As the title says, Reddit replied to my GDPR request to delete all my data saying I had to do it first, which I suspect is in violation of GDPR law.
Reddit’s argument is that to comply with GDPR, they just need to dossociate your account from your posts, so the latter cannot be traced back to you. However, the argument could be made that the posts themselves are enough data to be linked to you.
Is there any type of response that could be framed in legal terms to make reddit really remove all the content from my account?
I’m no lawyer, however, having gone through this a couple of times as a service provider this is my understanding:
GDPR and similar laws cover data which the provider has gathered about you and may have been shared with third parties.
Generally, user generated content is not covered under GDPR requests. Any content that you chose to post which is self-identifying was posted at your discretion.
The best examples of where this must be true are mailing list archives and Git reposities. E.g., the email address you gave to GitHub on signups and the email address that you attached to a git commit may have been the same, but only one use case provides for GDPR protection. Mostly.
In practice there’s a lot of gray area in GDPR and privacy lawyers often have to find the inflection point somewhere between clearly covered and clearly not covered.
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So, I’m hearing, “Overwrite all my comments to sign my real name at the end”
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Got it. Thanks for the explanation
As psychopomp pointed out this is wrong. (Or at least, “unsettled” - meaning that unless you are sitting on big pots of money and are happy to pay up to the gov’t if the courts decide against you - you should play it safe.) See https://kbin.social/m/RedditMigration/t/34112/Updated-Reddit-is-quietly-restoring-deleted-AND-overwritten-posts-and#entry-comment-140833 - for what it’s worth, folks from pre-Musk Twitter who looked into this issue determined that tweets basically did fall under the GDPR.
See also https://mstdn.games/@chris/110553477682106144 https://www.wired.co.uk/article/delete-twitter-dms-gdpr https://techcrunch.com/2023/02/08/elon-musk-twitter-dm-deletion/
for what it’s worth, folks from pre-Musk Twitter who looked into this issue determined that tweets basically did fall under the GDPR.
That’s interesting! It does set a precedent. I’m just going to have to wait for a European class action against Reddit. I hope someone with time and money in their hands takes the initiative.
Hmm. I wonder though - could follow BrikoX’s suggestion. Might be the case that you don’t need a lawyer or to spend any money on it, instead the gov’t org will hear complaints from lots of redditors (or ex-redditors) and then send its own lawyers in. If so, then these folks will be using public money from taxpayers and of course they got the time - it’s literally their actual job. (Of course I speak in generalities and maybes because i don’t know the system in every single EU country and it likely varies somewhat between them.)
Contact your Data Protection Authority and file a complaint.
I think it’s untested whether this is legal or not; it’s in a legal grey zone. Try to find an online script to help you delete all your posts. Alternatively turn the question to your national agency which handles GDPR compliance.
With the API shutting down, I believe there is no longer an automated way to delete all content. I would focus more attention on the latter suggestion.
With the API shutting down, I believe there is no longer an automated way to delete all content.
Actually, the API hasn’t shut down. It’s just you get a bill if you go over 100 api calls per minute, but existing scripts like github shreddit can be easily modified to include a builtin delay to prevent that from happening. Alternatively you can pay shreddit.com $15 to do this for you and not worry about it (they use their own API key i figure though I don’t know the specifics, but I imagine they have a setup that prevents them from going over the limit as well).
I rushed in a bit of a panic to get all of my stuff deleted, not even waiting for the response to my data retrieval request (see https://kbin.social/m/RedditMigration/t/65260/PSA-Here-s-exactly-what-to-do-if-you-hit-the ) before I realized this.
