Ask Lemmy
A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions
Please don't post about US Politics. If you need to do this, try !politicaldiscussion@lemmy.world
Rules: (interactive)
1) Be nice and; have fun
Doxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, and toxicity are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them
2) All posts must end with a '?'
This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?
3) No spam
Please do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.
4) NSFW is okay, within reason
Just remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either !asklemmyafterdark@lemmy.world or !asklemmynsfw@lemmynsfw.com.
NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].
5) This is not a support community.
It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions.
If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email info@lemmy.world. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.
Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.
Partnered Communities:
Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu
view the rest of the comments
Migration goes beyond sheer numbers. The 3.8k users are probably the one that were the most attached to initial Reddit, hence people who would contribute the more. I would rather be with those 3.8k users than the millions of people okay with staying on Reddit despite Spez's decisions.
I hope that once Lemmy is a bit more polished (instance blocking, account migration, hot filtering working etc.), we will gradually see a second wave of arrivals.
I doubt it, and if it does get successful, there's unfortunately lots of ways it can be taken down by lawsuits if the big players want to.
It's currently impossible to follow a GDPR information delete request for example, because you can't delete the info from other instances.
And if any user uploads copyrighted material, the instance admin is liable.
Same with illegal material.
For these reasons, the Fediverse is incredibly vulnerable to a constant death and creation of instances which will make creating a collection of valuable info (like on reddit) impossible.
But I'm enjoying it while it lasts.
But if that were the case, wouldn't GDPR already be used to take down TOR or torrents or any other p2p tech? All it would take is someone's personal information being on them, right? (I'm really asking I have no idea)
TOR nodes and torrenters are taken down or charged all the time.
The fediverse itself can't be taken down, but if you take down instance admins often enough, you force users to keep making new accounts and new communities. Something that prevents establishing a real social network.
Then you adapt to that threat with user exports or built in auto migration methods.
The distributed nature makes it much harder to down the fediverse with legal claims than it does reddit/twitter/whatever already. Just being hosted in different countries makes these claims a stunning pain in the ass, as many countries do not require any compliance with the DMCA.
That's a good point. Right now if I send something out, even if the company I submitted it to deletes it from their servers, doesn't mean other users will delete copies of the data I want to have deleted. Only the party I submitted it to will have to delete it.
Just take a screenshot of a tweet or a LinkedIn profile or whatever someone posts here in the Fediverse, anyone can capture a copy of it.
What makes it impossible? Why would any given instance maintainer be responsible for the data on someone else's instance? Would it not fall on the GDPR requester to make that request of each individual instance?
The requester can have no idea where his data ended up. That's why the admin who receives the data is responsible for who he gives it to. And he also has to forward the delete request to whoever he gave it to.
Otherwise, customers of an online service that sells their data would have to request deletion from everyone who bought it, which is impossible cause they don't know who that is.
The regulation was written to give people more control over their data, but it has no provision for something like federation, and it also doesn't allow for a "do whatever you want with my data" box the users could check.
The regulation was written to give private users control over what big corporations can do with their data. It doesn't fit for non-commercial (but also not private) use by a loose group of admins. But legally, it still applies.
So then if someone requests that Gmail delete all their email data, is Google then responsible for making sure any emails sent out from it's server to another is also deleted from those external servers?
Just in case you guys are wondering, there’s probably dozens of us enjoying the fuck out of this conversation. Thank you for asking questions I wouldn’t think of asking. On behalf of all three of us lurking.
Lol yeah this is great.
I really want to hear the answer to this
I don't have the answer but I think of it like this.
Email is essentially a direct conversation between you and someone in the same room but you may extend (cc) to those people in the house. There is an implicit "I am including you in the conversation"
Lemmy on the other hand is more akin to talking to someone in a crowded bar but the conversation is recorded and anyone over the world has the ability to listen to the conversation at any given time.
Apples and oranges.
Interesting perspective, but then cannot we consider that Lemmy users are aware that they are including all of the Fediverse in their conversation? That way Lemmy instances could be treated in the same way email providers are
See https://gdpr-info.eu/issues/right-to-be-forgotten/
Once the "controller has made the personal data public", they have legal obligations. Gmail doesn't make my data public, generally.
Hm, I see. A shortcoming of the law, when they probably did not imagine something such as Lemmy or Mastodon happening. By the way, how does Mastodon deal with that? They've been around for much longer
I checked Mastodon briefly. It appears they are currently not in compliance. There are open issues on GitHub, but nothing looks close.
See https://gdpr-info.eu/issues/right-to-be-forgotten/
Once the "controller has made the personal data public", they have legal obligations. When you send an email, you are not making it public.
Essentially yes, it's called the Right to Erasure or the Right to be Forgotten. If the user is in a country that adheres to GDPR and the company controlling the data operates in a country that also uses GDPR, then that right applies.
The only reason Google/Gmail wouldnt delete (or wouldn't be able to delete) some of your data would be if they had a lawful or legitimate basis for holding onto it.
I can't think of a reason Google would give for hanging on to your data but that doesn't mean there isn't one, but they'd have to notify you of that reason as part of their response to your request.
Unless these instances are showing ads and selling data, I'm pretty sure they're protected from the law. Not only that but if you're not hosting in the EU that law doesn't apply to you.
Making money is not a requirement for the GDPR to apply. Neither is being based or hosting in the EU.
In fact, the example the EU provides on their site is of a company that offers free services (and is based outside of the EU):
https://commission.europa.eu/law/law-topic/data-protection/reform/rules-business-and-organisations/application-regulation/who-does-data-protection-law-apply_en
The problem here is how does that work? If I host something in the USA, how is someone going to bring a lawsuit towards me if I am also in the USA?
Asking honest questions here. As this just sounds like a lot of chest thumping from the EU.
"Provided your company doesn't specifically target its services at individuals in the EU, it is not subject to the rules of the GDPR."
Just say, we don't provide or target EU individuals and you're free.
Yeah, but if you don't have any assets in the EU for them to seize, and if you're not present in the bloc yourself it doesn't matter for shit. They have no jurisdiction or ability to enforce unless you really, really want to operate inside of their market at scale.
This is a big issue of eu regulations. They are needed, but don't account for non profit initiatives, in practice favoring big players
Well, the upside and the downside of GDPR is that if you're not a member of the EU, you can basically just tell them to go fuck themselves because they have little to no actual power to impact you since you're not within their jurisdiction.
I'm never to sure about GDPR. The spirit of the law is that any identifiable information has to indeed be removed.
However, does a Lemmy username really fit that definition? If John Doe has all of his Lemmy content under CoolNick89, I'm not sure GDPR applies.
Emails, especially if they contain first and last name, are a different story, but those would only be known by the host instance.
GDPR applies to user names and even IP adresses, according to current case law.
The law specifically names "online identifier".
The data subjects are identifiable if they can be directly or indirectly identified, especially by reference to an identifier such as a name, an identification number, location data, an online identifier or one of several special characteristics, which expresses the physical, physiological, genetic, mental, commercial, cultural or social identity of these natural persons. In practice, these also include all data which are or can be assigned to a person in any kind of way. For example, the telephone, credit card or personnel number of a person, account data, number plate, appearance, customer number or address are all personal data.
https://gdpr-info.eu/issues/personal-data/
Makes me wonder if the fediverse shouldn’t be individually instanced. Like Each persons phone/browser is their own individual “instance”. Maybe a central hub/series of hubs (like instances as they are now maybe) that act like dns servers to point everyone around. No content is hosted on them, they just tell everyone’s apps where to look to the other apps for posts.
I have no idea, I’m a moron and I don’t know how the internet actually works. I’m guessing this is a problem at scale.
Or those 3.8k users were on Apollo, RIF etc that didn’t bring any revenue to Reddit regardless.
They could care less about these users leaving, there are plenty of new angsty teenagers to take their place
If they're the same that generated significantly more content, then it's still a loss for reddit
It doesn't really matter, though. The fact that I'm here and not using reddit has netted a huge improvement in my happiness.
To be honest, I don't really care if more reddit users come here. They can keep their bad takes and dick-swinging contests on reddit.
A very good point. To be honest, if they are happy with that new demographic, and we are happy here, everyone's happy
Unfortunately, as one of those 3.8k daily users, I'm still using Reddit mostly. Lemmy has a long way to go before I drop Reddit all the way.
The next wave won’t come until Lemmy post are indexed by google and ranking up on the first page. Until then, searching for obscure things will still land on old Reddit posts.
Depending on the domain, Reddit content might get outdated quite fast (definitely true for tech content).
Even creative fields such as fantheories and such will probably emerge on Lemmy once new shows are released (Futurama could be a good example).
Mass migration or not, I'm happier to be here with all of you.
I have to admit, when I came here I was hoping this would be a mass migration, but these days I think Lemmy is already great even without the bulk of Reddit's user base joining. Easier to participate in conversions, less trolling, less aggression, fewer bots...
Not saying I don't want Lemmy to grow more, but it's a fantastic place already.
yeah people here are generally nicer. I do wish there more more active niche communities though
less popcorn </3
But it's manageable.
I agree. And if I’m being honest, I don’t want 100 million people from reddit suddenly appearing here. Same for Mastodon from Twitter. That would be awful.
Please make them stay where they are.
Ditto. This has been great
Nice, mr. Fapper McFapper.
I think the problem is, Lemmy's greatest strength (Fediverse) is also the thing that's going to hold back a mass migration at this point in time. Onboarding with Reddit is a breeze. You make an account, it asks you what your interests are and location based communities and you're off to the races. Every community on reddit is immediately available to interact with.
When I came to lemmy I almost gave up on my initial onboarding and I'm a pretty tech savvy guy. I didn't know where to go to start. There's all these different lemmy sites and I didn't know if they were the same thing or different and if I was signing up to the right one. Account creation failed initially without giving an error message (I'll chalk that one up to just a bug). There didn't seem to be any NSFW communities until I figured out the instance thing. You're told you can use your account across instances but when you go to another instance via it's domain you can't interact with it, you have to get to another instance through your instance which is confusing as a newcomer. Any one of these issues is a falling off point for a less inclined visitor.
I'm not saying the fediverse thing is bad but the unfortunate byproduct of it is a difficult experience for newcomers, especially when you compare it to Reddit. I'm hoping growth in the community will bring in talent to solve for this initial experience or possibly apps which can handle all of this more seamlessly.
I wish some of the subs I frequented the most were a bit more active here, but I guess it's a bit chicken and egg. Need to interact more with Lemmy ourselves to motivate others to.
Doesn't matter if there is or isn't a mass mitigation, the %1 who did the modding and content creation were the loudest about the changes and most have started to move to other platforms. It's very obvious now on reddit that the quality of the posts have started to tank.