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.
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.)
Same with Relay... I checked it to see what the dead so would look like and all the genetic frontage posts loaded in... It'll be interesting to see what happens.
The author of relay put out a post saying that it'll keep going for free while he decides what the subscription model is going to look like - it's the top post in the sub ATM.
Was surprised with that choice, but it doesn't change anything - not using it anymore regardless
There’s shitloads of secret communities everywhere. Discord is particularly popular. The reason they exist is that average people are only averagely intelligent and averagely interested in most topics, so if you want a higher level of content than average, you have to go where they can’t find you.
When a dance club is cool, nobody knows about it. When everyone finds out about it, those cool people go somewhere else. Being cool, itself, implies being something different enough from normal to necessitate its own word to differentiate it. Think hipster.
Average people made McDonalds the worlds most successful restaurant. Not everybody wants to live on big macs though. But on the internet, where the users control the content, they find your cool burger place and accidentally turn it into a McDonalds because they don’t know the difference.
In my experience, most people outgrow the secret clubs phase eventually. But I’m sure not everyone does. Who doesn’t like feeling special, no matter how unjustified it is?
Yes and no. Invite only clubs risk become extreme echo chambers because they self select their members. Arguably much of social media often becomes echo chambers as people self select what they want to see. But if you then add in secret invite only clubs you're creating echo chambers within echo chambers.
Beware the alure of exclusivity, it can be false gold.
I got added to it for a top post once. I opened the popular subreddit and the top post was something like, “Well, I’m here. Now what?”
I knew immediately it was dumb.
I think “secret” communities can be good when they’re for a specialized interest. But they don’t even have to be secret. Even just niche is great.
For example, the discord for the game PolyBridge is fucking incredible. I mean, it kind of sucks right now because they just released PolyBridge 3, so a lot of new people have (temporarily) joined.
But there are regulars who post hourly years after PolyBridge releases. There is even this one person called Arglin who posts absurdly complex essays on geometry and new discoveries within the game. They could be dissertations on mathematics.
If anyone is still reading this, I have to tell you about the Linkage Repository. This document is insane. For an Indie studio’s bridge building game lol.
In my experience, most people outgrow the secret clubs phase eventually. But I’m sure not everyone does. Who doesn’t like feeling special, no matter how unjustified it is?
** looks around at the Free Masons, Skull and Bones, and Illuminati **
I still don’t understand why anyone would still be using Twitter today
Lots of content I want to see is on Twitter and the alternatives those content creators use are like Instagram or even worse. If I have to choose between Twitter and Instagram, then Twitter is the obvious choice, still.
Every once in a while I check who is now on Mastodon, and I am always happy when I see a few more users I like. But then I look and many people rather look for Project 92 or Bluesky from Jack instead of just joining Mastodon.
Is there a reason why this is the case? Could it be because it’s a publicity thing where it’s created by tech billionaires that’s why they prefer them over anyone else?
I’m not touting it, it’s a decent way to make sure that an account is reputable and behaving in a way conducive to the principles of the communities it’s participating in - “upvotes” means people like the things they are posting and saying which means they are good users. It’s just a little …familiar.
I understand what you're saying, but in a general sense, a person with good "Reputation Points" can be seen as contributing positively in the communities they are in. Even posting a controversial opinion and getting downvoted to hell (which I have done before on reddit) won't kill a person's Reputation Points / Karma. I'm still torn on whether it's a positive or not, but it can definitely used as an indicator of whether a person is being a positive member of the site.
However, @PositiveNoise brings up some of the negative points as well. Another being that it reinforces an echo chamber of ideas and stifles discussion, with unpopular but well-fashioned arguments being downvoted because they're disliked, not because they're harmful. And further, repost bots got tons of karma on reddit, upvoted by people who didn't see it the first time, which reduces the quality of the sub / community / magazine by burying OC that couldn't compete against an already proven successful picture / tweet / meme / etc.
It's a conversation. There are arguments for both sides imo.
I strongly encourage this discussion, because at the end it's up to the users - the community - to decide how to use those tools. I think that we have an opportunity here to embrace new custom, and leave what was on reddit on reddit.
but I would argue that the quality argument is flawed in my opinion. upvote and downvote are more used as agreement / disagreement markers.
so if you agree with content, I can understand that you just want to use the upvote (who really is a favorite here in the fediverse) to let the poster know that their content had a positive impact on yourself. I'm cool with that and it's also good to avoid "+1" or "^^^^this" comments. But maybe it shouldn't be displayed (every upvote downvote boosts are public in the fediverse, anyone can have access to this info it's how ActivityPub works for now, just go to more>activity). Favorites are not that public on other platform, I guess only people from the same server are seeing it, or people you follow, I'm not sure about that.
but the downvote mechanism, who could imply a disagreement, is problematic to me. Because we should feel free to specify why we are in a disagreement. They can be so much reason for that and only a conversation, an exchange of thought can help us understand each other.
a simple click on the downvote button is more like a "shut up" for me. Not a really great way to express ourself, to express disagreement. And it's also too healthy in my opinion.
So yes the strongest issue with this mechanism is how it contribute to encourage a single discourse, a single point of view and tend to discourage users with other point of view to engage. It's really problematic for me.
Good for the mod team. If Reddit is going to take away the only functional tools that make the volunteer work possible, Reddit can pay for moderators to come in and do it.
I burned accounts frequently so karma didn't matter, except in terms of meeting posting thresholds. Upvotes/downvotes mattered to me because they were "feedback" for what I said. Other poster's karma mainly mattered to me when trying to sus out if someone was an alt/bot/troll account.
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