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by jbfoo 2950 days ago
>> Are EU courts going to issue default judgements on businesses and individuals?

> Against individuals: Unlikely, but it could happen

AFAIK IANAL: GDPR doesn't apply to individuals that e.g. host mastodon instance.
2 comments
ldjb 2950 days ago
It's true that the GDPR has exemptions for "personal or household activity". Ideally, this should apply to non-commercial Mastodon instances.

However, some non-commercial Mastodon instances are now supporting thousands of users. An argument could be made that operating such instances is no longer a "personal or household activity".

Whilst I would hope that the local data protection agency would side with the Mastodon instance operator, it does put them in a rather difficult situation.

I think this possibility raises a lot of concern for operators of Mastodon instances and other online services.

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jacquesm 2950 days ago
Agreed, but execs of companies violating the law are also individuals, and those were the individuals I had in mind.
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weinzierl 2950 days ago
> GDPR doesn't apply to individuals

>> Agreed

Not a lawyer too, but I'm interested what makes you (and jbfoo) believe that it doesn't apply to individuals. It's a EU regulation it should apply to natural and legal persons.

Ok, it has an exception for the processing of data by natural persons in the course of a purely personal or household activity but that doesn't mean it doesn't apply to individuals in general.

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jacquesm 2950 days ago
> Ok, it has an exception for the processing of data by natural persons in the course of a purely personal or household activity but that doesn't mean it doesn't apply to individuals in general.

If you set up a service that operates in the same way as a similar service would operate if it were done by a business then I suspect that you being a private individual is not going to be much protection, after all you are effectively roughly in the same situation as a sole proprietor business minus the incorporation.

If you process data for family and friends then that would most likely be enough to trigger the exception.

So the dividing line in the case of a Mastodon server would likely be whether or not you allow total strangers to make use of the service and whether or not you respect their rights.

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