Reddit can restore your deleted posts. However, if people flood them with GDPR / CCPA delete requests, they may become liable for lawsuits if they don’t comply.
It sounds like their current policy is to not delete your posts even when deleting your account, but there may be grounds for legal action here.
Strongly suggest overriding all comments and posts (using something like PowerDeleteSuite) before submitting a GDPR request though. Replace it with “use kbin/lemmy” or similar.
Not sure whether it will work out but I am planning to do that before API is gone (assume ~28th of June or something).
Any hope for Canadians? Not sure if using GDPR or CCPA would work in that case.
Reddit’s Privacy Policy and User Agreement apply to you either way, so I’d assume you’d be able to make a request based on that. Due to the EU’s GDPR regulations, most companies make their policies GDPR-compliant, meaning fewer variations, less work, and better consumer protections.
If you can prove that the data you’re asking to have deleted is or contains PII, I’m sure they’ll comply to the letter of the law. Outside of that, all content submitted to Reddit belongs to Reddit, Conde Nast, Advance Media, and all subsidiaries.
Surely this is wrong? If the content I posted is not deleted and it still shows as being made from my account, it traces back to me, so it should be deleted if I requested so. In addition to this, would you apply the same logic to private messages? With or without your name or username, if you send a message to someone and cancel or delete it, no one should be able to recover it unless you consent to it.
Let’s go more in depth now. According to the UK’s Data Protection Act 2018 (GDPR) and EU’s Regulation (EU) 2016/679 (General Data Protection Regulation):
Examples of Personal Data (excluding the most obvious ones): (here and here)
- race
- ethnic background
- political opinions
- religious beliefs
- trade union membership
- genetics
- biometrics (where used for identification)
- health
- sex life or orientation
Processing Meaning: (here)
Processing covers a wide range of operations performed on personal data, including by manual or automated means. It includes the collection, recording, organisation, structuring, storage, adaptation or alteration, retrieval, consultation, use, disclosure by transmission, dissemination or otherwise making available, alignment or combination, restriction, erasure or destruction of personal data.
Examples of processing include:
posting/putting a photo of a person on a website;
With this in mind, you can no longer only be identified by your username (in case it says “Deleted”), you could potentially be identified by your post’s content (and post history). If consent is withdrawn and you wish that the company stops processing your data, the company must comply (here).
With the heat Reddit is taking, and probably the wave of complaints that’s about to happen, I’m eager to see what’s going to be the regulator’s response.
No, they’re correct, which the rest of your comment alludes to in the full context. You’d only be allowed to request deletion of comments with personal data, and Reddit is within their rights to have you specify which ones.
I’m sorry but that’s not what the User’s agreement and Privacy Policy says. It’s pretty obvious who’s the content’s owner and what rights we have over it. The only way reddit can keep that content is by making a derivate of the content, like stated above. As I can see some of my original posts being recovered after deletion, these are obviously not derivative of anything, they’re the original content.
As of right now, I haven’t deleted my account, so this includes my username. That’s definitely personal data, and as such, they’re not allowed to recover the post without my consent. Maybe the solution to the problem at the moment is to keep an account in order to have more control over our content and make sure stays deleted. In case they change their UA or PP regarding this matter, then we should request the account’s deletion.
I believe it’s less straightforward than that. Under GDPR, consent can be withdrawn, you can’t give an irrevokable consent.
See https://kbin.social/m/RedditMigration/t/34112/Updated-Reddit-is-quietly-restoring-deleted-AND-overwritten-posts-and#entry-comment-161522 and https://kbin.social/m/RedditMigration/t/34112/Updated-Reddit-is-quietly-restoring-deleted-AND-overwritten-posts-and#entry-comment-149886
