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6 years ago
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One more time #GDPR

I took three approaches towards GDPR-compliance for three different websites.

For a small non-profit association in Germany I played it safe and took what Dr. Schwenke’s friendly Datenschutzgenerator provided. (Props to you, Doctor!)

Antville.org, a vintage, open-source blog hosting platform from 2001, which is also run by a small non-profit association but covers personal data more extensively got an individual privacy statement we came up with ourselves. Also, I implemented some tools for data introspection, export and deletion. (All of that took the greatest effort, needed all of my sparetime and got me on the brink of exhaustion.)

Finally, my own stuff here, which I simply (and IMHO rightfully) claim as private endeavor, and thus, should not fall under the GDPR. Oh, almost forgot: I removed and disabled comments light-heartedly, not much feedback for years.

We will see how each of these attempts are going to hold up against legal interpretations of and judicial judgements based on the regulation. Not to mention the ugly species of Abmahnanwälte.

My personal opinion remains that this kind of approach to tackle digital privacy is especially hurting those people, ideas and motivations that actually made and popularized the Web.

It comes at a time when those are already suffering from centralization, commercialization and huge monopolies.

Sure, obviously there is a huge demand for the latter, whether thanks to the »don’t make me think« credo or due to freedom fatigue, but disappointment just adds insult to injury.

18 years ago I wrote naïvely that “(…) when everybody is able to publish content, broadcast movies, sell products then the real avantgardistic act will be to live as a 100% consumer”.

I really believed in the societal shift from consumers to creators, and of course wanted to say something smart-assed about it.

Today and also in the legalese of the GDPR it is clear that there is not the slightest thought about grass-root movements empowering people from a charitable point of view; all of us now are either cradled consumers or suspects of data abuse, at least in Europe.

Actually, I wanted to sprinkle this text with some links that made me sad, furious or somtimes even smile during the last weeks. But I just don’t have the energy right now. So here they are, in meaningless order.

I don’t want to miss the oportunity to thank the good folks at Antville.org who showed a lot of support although I was very late to the GDPR 💩🎉.

And to avoid misunderstandings: I support digital rights and respect the work of many data activists and privacy advocates. (I especially recommend the papers by Cracked Labs.)

However, I feel like I fell out of time and do not belong to any of the representative groups involved, anymore. That’s a little bit frustrating.
ISSN 1608-4624.
Propelled by Antville.