Source: https://sebastiangreger.net/2018/05/indieweb-privacy-challenge-webmentions-backfeeds-gdpr/
Timestamp: 2019-04-23 16:43:11+00:00

Document:
With privacy on the agenda everywhere (aka. “last-minute GDPR panic”), I regularly receive inquiries about my implementation of some Indieweb features on this website. I have always been openly enthusiastic about the long overdue regulation of the use of personal data in a technologised world, even though I too see the sometimes almost unsolvable challenges that some of these rules pose in practice. My primary motivation for promoting privacy-aware design, however, have never been legal requirements, but the belief in shaping technology based on people-centredness, respect and transparency.
Hence, it is with a mix of curiousness and concern that I try to wrap my head around some of the challenges of creating social interactions in a decentralised manner, while respecting the privacy of people and keeping them in control over their own data …at the same time meeting the strict requirements of (EU) privacy laws.
One of the things I have been fascinated by for years is the Indieweb – a movement that aims to develop and establish techniques for social interactions on the open web; much like the “closed silos” of social media, but in a decentralised manner where users retain sovereignty over their content.
Authors post all their content on their own website, then use POSSE syndication mechanisms to share it elsewhere (e.g. to reach audiences on Twitter, Flickr, Facebook).
When other Indieweb users interact with this content by replying, liking, bookmarking or sharing on their own sites, their websites send a notification using the Webmentions protocol, allowing the original author to read and possibly (often automatically) publish these responses.
In an extension of that logic, it is also widespread practice to pull in the backfeed of social interactions from other platforms that do not send Webmentions themselves (for example Facebook comments, Twitter likes, reposts, RSVPs etc.), using either specifically tailored pieces of code or free “backfeed proxy” services like Brid.gy.
It is a brilliant loop: Authors always keep the master copy of their content, enable others to consume the content in their preferred channel, and aggregate feedback and follow-ups in the context of the canonical copy.
I’ve been using some of these mechanisms for a long time and it’s been working well and aggregating feedback nicely. It is actually a fascinating feature. Yet, a few observations have always unsettled me regarding my implementation – in particular of the social silo backfeed.
First of all, I regularly notice more Twitter users “liking” my syndication tweet than the number of clicks the (unfortunately compulsory) t.co click counter reports. This indicates that “liking a Tweet” does not necessarily reflect an endorsement or feedback for my 2000-word article that tweet was linked to, but may as well just be a user’s way of bookmarking interesting tweets, a way to signal to me that my efforts around a certain topic is appreciated, a general “poke”-like social interaction – in short: a Twitter “like” does not equal a reflected “favouriting” of my full blog post.
Image caption: Often seen on Twitter: users explicitly state in their bio that “likes” are not endorsements but personal bookmarks. Displaying such interaction as a “like” on a connected blog misrepresents the original intention.
Displaying a Twitter “like” as a “like” under my blog content does therefore not always reflect the intention of the person who clicked that button. Changing such meaning without affirmative action by the individual concerned is, in my opinion, at least questionable.
Secondly, while a Twitter user technically “publishes” a message for all world to see as they like or retweet a tweet, the consequence that simply pushing a button within Twitter will result in their profile picture, name and “endorsement” being displayed on a third-party website may not be understood.
Presenting such users’ actions with their full name and mugshot on a website (inevitably getting their names indexed for that website by search engines) makes these interactions more public than users may intend. Such “surprise” processing of personal data is always a red flag when designing for pricacy (and, for example under the GDPR, definitely risky terrain in legal terms).
This had been previously identified on the Indieweb wiki, with a handful of documented approaches to tackle the issue; all based on publishing a note about the backfeed practice more or less prominently on the silo profile or feed. For me personally, none of the discussed solutions fulfilled my requirement, wanting to ensure that I only process data of users fully aware of what I am doing.
Thirdly, while the idea behind pulling in the social backfeed is about “owning the conversation” around my content, an Indieweb site is at the same time also taking ownership of other peoples’ content, expressions and conversations – this comes with responsibilities. The Webmention protocol in principle supports edit and delete commands, i.e. if another Indieweb user edits a former reply to my post, they can send an automated notice, which then should update or remove the response on the receiving end.
When pulling in social silo feedback, this is not necessarily provided for – at least with most current implementations, “unliking” a tweet later will not reliably remove it from a site with a backfeed. Definitely not something that privacy practitioners nor privacy legislators like to see.
Image caption: A Twitter user should be (and by t&c of Twitter is, including API use) always able to revoke a “like” without a trace.
Encouraged by deep discussions on general questions of tracking, privacy and webmentions at a Homebrew Website Club Berlin meeting in early 2017, I got the motivation to rethink my backfeed design based on these observations – to better reflect the nature of these interactions, but also to demo and test-drive “privacy-aware web design” and the application of the “minimum actionable dataset” design principle.
I was soon to find out that these objectives may easily clash with the underlying “enable social interaction” objective of the Indieweb.
N.B. This text does in no way constitute legal advice. I am not a lawyer, and not qualified to provide legal advice. All content, provided solely for informational purposes, has been researched with greatest care, but to create legally compliant solutions, you should always consult a lawyer or solicitor.The EU’s GDPR regulation, enforced as of 25 May 2018, sets tight rules on processing personal data, with possible implications when displaying syndicated data from other sources.
Most of the data required in order to display a backfeed is “personal data” in the GDPR sense: the name of the person, the URL to their Twitter profile, the avatar image, all fall under the rules of the regulation – triggering high requirements as to the rights of the people concerned (and, contrary to some voices, there is no reason to believe that it having been published elsewhere would render it any less “personal data” in a legal sense; the only difference could be that it being publicly available may shift the weights when trying to justify the applicability of “legitimate interest” as the legal grounds for processing, rather than consent/contract).
Given that, in the case of syndicated backfeeds, no silo user actually interacts with the Indieweb site directly makes it for example almost impossible to inform them about the processing of their data, as required by Art. 12-14 GDPR.
Furthermore, the latest version of Twitter’s Developer Policy document, effective as of 18 June 2017, for instance requires API users to only display Tweets still available on Twitter (ref. C.4). This means that displaying Twitter backfeed messages would formally require to at least verify all silo replies every time before displaying them. This is one of many rules in Twitter’s terms that obviously relate to the GDPR: Twitter users have the right to delete their data, and Twitter has to ensure that every API user who had accessed that data also deletes it, in order to fulfil their own legal obligations.
social proof: being able to show that others have read and reacted to content may increase its value or reputation; an aspect whose importance varies significantly from person to person (myself and a lot of my peers mainly publish for their own motives, not for building reputation, but it obviously is a very valid motive for a backfeed).
I then moved on to implement what I – at the time – believed to be a good solution to solve the ethical issues I saw in the original “full silo backfeed” feature.
just displaying the amount of feedback and linking it back to where it can be assessed still adds “social proof”, as the names and faces of strangers do not add any more value to this as does a backlink to where these could be accessed and verified as genuine reactions.
The only aspect negatively impacted by anonymizing the backfeed is the facilitation of interactions between those interacting with my content; this is an obvious shortcoming (especially knowing that this facilitation is one of the core objectives of the Indieweb), but since we are acting in a public context it might be the price to pay for protecting other individuals’ privacy. This is where aforementioned clash between privacy objectives and Indieweb objectives becomes most tangible.
Intentionality of providing feedback to be presented on the original content’s website is only given with “genuine” webmentions, i.e. if a user reacts to a post using their own website or a service specifically designed to send out reactions as webmentions (such as Indieweb sites); any automated silo backfeed from third-party networks is not in most user’s initial intention; even though, within the Indieweb community, users might expect such functionality.
An explicit desire to publicly comment on a piece of web content could primarily be assumed when a user writes a commentary along with the reaction (such as a retweet with a comment, or a reply message on Twitter), in which case presenting it on the canonical website copy could potentially be thought of as a kind of “quote” as a common social convention; in other silo actions, such as simply pressing a retweet or favourite button, the publication of that expression is of more implicit nature (i.e. not all users may always be aware of becoming a publisher, in particular with favouriting, as these are commonly not very exposed, e.g. may not be indexed by search engines).
Following this train of thought, I changed the implementation of social silo backfeeds on my site: I decided to “anonymize” all reactions that I consider to be potentially unintentional (regarding their prominent public display, notwithstanding the fact that it is of course, unless deleted, public information by nature) and of rather implicit nature (as in: how conscious a user may be of their action).
In order to maintain the great value of convenience, archiving, aggregation, facilitation and social proof, I decided not to hide the interactions completely, but rather ensure that the individuals’ names and portraits do no longer show up on the site publicly. They are still linked to the original interactions (simple hyperlinks to the silo copy of my content, indicating that “I have been made aware of feedback there”) and can be followed up within the silo UI as long as they have not been deleted.
Image caption: The backfeed section on this website after implementing the “anonymized” design of proxied Twitter reactions; on a detail note: I also changed “liked” to “fav’ed” in the counter feature, to further reflect that not all of these may have truly “liked” what I wrote.
Furthermore, to the logged-in admin user (i.e. myself), all names and avatars would still be shown as before – ensuring the ease of conversation overview that I was primarily looking for when I decided to “take ownership of my content and its surrounding conversations”. This in a way resembles implementations of many social network silos, where visibility of “reactions” can be limited to a smaller audience than a post.
Implementing the change was rather straightforward. Since I had always cached silo users’ avatars on my own server, all I had to do was to instead generate and store a pixelated copy of each avatar in the process (as a design element, avoiding to use “egg heads” or other generic placeholders) and change the WordPress template to serve anonymized markup to anybody but myself.
Silo users (e.g. on Twitter) no longer would be surprised about finding their name and image, along with a potentially misinterpreted “like” action, on my website – and by linking back to the original silo interactions, the silo users would stay in full control over their own content (for example to delete it) while it would still be easily accessible from my site. At the same time, I believe that this solution solves potential conflicts with silo T&Cs (with the “delete” requirement the only one that I am actually aware of; given the complex structure of Twitter’s terms and conditions spread over various documents, I’ve never been able to determine for example the copyright questions around displaying avatar images from Twitter outside of the Twitter-provided embed features).
Now, I have spent a good share of my awake time over the last half year on complementing my privacy-led design perspective with deep insight into the legal field, familiarizing myself thoroughly with the GDPR. This was not an intentional move at first (really, what designer-researcher wants to become a privacy law expert?), but when advocating privacy-centred design practice, fluency with the complex legislation is a must. And complex it is. But, I admit, also extremely fascinating.
Reflecting over the “silo backfeed” once again, I today see a range of further issues, even after redesigning the feature last year. Most importantly: I was still storing personal data on my server that I had obtained without the “data subject” (GDPR-speak for the person whose data it is) being aware of it. Even though it is not displayed to anybody but myself, the name and URL of the silo user still got stored in the database – a processing activity of personal data, falling under the GDPR’s rules.
In order to maximise compliance with the GDPR, I recently did an audit of my database (in this case: the WordPress database) to identify any personal data being processed. This is the first step in order to document the legal grounds for processing: processing personal data is by default always prohibited unless the “data controller” (the website owner) can prove it to fulfil one of the six requirements of Art. 6(1) GDPR.
Image caption: The WordPress _comments table contains identifiable information about the Twitter user (real/nick name and a brid.gy URL containing their Twitter user ID).
Image caption: The WordPress _commentmeta table contains several fields carrying user name or Twitter ID of the person, and a URL to their portrait image.
All fields marked yellow in the screenshots above represent “personal data” as per the GDPR definition (here: information that allows to identify an individual), and can only be processed/stored based on one of the six legal grounds for processing defined in Art. 6. As said before, the fact that it was retrieved from a public service does not change that. In order to adhere to the law, the website owner has to comply with the requirements imposed by the GDPR.
This Regulation does not apply to the processing of personal data by a natural person in the course of a purely personal or household activity and thus with no connection to a professional or commercial activity.
Based on the German legal literature I have assessed, this would make the GDPR applicable to a personal website as soon as its content has any connection to professional or commercial activity, hence not only applying to freelancers, who undoubtedly are affected, but e.g. to any web professional who discusses web technology on their personal site (the entire “Indieweb generation 1“?).
Legal basis for processing a silo backfeed?
This is where things become complicated. Nothing unusual, given that it is May 2018: this kind of tricky questions – where existing practices suddenly turn out to be in conflict with one or several of the requirements – are exactly what keeps web professionals and privacy lawyers in the EU so busy these days.
Despite “consent” getting the biggest media attention, the most commonly applied basis for processing in practice is “legitimate interest”: the data controller carries out (and documents) an auditable assessment that their interest weighs stronger than the privacy interest of the data subject.
In the case of displaying aggregated reactions to web content, I can see that a “legitimate interest” argumentation could possibly be defended in principle. After all, the personal data in question is already public (always a strong factor towards the interest of the data controller) and the data is – depending on the site content – of rather low impact. Having a feature in place that validates displayed reactions for possible deletions on their originating site would be another strong argument on the “pro” side. On the “con” side, I would at least list my three initial headaches that triggered this entire process.
Yet, being able to demonstrate that the site owner’s interest is greater than the need to protect the data subject’s privacy is not enough. The GDPR still requires that the data subject must be informed about the processing. With data being aggregated from the API of a social media silo, that is almost impossible.
To my positive surprise (this is an understatement: to my greatest joy), the exact question of Indieweb silo backfeeds was brought up on the recent episode 55 of the “Rechtsbelehrung” podcast, one of the most prominent German podcasts on legal questions of digital technology, with an equally prominent lawyer in the GDPR field, Dr. Thomas Schwenke (author of a popular GDPR guide for entrepreneurs, and in my opinion one of the go-to sources for solid online legal information in Germany).
As with all things GDPR, it boils down to risk assessment. While Dr. Schwenke presents a possible way to declare the processing lawful by building on the fact that Twitter users have accepted third-party use of their data, he also (implicitly, in the very last words before moving on to the next topic) refers to one of the big risk factors of the new legislation: the data controller (here: the Indieweb site owner) would be responsible to present proof that the data subject (here: Twitter user) was indeed aware of this particular reuse. No matter how well the backfeed feature is described in the privacy notice of the site (an absolute requirement as well), the challenge remains that the site owner is responsible for being able to prove (when challenged) that the data subject could indeed be aware of the processing.
At this point I need to specify my outbreak of joy described above: I was mostly happy about (a) the Indieweb idea surfacing in a podcast with over 10.000 listeners and (b) the fact that a reliable expert would give some comments on the topic. Less reason to party is the fact that his brief initial assessment reassured me that my own hunch had been correct: processing the personal data that is “people’s reactions on publicly accessible social media” is indeed a legal swamp (I first wrote “legal minefield”, but needless alarmism is not how I like to get my points across, so keeping it neutral).
From what I understood based on many discussion over the last months, the Indieweb is not the only social technology stack facing this kind of challenges; Mastodon, for example, with its federated model of content distribution, also faces conflicts between technological possibilities and potentially undesirable legal implications for the users (off-topic here, but it was related to Mastodon servers potentially hosting federated third-party content that is considered illegal under some legislations).
A permission layer for Webmentions?
Every site owner processing Webmentions would need a means to document that the individual from whom the Webmention originates is aware of the processing it will undergo and has no objections to it (the latter does not have to be “consent”, which comes with a range of practical consequences under GDPR, but could also be the provision of a means to object under a “legitimate interest” justification).
This comes first and foremost from the ethical consideration that a person’s data should never be processed without them being in the know and ok with it. In practice, however, the maybe even more burning issue is that the (EU-based) website owner would have to be able to prove that in a case of dispute.
I could not find anything documented, but have been made aware that some initial ideas have been discussed at IndieWebCamps. One such idea would be to implement a mechanism that informs a Webmention sender on the first time such message is being received from that source, and only process it under the condition that it is either not refused (an opt-out approach, probably to be considered when relying on “legitimate interest”) or confirmed (opt-in, as common under the “consent” category of GDPR legal grounds). On a related session at the IndieWebCamp Nürnberg 2017, the particular question of copyright for profile images (in a scenario of Webmentions between Indieweb sites) had already been discussed, leading to some ideas on including a license in the markup.
In the light of recent developments on the legal front, approaches to solve the issue appear to be one of the maybe most urgent needs for a people-first federated social web. For now, with mainly Indieweb enthusiasts using Webmentions, the generic use case (not through social silo proxies) could probably still be considered to take place within a community that is aware of the implications, but once Webmentions mature into a feature in bigger platforms or software like WordPress, it can no longer be assumed that every sender of a Webmention is aware of it. As a matter of fact, it is already today possible to send a mention on somebody else’s behalf (the protocol only verifies that the submitted URL indeed links back to a post, but not who made the request to process it as a Webmention).
Compliant backfeeds in the future?
Using a social media silo backfeed in the way it is commonly implemented today may not be entirely impossible from the legal perspective, as presented in the “Rechtsbelehrung” podcast (building the argumentation on Twitter users having consented to the service’s terms on third-party data use during sign-up, informing comprehensively about it in the privacy statement, and ensuring that the implementation is 100% compliant with all applicable API, developer and service terms). Yet, as also becomes clear from the podcast, this argumentation comes with heaps of potential points of failure that could later lead to it being declared unlawful in a legal dispute (did the user really agree to this specific use in the Twitter T&Cs? were the Twitter terms really understandable enough for the user? does the backfeed solution truly adhere to every single API rule in place, e.g. almost instant deletion of mentions based on deleted Tweets?).
From an ethical design perspective, however, I still have a stomach ache thinking of publishing the name and image of unknowing Twitter users on an unrelated website, presenting a “like” potentially intended as a bookmark of a short tweet as a “like” for a long essay on some blog site they have never visited. Here, too, some kind of transparency/consent mechanism would be required; and while I am sorry to not have a ready solution to offer, the idea of simply warning about a backfeed in a sticky post on top of a timeline is not really something I consider sufficient. Likely, the solution for the silo backfeeds would have to come after a solution for Webmentions in general has been developed.
Since the data to display Webmentions and/or backfeed reactions is personal data under the GDPR, this comes with further responsibilities related to the rights of individuals. Even when the processing of these interactions is based on a (hopefully stable) legal basis, implementation challenges remain as to the rights of individuals to demand information, rectification, deletion of their data; potentially transferability as well. On a small scale, this can be carried out manually, but for scalable solutions, any website dealing with personal data would have to be able to do that in an automated manner.
Some communities are already actively working on solutions to provide CMS plugins with a centralized GDPR dashboard to deal with such requests; for example GDPR WP as the most prominent initiative for WordPress (apparently even becoming a core feature in the very near future).
As we build techniques to display federated social interactions on websites, dealing with individuals’ exercise of their privacy rights will be another important foundation for a future-proof and privacy-respecting framework (and, not to forget, legal compliance).
As you can tell from the length of this post, I have been putting a lot of thought into the privacy implications of Webmentions over the past year. I still believe in the idea of decentralised social networks, and I do want to see Webmentions and similar inventions succeed. When approaching current implementations with a strictly (maybe even radically, if it serves the purpose to spark a debate) privacy-centred view, however, it seems that there is a mind-boggling range of issues to be solved if the Indieweb – or other decentralisation movements – want to be not only in control of their own content and interactions, but also deal respectfully with the content and interactions of others.
These are major challenges for the big social networks, and the GDPR was not least authored with their often questionable practices in mind, so it cannot really be expected that it would be easy for the underdogs, either. If anything, I have come to believe that the decentralised nature of solutions like the Indieweb makes the management of privacy interests even more intricate. By building a solution based on making everybody a website owner (and hence, many of them a “data controller” under the GDPR) as is the core of the Indieweb idea, we cannot rely on the same comfort of making all participants sign a common contract and then operate freely within a walled garden as the big silos do.
I wrote this article to document my approach – for open discussion in true Indieweb manner – and do not intend to judge others. Most importantly, I hope this text can trigger a widespread discussion about the privacy implications of building a social network that is entirely open. I admittedly draw my conclusions from a rather strict ethical baseline, but do respect that others’ compass may be calibrated differently; new solutions can only emerge from constructive exchange over different positions. Maybe this article, and my recent thoughts on “The GDPR as a call to practice ethical design” can be worthwhile contributions to such process?
Image caption: Taking the human rights -based approach to “GDPR compliance” starts from the core value of the right to privacy, imposes strict limitations to the collection and processing of data, and only in last instance defines the lawful ground for processing (illustration from my post on the GDPR and ethical design).
Given the considerations above, and the GDPR enforcement deadline three weeks away, I decided to at least temporarily remove the Twitter backfeed from my site, delete the personal data accrued in the database, and disable my Brid.gy account (shedding a little tear, as it truly is an ingenious concept and service). While I still believe that my pixelated and de-personalised presentation of the backfeed solved at least most of the ethical issues, I personally don’t want to jump through the hoops of drafting a privacy statement with a shaky argumentation about the lawfulness of storing all that data. At the same time, this releases me from the need to think about how to deal with individuals’ requests as they may execute their rights under the GDPR; it makes this site less social, though – a strong motivation to keep thinking about solutions!
I will keep my Webmentions endpoint open (for now relying on “legitimate interest” and the fact that Webmentions are still a niche feature), but all incoming “generic” Webmentions will be moderated, only accepting mentions from sites that make use of Webmentions themselves; that way, I can safely argue that the sending user was aware of the implications. All other incoming Webmentions will be deleted within a few days – a “privacy by default” feature in the GDPR sense.
Maybe this is also the first step in moving away from the overall reliance on Twitter as a notification channel? Quite frankly, most of my Indieweb contacts still appear to subscribe my posts over Twitter, not the open web – something I would like to change. The recent activity surrounding an “Indie Reader” is a welcome sign in that direction.
Talking to some social activists at last year’s Datensummit 17 once again highlighted how protecting other users’ privacy when sharing content of conversations not intended to be publicized widely (even if they may be undertaken in a public space; this is an important consideration!) is of great importance. And as a publisher, it is everybody’s responsibility to consider these aspects. Just the fact that I can aggregate a “facepile” showcasing everybody who clicked “like” on a tweet of mine does not mean that my motivations for doing so are more important than their right to stay in control over that interaction.
Please feel free to comment – below or via Webmentions – if this triggered any thoughts. I am looking forward to collaborate on working out how privacy can be a core aspect of the Indieweb.
wow, quite a nuanced analysis. thanks for doing this research and writing it up! i’ve linked to this from the GDPR section of Bridgy’s docs.
from a strictly legal GDRP compliance perspective, we (including a lawyer) still tentatively concluded that Bridgy may be exempt from much or all of the GDPR because it’s non-commercial, it only handles fully public data, and that data is generally only sent to personal web sites. details.
the ethics, of course, are an entirely separate question. i myself haven’t addressed them at all yet, but you have thoughtfully and deeply here. thank you for your perspective!
I have been thinking about this issue a lot. GDPR seems to be everywhere, and I’m not sure that storing information on interactions is a privacy issue, but I want to respect people’s concerns. GDPR or not, I do not think this is a use case the law intended to prevent.
You use the WordPress suite of plugins. And being as I’m as regular contributor, there are a few ideas I’ve floating that I think are a good start, and invite you to contribute more.
Add text to the Webmention form that explains how to use it to delete a mention. Since the form can be used without supporting webmentions on your own site, this is something that should be made clear.
Add ability to edit mentions, to correct inaccurate data.
Add setting to store more/less data.
Explain how to request a takedown of information.
Allow a different level of processing for ‘native’ webmentions vs backfeed run through a service like Bridgy.
This doesn’t solve all of the problems necessarily, but I think these ideas are a good faith effort in that direction.
Huh. Maybe I’ll just switch off all my websites and the internet and have a nap instead.
So langsam kommt der 25.05.2018 immer näher und ich hatte gehofft das die DSGVO für meinen kleinen Blog hier nicht relevant ist. Gedanken macht man sich aber trotzdem und man liest auch einiges darüber in den Medien. Dazu gibt es schon viele hilfreiche Blogbeiträge mit Tipps.
Was mir aber bisher gefehlt hat, war das Indieweb Thema und der Datenschutz. Denn eigene Kommentare, IP-Adressen usw. speichere ich nicht hier im Blog. Allerdings werden sehr wohl Webmentions von Twitter & Co angezeigt.
Just the fact that I can aggregate a “facepile” showcasing everybody who clicked “like” on a tweet of mine does not mean that my motivations for doing so are more important than their right to stay in control over that interaction.
This, and his conclusion to disable the webmention/backfeed process, plus deleting all data aggregated this way, to be on the 'save' side, or ethically, on the 'right' side, illustrates how the GDPR of course effects even the smallest part of 'the web'.
As it is intentionally, since 'the personal data', and not 'who uses the data' is in focus. Of course there are differences between a multibillion data processing adplatform and a personal blog by a concerned web citizen, but the (mis)use of data as in 'whoops, I didn't know that my profile pic would turn up on every bridgy/webmention/backfeed enabled site in the world, and getting indexed by search engines in that site's context', well, looking from that point of view, the (mis)use is there.
And while I still think that there has to be a leverage of intention and possible damage, I do see how this gets really really tricky really quick. And that's why I am kind of divided in my thoughts about this whole GDPR / DSGVO thing.
The other part however is quite pleased with all the discussion and action that is happening right now, since people now are forced to think about privacy implications of their (design) decitions. Unfortunatly, not many are aware of the chances this brings, the majority still doesn't care, but only wants to get out of this current hassle with a minimum amount of effort.
Very telling is how many of my clients confirm that they really don't use google analytics much, yet they have full IP logging. They won't even notice a difference if the IPs are masked, but prior to the current GDPR hassle wave, didn't care to change their settings.
Still, the amount of research, of legal counsil, of work needed in the markup of year-old sites (not even starting to look for implication in-house) – all this currently sheds a very bad light on GDPR in most people's mind, and for the average web user it'll bring just another onslought of disclaimers and policies to read/click through. And since very few really think about changing their practise, not much will change in terms of the real data processing. This is my pessimistic view of things. My sarcastic view of things waits for the wave of legal battles that'll start because of wording in the policies and/or the confusion what is to be considered a 'personal' site.
Very interesting times ahead. Interesting as in this chinese curse 'May You Live In Interesting Times'.
Sebastian, first of all, thank you for your detailed write up on this issue. I think much of your roadmap is worthwhile, and of great interest.
I cannot, however, say that I am convinced by your contentions regarding the effect of GDPR and indieweb sites. In particular, I think your definitions are excessively broad, and you elide much information from both the Regulation itself and the Recitals.
It is quite clear, from the highlighted section, that information which is provided in the context of social networking is itself not a subject of the Regulation. I am curious as to why you omitted that second sentence in your article?
I also do not understand your position that German Legal Literature means that any personal website where someone publishes anything regarding an area related to their professional activity automatically becomes a commercial activity for the purpose of GDPR. The GDPR has not, as yet, become law. There is no precedent support for your position in the corpus of the ECJ (nor could there be). There is disputation at all levels of the ECJ on the question of when an activity ceases to be personal activity (Lindqvist, for example, or Rynes) however it is notable that the Working Group regarding GDPR specifically cited the dictum in Lindqvist as incorrect, and both Article 9 and Recitals surrounding same were designed to place restraint on that dictum. The original intention was to broaden the exemption more dramatically, but this was resisted strongly by a curious alliance of authoritarians and anti-governmental fractions in the European Parliament. Nonetheless, the dictum is significantly broader than that which pertained in 1998. (For a more detailed look at this issue, see for example this article by Brendan Van Elsonoy, legal advisor at the Belgian Data Protection Authority.
I would be, naturally, happy to be proven wrong, however I simply cannot accept that your various statements regarding the law of the matter are correct in the absence of evidence to support them. Unfortunately, I don’t speak German, and am unable to comment on Dr. Schwenke’s positions in the podcast. All I can comment on is the statements in your bulleted list.
Informed by whom? By which site? Consent to the viewing, accessing and storage of public data is provided in the Regulation. What is the basis for this claim?
Again - on what basis? Where is the support within the GDPR for this claim?
I’m sorry if this sounds churlish, but as a lawyer I refuse to take such claims as meaningful in the absence of supporting rationale. Like Dr. Schwenke, I’m a practitioner as opposed to an academic of law. Like most such practitioners, I’ve been undertaking GDPR training in the last two years. Not once in any of that training has there been any support for the type of legal minefield you propose. I’ve spoken about Indieweb components, including backfeed, with legal advisors to the Irish, Dutch and Belgian DPAs. None of them have raised objections of the nature mentioned by you as being required by GDPR.
GDPR is scary enough as it is. It is also an incredible opportunity, a moment in which we can look to a future absent the abuse visited upon us all by Corporations with a skewed view of rights and values. I look forward to it for those reasons, and I welcome all efforts to secure that future.
As someone involved in K-12 education, I always wonder where the #IndieWeb might sit. This analysis of webmentions and privacy from Sebastian Gregor poses so many questions and things to consider. I was particularly intrigued about the questions of dragging in ‘likes and favourites’ which might be used and interpreted in different ways.
Just thinking about my own use, I usually use the ‘Like’ post-kind to recognise posts that I find interesting, but do not have anything to add (that would be a bookmark.) This does not mean I ‘like’ the post or agree with everything written. This is where confusion can occur.
I think this is one of those posts that I will come back to as my knowledge of webmentions and the #IndieWeb continues to grow and evolve.
Daniel, thank you for your elaborate response to my article on "The Indieweb privacy challenge".
As I explicitly state whenever writing about the GDPR: I am not a lawyer. In recent months, I spent more hours on legal research and debates than many designers ever will, but I always inform readers that I am not formally trained. I put a lot of effort in finding the most reputable sources and put great care in formulating any legal references as the understanding that informed my design work, not universal fact. Therefore, any reader jumping to legal conclusions would be misframing, not me. Alarmism really is not my intention, but I believe it must - especially in the unfortunate absence of definitive rulings - be allowed to explore potentially broad interpretations of the GDPR. Speculative thinking is a powerful tool in design. I, too, see the GDPR as a great opportunity and am excited to see the change it already starts to entail on our society.
From what I have learned, the German judicative's interpretation of privacy laws has traditionally been always amongst the strictest; maybe that, at least to some degree, can explain why my sources tell a different story than the perspective you present. Could such dogmatic differences be the reason why the latest legal commentaries by senior German experts indeed suggest a very restrictive interpretation of Art 2(2) GDPR (Kühling/Buchner, DS-GVO/BDSG 2. Aufl, Art 2 Rn 23+26) and state that Rec 18 GDPR defines the precondition of complete absence of any relation to professional or economical activity (ibid., Art 2 Rn 23)?
Not citing the second sentence of Rec 18(1) in my post was not with the intent to falsify its message, but because several legal commentaries I have analysed explicitly interpret the "social networks" exception as not applicable if personal data is made accessible to an undefined audience (e.g. ibid., Art 2 Rn 25) and define "personal or household activity" as by nature being the opposite of public, "öffentlichkeitsfeindlich" in German (Gola, DSGVO, Art 2 Rn 21; Paal/Pauly/Ernst, DS-GVO, Art 2 Rn 21). Other commentaries, too, state that publishing on a public website would be beyond the boundaries of what is considered "personal" (in this case referring to the similar exception in pre-2018 German privacy law), no matter the subjectively intended target group; herein reliable access control with a limited audience would be a relevant criterion (Plath, BDSG, §1 Rn 30; Simitis/Dammann, BDSG, §1 Rn 151).
A 2016 article in Germany's most prestigeous legal weekly NJW (Schantz, NJW 2016 p.1843) appears to be in almost diametral opposition to the position by van Alsenoy re the ECJ in casa Lindqvist and the interpretation of the GDPR trilogue outcome on Rec18: it claims that, despite an explicit "limited audience" requirement to the Art 2(2) "household exception" not finding its way into the final text as desired by the EP, there "are no signs that there was an intention to loosen this interpretation" (paraphrased translation mine).
These are just to highlight that I did not make up any of my assumptions: everything written about the GDPR in the original article is based directly on - in scientific rigour generally more than one - legal professionals' opinion (being a social scientist myself, I obviously know there are always different schools, but in my world view that does not render one opinion false unless empirically proven). As a lawyer you are no question more qualified to measure these, but neither a legal debate nor legal advice were ever the intent of my article.
I wrote above paragraphs to provide you with some of the requested evidence to support my argumentation (even though unfortunately all German literature, I believe it is good to put out my sources for anybody to verify), and - more importantly - to show that, while we indeed appear to have different standpoints, my presentation is not based on malinformed scaremongering or undue elisions. Admittedly my perspective is potentially biased by chiefly building on German sources only, but I believe to have thoroughly done my homework as far as a non-lawyer possibly needs to, when writing on their design blog and presenting legal assumptions in the subjunctive.
In addition, I want to point out that Germany is the country where a website owner can already get into trouble for a malformed "Impressum" imprint (not its absence, even just omitting f.ex. their snail mail address or publishing their e-mail address as an image file rather than screenreader-accessible HTML text). It is likely only a question of time until the originally well-intended, but today commonly misused, instrument of the "Abmahnung" will be utilized by a certain breed of lawyers to abuse unsuspecting website owners as cash cows starting May 25. This, among other reasons, is why I believe it is not alarmist but only sensible to discuss potentially overseen design-inherent risks with my (to a good share German) blog audience - always with my disclaimer, never sensationalist, but as a worst-case scenario to speculatively assess. Since the imprint requirement of §5 TMG has a (to my knowledge largely similar, though I did not look into the details), "private/household" exception, a pessimist could imply that any website owner who so far considered themselves needing an Impressum might also be subject to the rules of the GDPR - on German Indieweb sites, the Impressum is almost a staple feature, precisely out of fear of the costs incurred by such "Abmahnung".
Ultimately, while I genuinely appreciate that you point out your disagreement with my line of argumentation, above discussion leads - and I take from your intro that you are aware of that - pretty far off the main point of my article: the central question raised is one of ethics and design. And while the GDPR at this point indeed lacks precedents in case law or the ECJ corpus to definitively determine its applicability, the Indieweb community can today start to discuss about ideas to tackle certain implicit, opaque or surprising aspects of the Webmention and backfeed mechanisms. As a designer and concerned citizen, I see the GDPR primarily as a formal manifestation of the universal human right to privacy: its ethical underpinnings should be motivation for everybody to review how we deal with personal data. As the Indieweb community is shaping universal building blocks for the social web of the future, I believe that constructively questioning the "what we do is entirely private" argument is an imperative.
Thank you once again for your comments, I appreciate and respect your point of view. That said, if you have an opportunity, I for my part would be very interested to read about the assessments you mention to have received from the various DPAs regarding Webmentions and backfeed, as that could introduce a welcome specificy to this debate.
This week, Chris Aldrich and I got together a bit late…so I was a bit more quiet than normal.
With the GDPR regulations coming into effect in Europe May 25th, privacy seems to be on everyone’s mind. This week, we tackle what webmentions are, using them for backfeed, and the privacy implications.
Interesting piece on GDPR impact for #indieweb webmentions.

References: Art. 12
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