Reddit pulls a Twitter. Third Party Apps will cost some developers $20 MILLION/yr.

[Taf the Ghost]

30 minutes ago, pythonmegapixel said:

The lesson here is one we have seen many times in many different forms.

 

Social media companies have absolutely no duty to provide anything the vast majority of their users. You don't pay anything to use the platform, so it's not even like there's a minimum standard of service you can expect for your money. They are accountable to their shareholders, who expect a return on their investment, and by extension to those who pay to place advertising on their platform.

 

What is happening at the moment is rather unfortunate for those who've put in a lot of effort to build a community on Reddit's platform. But Reddit's platform is just that - Reddit's platform - and they are entirely within their rights to change it in any way that they see fit. So it was always on the cards that this sort of thing would happen.

 

Social media might be convenient, so by all means use it, but this debacle is yet another reminder that you should think very carefully before building something you really care about to be reliant on someone else's platform.

 

If you want to be able to put effort into a community endeavour and be certain that it will exist in the long term, then it has to be structured so that same community somehow owns and controls the platform it is built on.

While I agree with most of what you say, I have to point out one thing. Social Media companies aren't beholden to their shareholders. They're beholden to their "Controlling Interests", which aren't the exact same thing. It isn't the pension funds. That's the couple of major investment managers and their power factions.  And they view these companies as Media companies that have to toe a line.  (This is why Twitter was always unmanageable; they had multiple factions that controlled a board seat and almost no one in the upper level could be fired.)

 

We'd all be a lot better off with the Social Media companies acted in their long term profitable interests.

24 minutes ago, ToboRobot said:

being able to vote out bad mods is actually a good change.

It's a great theory. On a platform with mass scale bots? Oh, that's going to go well.

[Leychee]

11 hours ago, Arika S said:

doesn't matter, redditors couldn't even stand a 48 hour black, 95% of them aren't going to move to a new platform, they will just take their lumps.
 

The 48hrs blackout didn't do much as a protest tbh. Mods should have closed the subreddits indefinitely.

[wanderingfool2]

6 hours ago, AluminiumTech said:

They talked via email.

Because Apollo publishes the portion of the conversion he had indicating Reddit was unwilling to budge.

Email is a thing and RIF used that.

So in other words you are being obtuse to recognize that one of the definitions of talk IS TO SPEAK.  Not email, but to speak.  It's like when I send an email to a college and say lets talk.

 

Anyone who looked at this from the external point would say the statement RIF didn't want to talk is correct.

 

Here's a series of events since you can't seem to realize:

Reddit sends email to RIF; email ignore

More emails; email ignored

Reddit sends email with a headline to catch the attention (RIF has a hissy fit that Reddit had the audacity to do that because it's unprofessional...despite the other attempts)

Trying to arrange a phone call

Apollo leaks PART of a call, RIF decides there's no point in call

 

So yea, RIF didn't want to talk with Reddit.

[Bitter]

Next stop, banning NSFW content to make the website more appealing to a broad base of advertisers and payment processors. Mark my words, it's gonna happen.

[da na]

4 minutes ago, _PM_ME_YOUR_SYNTAX_ said:

Specially since reddit does not show adverts in NSFW subs.

That was the point of major subs going NSFW, to cost Reddit ad revenue.

[Arika]

2 hours ago, Bitter said:

Next stop, banning NSFW content to make the website more appealing to a broad base of advertisers and payment processors. Mark my words, it's gonna happen.

tumblr 2.0

[Bitter]

Just now, Arika S said:

tumblr 2.0

Yes, that was painful especially to my partner with ~25-30K followers (or whatever tumblr called them) when her side hustle blog got deleted, it drove a lot of business and there was a marked slump when that happened. If even 1/4 of those were real people and not bot accounts but still that's a big audience to suddenly drop. Honestly I won't be too upset if Reddit takes NSFW away, it's been one of the bigger sources of pirated content for her to deal with since they're pretty lazy about DMCA requests when we've submitted in the past, can't say I've seen action taken against the users posting it so we went for the locations hosting it AND Reddit with DMCA's and while the user never saw anything other than their post getting deleted the hosts did delete the uploaded content. It's all whack-a-mole but for a fairly small content creator it's important as a few sales can mean a lot! Thankfully her regular customer base is very loyal!

[williamcll]

4 hours ago, Arika S said:

tumblr 2.0

Comparatively tumblr seems like a better place to be than reddit now.

[Skiiwee29]

@AluminiumTech @da na @rcmaehl I have merged your threads surrounding Reddit and its happenings as a result of the API changes and protests etc into the first thread surrounding the change since its all related to the single point of the API charges. 

[Drazil100]

Supposedly according to Louis Rossmann’s latest video Reddit is restoring people’s deleted posts without their consent. I have no idea if this is actually true or not. Anyone have any more information?
 

 

[WkdPaul]

23 hours ago, Drazil100 said:

Supposedly according to Louis Rossmann’s latest video Reddit is restoring people’s deleted posts without their consent. I have no idea if this is actually true or not. Anyone have any more information?
 

 

It's not exactly true as far as I've seen ; lots of people have removed or edited their posts while some subs were still "dark", you can't see or edit posts you've made in a sub that has been privated, so once those subs came back as public or restricted, posts and comments that were previously "hidden" (because of privatized subs), became public again, making it look like posts and comments were "restored".

 

At least, that's what it seems like, I haven't looked further into it, it's not impossible for Reddit admins to restore posts and comments though, but I just don't see why they would do this.

[jagdtigger]

1 hour ago, WkdPaul said:

but I just don't see why they would do this.

Because thats reddits entire value, the user generated content. They loose that they are out of business.....

[wanderingfool2]

5 hours ago, WkdPaul said:

At least, that's what it seems like, I haven't looked further into it, it's not impossible for Reddit admins to restore posts and comments though, but I just don't see why they would do this.

Depends on what was being posted.  They might want to restore some things to preserve lets say a knowledge base.  Like if they deleted all their comments in a help section, and those posts were genuine solutions.

[AlTech]

7 hours ago, wanderingfool2 said:

Depends on what was being posted.  They might want to restore some things to preserve lets say a knowledge base.  Like if they deleted all their comments in a help section, and those posts were genuine solutions.

Whatever concerns Reddit would have about that are outweighed by the right to be forgotten in GDPR and the CCPA.

 

Reddit keeping the data public even after a data erasure request would be a violation of both the GDPR and the CCPA.

 

I am not a lawyer and this is not legal advice.

[wanderingfool2]

1 hour ago, _PM_ME_YOUR_SYNTAX_ said:

As nice as that would be for someone looking for the answer to their problem, it's still is wrong. If I a user delete a post I made, Reddit should not restore it due to either privacy concerns (ie. my data), or because maybe that solution is no longer valid. Also, if I delete something, it should be gone for ever, and if Reddit can restore individual comments, then that means they are not deleted, but just hidden from the average user, which in my opinion is an even bigger issue.

Then don't post, any medium like Reddit usually has the wording where they retain the right to use content you have posted.  Once you post you effectively don't have the rights to it anymore.  This whole mentality that what you posted on the web should somehow be erasable by a person is I feel shouldn't be allowed, under a similar concept a sculptor who made a work and sold it to someone who displayed it publicly should be able to claw back.  (I know that using Moral Rights portion of copyright law they technically do, but it also has financial consequences...and also moral rights I think has exceptions for text)

 

1 hour ago, AlTech said:

Whatever concerns Reddit would have about that are outweighed by the right to be forgotten in GDPR and the CCPA.

 

Reddit keeping the data public even after a data erasure request would be a violation of both the GDPR and the CCPA.

 

I am not a lawyer and this is not legal advice.

I'm against the whole mentality of people who seem to think it should be their right to be forgotten.  It's like giving an interview to a news outlet and then right before they are about to air you use the right to be forgotten as a way to kill the article.  It's like all the people who say YouTube or Google isn't allowed to censor them because of free speech; misapplying it as it only applies to government entities. 

 

Also, https://gdpr-info.eu/art-17-gdpr/
 

Quote

the personal data are no longer necessary in relation to the purposes for which they were collected or otherwise processed;

If there wasn't identifying information then it would fail the first line of the right to be forgotten.

 

Even if the courts rule anything written is considered personal data, you have a cases where the post is in reply to something, or documenting an answer then one could argue that it was necessary to maintain integrity of the conversation and of the solution.

 

The tl;dr, you have the right to be forgotten but only to the extent concerning your specific personal data (i.e. your profile).  Your post if fair game if they retain the rights to the post.

 

How never if the two above bits weren't enough, you have the third paragraph

Quote

Paragraphs 1 and 2 shall not apply to the extent that processing is necessary:

    for exercising the right of freedom of expression and information;

So nope, right to be forgotten doesn't apply

Here's even a lawyers write up of GDPR, and how it doesn't apply to forums

https://blog.iusmentis.com/2018/04/03/geldt-het-vergeetrecht-onder-de-avg-ook-bij-forumdiscussies/
 

 

Similar things with CCPA from what I saw.

 

 

[AlTech]

49 minutes ago, wanderingfool2 said:

Then don't post, any medium like Reddit usually has the wording where they retain the right to use content you have posted.  Once you post you effectively don't have the rights to it anymore.  This whole mentality that what you posted on the web should somehow be erasable by a person is I feel shouldn't be allowed, under a similar concept a sculptor who made a work and sold it to someone who displayed it publicly should be able to claw back.  (I know that using Moral Rights portion of copyright law they technically do, but it also has financial consequences...and also moral rights I think has exceptions for text)

 

I'm against the whole mentality of people who seem to think it should be their right to be forgotten.  It's like giving an interview to a news outlet and then right before they are about to air you use the right to be forgotten as a way to kill the article.  It's like all the people who say YouTube or Google isn't allowed to censor them because of free speech; misapplying it as it only applies to government entities. 

 

Also, https://gdpr-info.eu/art-17-gdpr/
 

If there wasn't identifying information then it would fail the first line of the right to be forgotten.

 

Even if the courts rule anything written is considered personal data, you have a cases where the post is in reply to something, or documenting an answer then one could argue that it was necessary to maintain integrity of the conversation and of the solution.

Legitimate interest can't, without more, override GDPR's principles and rights it provides.

 

The UK's implementation of GDPR (which seems to be broadly the same as actual GDPR) says:

Quote

“1.Processing shall be lawful only if and to the extent that at least one of the following applies:

(f) processing is necessary for the purposes of the legitimate interests pursued by the controller or by a third party, except where such interests are overridden by the interests or fundamental rights and freedoms of the data subject which require protection of personal data, in particular where the data subject is a child.”

 

And this is the test that the Court of Justice of the European Union has adopted:

Quote

• Purpose test – is there a legitimate interest behind the processing?
• Necessity test – is the processing necessary for that purpose?
• Balancing test – is the legitimate interest overridden by the individual’s interests, rights or freedoms?

 

This is the UK's ICO's commentary on that:

Quote

This means it is not sufficient for you to simply decide that it’s in your legitimate interests and start processing the data. You must be able to satisfy all three parts of the test prior to commencing your processing.

 

If a post contains personally identifiable information and there's a data erasure request then the personally identifiable info must be removed. Legitimate interest can only extend as far as it doesn't infringe on the rights of others. If there is a legal requirement for the information to be stored then the rights granted by GDPR can be overriden but if they don't have a legal requirement to keep it (such as Banks needing to keep information for 7 years in the UK or Broadband providers needing to keep records for 18 months in the UK etc because of legal requirements imposed by them) then you can't override the person's rights.

 

As a result, to be compliant they would need to either remove the personally identifiable information contained within the post or remove the post in its entirety. Their legitimate interest cannot, without a legal basis or requirement to retain that information, outweigh the individual's righs such as the right to be forgotten.

49 minutes ago, wanderingfool2 said:

The tl;dr, you have the right to be forgotten but only to the extent concerning your specific personal data (i.e. your profile).  Your post if fair game if they retain the rights to the post.

To the extent that it doesn't contain personally identifiable information.

 

If it does then they have to remove that portion of the post.

49 minutes ago, wanderingfool2 said:

How never if the two above bits weren't enough, you have the third paragraph

So nope, right to be forgotten doesn't apply

Here's even a lawyers write up of GDPR, and how it doesn't apply to forum

https://blog.iusmentis.com/2018/04/03/geldt-het-vergeetrecht-onder-de-avg-ook-bij-forumdiscussies/
 

 

Similar things with CCPA from what I saw.

All due respect but I think that lawyer is wrong.

 

It all depends on the content of the messages, if the posts have personally identifiable information then the Personally identifiable information must be removed at a minimum. This however does not mean that a post needs to be deleted in its entirety if it no longer contains the personally identifiable information.

 

Once again I will re-iterate I am not a laywer and this is not legal advice.

[wanderingfool2]

7 minutes ago, AlTech said:

All due respect but I think that lawyer is wrong.

 

It all depends on the content of the messages, if the posts have personally identifiable information then the Personally identifiable information must be removed at a minimum. This however does not mean that a post needs to be deleted in its entirety if it no longer contains the personally identifiable information.

 

Once again I will re-iterate I am not a laywer and this is not legal advice.

You think the lawyer, who specializes in internet law, is wrong in the assessment on an internet law?

 

11 minutes ago, AlTech said:

Legitimate interest can't, without more, override GDPR's principles and rights it provides.

 

The UK's implementation of GDPR (which seems to be broadly the same as actual GDPR) says

You appear to have quoted Art 6, rights to erasure are part of Art 17 and 19 (or in UK apparently section 100, but not to be confused with section 47).  Seems almost like the right to be forgotten in the UK only applies when brought to the court to request the removal...which would make sense to do it that way otherwise if a criminal thinks they might be caught they could simply request a removal and the data is gone before the police could get a warrant for the data.

[AlTech]

24 minutes ago, wanderingfool2 said:

You think the lawyer, who specializes in internet law, is wrong in the assessment on an internet law?

 

You appear to have quoted Art 6, rights to erasure are part of Art 17 and 19 (or in UK apparently section 100, but not to be confused with section 47).  Seems almost like the right to be forgotten in the UK only applies when brought to the court to request the removal..

Not sure where you got that from

 

24 minutes ago, wanderingfool2 said:

Which would make sense to do it that way otherwise if a criminal thinks they might be caught they could simply request a removal and the data is gone before the police could get a warrant for the data.

That is a lawful basis that overrides and the balance on rights vs legitimate interest. Reddit has no such lawful basis to rely upon.

[AlTech]

26 minutes ago, wanderingfool2 said:

You think the lawyer, who specializes in internet law, is wrong in the assessment on an internet law?

Internet law is not a legal specialisation area and internet law isn't a type of law. There is copyright law, trademark law, patent law, human rights law, and other law specialization areas.

 

I think the lawyer misunderstands the requirements of GDPR. I don't think I am wrong in my understanding of it despite not bring a lawyer.

 

26 minutes ago, wanderingfool2 said:

You appear to have quoted Art 6, rights to erasure are part of Art 17 and 19 (or in UK apparently section 100, but not to be confused with section 47).  Seems almost like the right to be forgotten in the UK only applies when brought to the court to request the removal...which would make sense to do it that way otherwise if a criminal thinks they might be caught they could simply request a removal and the data is gone before the police could get a warrant for the data.

 

[wanderingfool2]

1 hour ago, AlTech said:

Internet law is not a legal specialisation area and internet law isn't a type of law. There is copyright law, trademark law, patent law, human rights law, and other law specialization areas.

 

I think the lawyer misunderstands the requirements of GDPR. I don't think I am wrong in my understanding of it despite not bring a lawyer.

 

 

If ones work specifically centers around laws regarding the internet, then yes

 

You think that a lawyer who claims to be a specialist in laws regarding the internet somehow misunderstands the requirements of GDPR?  That is just laughable.

 

Just because you don't want something on the internet anymore doesn't grant you the rights to just eliminate it.  It's as silly as saying that if JK Rowling no longer wanted Harry Potter to be a thing she should have the right to remove all copyrighted works of it.  She doesn't strictly have that right (yes again in canada though there is Moral Rights which might grant her that position, but realistically she would have to compensate everyone).

 

  

2 hours ago, AlTech said:

That is a lawful basis that overrides and the balance on rights vs legitimate interest. Reddit has no such lawful basis to rely upon.

Again, you used their site, their terms of service when signing up clearly state they are entitled to use what you post and they can run with the narrative that removing conversations breaks with the purpose of service itself.  So yes they have a basis to keep it.

 

Let me say this again, stuff you post online is not exclusively yours to dictate what is done with it.  Once you post it, it is out there.

 

  

2 hours ago, AlTech said:

Not sure where you got that from

You were the one who was randomly quoting stuff without bothering to check the source.

Your first quote you attributed to the UK law is from Art 6 of the EU GDPR...which doesn't cover Erasure requests.

 

And like I said, the actual laws in the UK regarding this are Section 100.

https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2018/12/section/100#:~:text=100Rights to rectification and erasure&text=(b)the court is satisfied,its processing without undue delay.

 

You say the lawyer misunderstood, yet you seem to be incapable of looking up the proper legislation.

[AlTech]

Just now, wanderingfool2 said:

If ones work specifically centers around laws regarding the internet, then yes

 

You think that a lawyer who claims to be a specialist in laws regarding the internet somehow misunderstands the requirements of GDPR?  That is just laughable.

 

Just because you don't want something on the internet anymore doesn't grant you the rights to just eliminate it.  It's as silly as saying that if JK Rowling no longer wanted Harry Potter to be a thing she should have the right to remove all copyrighted works of it.

She does though as a matter of copyright law. She could remove all Harry Potter books from sale tomorrow if she wanted. That doesn't apply to the movies since she will have sold the licenses to that.

 

2 minutes ago, wanderingfool2 said:

Again, you used their site, their terms of service when signing up clearly state they are entitled to use what you post and they can run with the narrative that removing conversations breaks with the purpose of service itself.  So yes they have a basis to keep it.

A TOS isn't the end all and be all. A TOS that violates the law is not legally enforceable. You cannot agree to anything that is otherwise illegal.

 

4 minutes ago, wanderingfool2 said:

If ones work specifically centers around laws regarding the internet, then yes

No. There are many specializations in law but Internet law is not an area of specialization.

 

You are mistaken. I think the lawyer misundertands GDPR. Not every lawyer understands all aspects of law. You seem to misundertand GDPR as well and seem to be unwilling to admit that you are wrong. I think it is best that we discontinue this conversation.

2 minutes ago, wanderingfool2 said:

Let me say this again, stuff you post online is not exclusively yours to dictate what is done with it.  Once you post it, it is out there.

Not necessarily.

[wanderingfool2]

58 minutes ago, AlTech said:

She does though as a matter of copyright law. She could remove all Harry Potter books from sale tomorrow if she wanted. That doesn't apply to the movies since she will have sold the licenses to that.

And by using their service you gave Reddit the right to use the content.  The equivalent would be saying she has the right to remove all book, even ones already sold.

 

59 minutes ago, AlTech said:

A TOS isn't the end all and be all. A TOS that violates the law is not legally enforceable. You cannot agree to anything that is otherwise illegal.

The portion regarding the right to u se copyright is 100% valid.

 

1 hour ago, AlTech said:

No. There are many specializations in law but Internet law is not an area of specialization.

 

You are mistaken. I think the lawyer misundertands GDPR. Not every lawyer understands all aspects of law. You seem to misundertand GDPR as well and seem to be unwilling to admit that you are wrong. I think it is best that we discontinue this conversation.

In one ear and out the other with you isn't it.  I find no point in discussing someone how quotes wrong sections and can't understand the basics that a lawyer is  capable of having a focus in a specific area.

 

The simple fact is a lawyer who makes his practice by stuff surrounding laws regarding the internet is not misunderstanding the law.  You would be foolish to say so.

[AlTech]

5 minutes ago, wanderingfool2 said:

And by using their service you gave Reddit the right to use the content.  The equivalent would be saying she has the right to remove all book, even ones already sold.

 

The portion regarding the right to u se copyright is 100% valid.

And Reddit doesn't own the copyright to the content. They have a right to access the content, until that right is overridden by other rights or obligations that exist.

5 minutes ago, wanderingfool2 said:

In one ear and out the other with you isn't it.  I find no point in discussing someone how quotes wrong sections and can't understand the basics that a lawyer is  capable of having a focus in a specific area.

Lawyers do have specific areas of focus. Internet law is just not a focus. You are the one that misunderstands this.

5 minutes ago, wanderingfool2 said:

The simple fact is a lawyer who makes his practice by stuff surrounding laws regarding the internet is not misunderstanding the law.  You would be foolish to say so.

Alright. You're entitled to call me foolish but I believe both you and the lawyer misunderstand GDPR.