that if someone has it can be traced back to you. They also don't delete files or pictures you uploaded alone for this they should get fined.

isn't that the case for gmail? if you send me an email with a picture in it, then delete your email account, i can still see your email when logging into my gmail

It's the case for slack, insta, Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, bereal, TikTok and snap. I am not talking about pms but public posts.

Re: Discord fined €800k for failing to comply with several obligations of the GDPR

#169
post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Interesting this is considered [Microsoft] Discord's fault and not Microsoft Windows. Probably because Discord implements the button, no? They configure what happens when you press "X", so their configuration is in violation, not the platform.

But Windows misrepresents that the application is not running, when it is running in the background with access to the mic. Is this not a poor default? The justification here is that Discord behaves differently from "the vast majority of applications". First, I'm not sure if that's true. Second, another justification brought up is that Discord doesn't show the user that their mic is still hot, Windows seems just as c…

I would say it shows an icon on the system tray, but I think recent versions of Windows like to hide unused icons for whatever reason.

In my experience; quite a few programs will minimize to system tray when pressing x.

Re: Discord fined €800k for failing to comply with several obligations of the GDPR

#170
post #139
post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with you in principle and I think that the EU is basically extorting American companies, but in your example all that information is stored in your phone, while in this case the information is stored in Discord's servers.

Right which to me is a distinction without a difference. If you and me are both Gmail users and you send me an email then delete your account should Gmail have to reach into my inbox and delete your emails? They’re on Google’s servers after all.

It's about technical capability.

In this case, Discord is a very centralised service. They store all of the messages centrally, so can easily comply with the request.

Other services like email may not be able to do that, so they could use that as a defence when asked why they aren't deleting all data.

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