this post was submitted on 19 Jun 2023
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So just to clarify this point:
If I delete a comment on beehaw.org, it doesn't get deleted when accessed from another Lemmy instance that federates with Beehaw?
When you delete it your instance tells others that it was deleted, but it cannot force them to follow through.
Which is indeed a problem as it makes it impossible for any admin to host in the EU or for EU citizens, in theory. GDPR §7 makes it very clear that complete deletion of all personal data (and yes,a Lemmy comment is personal data) must be facilitated by the original data collection point.
it can't make it impossible. If facebook sold data to amazon, so now amazon has a copy, and then facebook's user asks their data to be deleted, facebook can't just march into amazon's servers and delete the data themselves. The best they can do is send a formal notice to amazon requesting it be deleted, which sounds like what lemmy does. At this point it's up to the federated server if they comply with the law...
Actually that is exactly what the GDPR stipulates. In your example Facebook needs a data processing agreement that ensures that all rights of the data owners are secured and the GDPR is followed. Facebook is liable here, not Amazon - the user must explicitly NOT ask Amazon to delete as the user may not even know where the data went to/should not be bothered to write requests to a huge amount of different data processing locations.
But, @hikaru755@feddit.de added another interesting point: The Instance may or may not be seen as a single data processing entity that does not voluntarily hands over data to other instances. That could indeed be a reasonable cause as e.g. data scrubbers are not within the sphere of influence of e.g. a service publicly displaying data. But as the whole network is build on interconnected nodes I wouldn't count on it if that reasoning would fly in front of a court. It may. Or it may not.
In this case though, would it not be that then if Facebook did have a processing agreement with Amazon with which they communicate information, and this agreement stipulates that (in order to comply with GDPR) data they sell to amazon must be deleted upon request, and Amazon does NOT do so, this would make amazon liable for breach of contract instead of facebook being liable for breach of GDPR?
If so, all fediverse instances would need is a copy-paste agreement when two instances federate that data from one must be deleted on the other upon request.
Partially right - Amazon would be liable, but not towards the data owner but Facebook. The data owner sues Facebook, Facebook then sues Amazon.
A copy&paste agreement is the first (and from my point of few most important step). Personally I would also integrate a automatic mechanism that deletes data (e.g. the delete request gets automatically federated) and defederates instances that do not follow them globally. Sadly this is still not enough - data handling in the US and other jurisdictions with similar bad privacy laws is also a problem, see the recent Facebook case and Schremp2. But tbh I have no idea how to solve that.
Lemmy can, by definition, not be GDPR obtain full GDPR compliance. We should make sure that best effort is ensured, especially with the right of deletion and the right to "know"(where data is stored), but also consider lobbying towards a reformed law for the federated use cases.
The originating instance definitely cannot be held responsible for failing to force a separate instance in another country to delete its cached copy of user data imo. I think what is more likely is that EU courts could force European Jimmy instances to only federate with GDPR-compliant instances.