Fun fact: Reddit is claiming it has full rights to distribute and sell any content posted to Reddit. So if you’ve ever posted to r/gonewild, they’re claiming to have a full licence to do whatever they want with pictures of your naked body.
I mean of course they do. Reddit’s job is literally to redistribute those photos and it is well known that they will be used to generate profit.
Maybe there is a little grey around around “selling” but if they have the right to redistribute them I don’t see why they wouldn’t be able to redistribute them directly for money as opposed to just redistributing them with some ads on the page.
The reason Reddit shouldn’t be selling other people’s pornos is that the users didn’t knowingly consent to being a sex worker. The distinction between free sex (in which I include open distribution of nudes) and sex work (in which I include paid distribution of nudes) is emotionally important. And it’s especially important when someone is being pimped without their knowledge.
Yes. “Knowingly” is the hard part here. Reddit will of course say that you agreed to their terms of service and that the terms are reasonable because otherwise they couldn’t operate their service. However it is definitely true that many users didn’t realize that they were giving Reddit permission to sell their content (even if it is the logical conclusion).
I might be naive, but isn’t that the point of posting them on the internet?
The point of posting them is either for fun or for profit. Not to grant an open license for a corporation to sell your content for their profit.
Reddit created a website for people to come and share content and ideas with each other, and now claims to have legal ownership over their users’ content and ideas. Nobody participated because they wanted Reddit to sell their data. People generally figured that seeing advertisements was how they paid for the site, not by selling their souls.
That sounds like wishful thinking. If I leave my private photos and sex videos on the local supermarkets local-ads bench, I can all but hope that they will only be used for innocent fun. But who would actually expect that?
Posting things on the internet is a verbatim open license for your stuff to being used and sold. Perhaps your country has some laws. But nobody is keeping some local vietnamese company in check, or that indian outlet. Or any other place in the world.
The internet is public. Any bot can just parse reddit. All those pictures are being used anyway, with or without reddit making some cash with them. It’s just legal issues and drama. The data is out there, and someone is making money with it. Already. Just without making it public. All this outrcry is just additional marketing.
No, many people do sex work on the internet and depend on distribution rights to their own bodies to make an income. I’m not usually a fan of copyright, but I make a big exception for people’s bodies. This also isn’t just a matter of money, it’s a matter of personal dignity and social integrity. Nobody should be coerced into giving up creative rights to their own body. It’s sexual harassment at best. If my nudes are used to train an AI in some way with a profit motive, then I’m engaged in what is essentially prostitution without my own consent.
I am not sure that you realize how public internet works. Only a few countries participate in copyright.
Even fewer have actual laws about it. Most don’t give a shit about it at all. Your Reddit photos are public, you gave up the rights to them already, in any realistic way imaginable. You only have a case in countries with copyright laws. What about the others? How is that realistically protecting your privacy, if only one billion out of eight billion give a shit?
So yeah, it’s a shitshow. Reddit fucked up their image. I’ll never post anything of consequence there and certainly won’t use it to create a business. Same with Facebook. Or any other public forum. I never have. And nobody should, if they are concerned with privacy or copyright.
There is no war for privacy on the internet. Just an endless battle with companies making money. It can’t be won. Public and Privacy don’t mix. And never will. It’s a game the law-makers play. It has nothing to do with rights.
This is reality versus Living inside your head. Prostitution? Coerced? Sexual Harassment? Dude, you are mangling those words into perversions of themselves.
An ai is using hundreds of thousands of nudes for training. Your body is used for normalizing the process, not as a template for porn. How special do you and your celestial body feel? You probably have 10000+ natural look-a-likes. Meh.
I honestly figure they do have the rights. I will be bum fucked if I ever read those terms and conditions.
What will they do with my lewd pics anyhow?
Under GDPR they have to prove that you read the terms and conditions, not just accepted them.
GDPR is a god send for the EU and UK.
Maybe a dumb question here from across the pond. Does GDPR even apply to the UK after Brexit?
Feed them to Google’s AI for data. Your boobs will be source material for the next generation of AI porn.
PSA: GDPR still applies in law in the UK too; it has not been repealed
Is there a way to export my data from reddit and archive it on Lemmy instead? I dont want my valuable contributions of difficult-to-find information to be lost forever by just deleting it
Isn’t it a violation once they do something?
Maybe its illegal to make impossible promises to investors, but the GDPR supervisor authority wouldn’t be the place to make that complaint…
It is not clear if reddit has already engaged in this with Google, or if it is something that’s only starting. However, as outlined in my post, they might have to consult with a DPA before engaging in this anyway, which I doubt they have done. So, no, DPAs are absolutely the right place to make that complaint.
Even if they hadn’t started yet, might as well get their eyes on it, and force them to do it right from the get go (which they cannot do, as it currently stands).
You really believe a large Corp like reddit decided on something as big as this without consulting with their lawyers? Fuck spez, but there’s no way not a single lawyer working with reddit remembered the massive legislation that has by far had the largest impact on the internet in years.
Especially US companies usually just do things and are willing to engage in lenghty legal battles after the fact.they are very, very litigous.
Another issue to consider is that the GPDR is held vague on purpose since it applies to your neighborhood yoga studio as well as Google or reddit. Entirely different use cases. So there is a lot of room for interpretation.
Looking at the conduct just within Europe, yes, I think it is possible GDPR considerations were either ignored or downplayed to the point of irrelevance. There was a recent study by noyb.eu which showed that DPOs are still often pressured to make recommendations that do not align with GDPR principles.
Either way, the DPAs will have to decide if the complaint has merit. Given new technologies are specifically mentioned im the GDPR, I am at least very curious to see how it turns out.
Corporate lawyers tend to be …optimistic. And then management will put a risk calculation on top of that. As a result, most larger companies violate the GDPR. See the popular use of Google Analytics or Microsoft 365, for example, which are illegal in the EU, if you ask a DPA¹. Giving them a reality check is never a bad idea.
¹) https://www.imy.se/en/news/four-companies-must-stop-using-google-analytics/
https://news.itsfoss.com/microsoft-office-365-illegal-germany/
Ive been engaged in discussion with my country’s data protection officer since the summer, and the reply I got was that I should delete comments myself. There are 2 comments that appear on my profile only if viewed while I am signed out, and when I raised the concerns with her I basically got the reply that “there is no personal information contained within and once you delete your account there is no username attached to them so you cant be linked with them”. Is she right, and how do I handle this situation?
As I understand it:
As long as the link between data and user is severed, they are compliant with GDPR. Anonymising data (proper non-reversable anonymisation, rather than pseudo-anonymisation) is as good as deleting. As long as it’s not personally identifiable, it’s OK.
I suspect anyone else expecting the EU to purge reddit of their comments will be equally disappointed.
As long as the link between data and user is severed, they are compliant with GDPR. […] As long as it’s not personally identifiable, it’s OK.
Wrong.
In the US, data protection refers to “personally identifiable” data, so severing the link is enough. Under the GDPR, all “personal” data is protected, doesn’t matter if it has a link or not to identify the person.
The test under the GDPR, will be whether a comment has any personal data in it. If it’s a generic “LMAO”, then leaving it anonymous might be enough; if it is a “look at me [photo attached]” or an “AITA [personal story]”, then the person can ask for it to be removed, not just anonymized.
That sounds like it places an undue burden onto the user to determine and explain why data might be personal. Is a particular writing style personal? Something that identifies their IP address, or time zone, or three separate messages that can be used to pinpoint someone’s identity or narrow it down significantly?
To build on the Matrix example I mentioned, they give you the ability to “redact” messages but it’s your job to hunt them down across their entire platform, and obviously you can’t look at any messages in any rooms you’ve been kicked out of (and I’m pretty sure an API call to redact them, even if you correctly guessed the ID, would be rejected).
what about the whole knowing who is who based on word pattern/habit, and connected content and/or opinion?
According to how the UK’s Matrix/Element “privacy” messager app acts, that is correct. If, for example, you request a GDPR compliant data deletion of your messages in a room that contains 100 people, they will continue storing your data and delivering it to those 100 people, as well as propagating your data across any other servers where those people may be.
If you’ve lost access to any of those rooms, screw you, your data doesn’t belong to you but it does belong to anybody who was there at the time.
The DPAs have discretion on how they interpret the laws and what guidance they give. This is something you could only really pursue through litigation beyond what reply you’re getting from your DPA. Personally, I am not trusting reddit to actually, truly delete anything. But there would need to be proof for that, beyond my suspicions.
If deleted was truly deleted, I’d say they’re right on an individual case.
The issue I’m outlining is however of a different nature, so I am somewhat hopeful at least some DPA will take this issue on.
