if you don't like your posts on a forum

[Aspergers_Aspie]

if you don't like your posts on a forum you can legally request the removal of forum posts under data protection laws like the GDPR (in the UK/EU), which provides a "right to erasure" (right to be forgotten). Organisations must take reasonable steps to delete personal data, including forum posts, if it is no longer necessary, consent is withdrawn, or it was unlawfully processed.

 

[Judge]

if you don't like your posts on a forum you can legally request the removal of forum posts under data protection laws like the GDPR (in the UK/EU), which provides a "right to erasure" (right to be forgotten). Organisations must take reasonable steps to delete personal data, including forum posts, if it is no longer necessary, consent is withdrawn, or it was unlawfully processed.

Yes, however my understanding is that it can only apply to forum members who physically reside in the UK or European Union. Particularly given that the servers on this forum do not physically reside there. That such extraterritoriality goes only so far.

However there may still be one huge caveat. How they do or don't go about enforcing it. They might be quite picky about what cases they look at, and what ones are filed in a waste basket. After all, think of the logistics involved on a global basis with limited governmental resources.

To my mind such laws exist largely to pacify the public, but little else. When they are more likely to be wrapped in "red tape" bureaucracy and stay there until people get tired of waiting for a resolve that never actually comes.

Does GDPR Require EU Data Hosting?

 

[Outdated]

I don't understand this "right to be forgotten". It simply doesn't make sense. Try using it in the context of a spoken conversation - you say something you regret, you instantly ask the other person to forget that you just said that and they agree.

Did the other person really forget?
Can you now carry on as if the unfortunate statement you wish forgotten had never been spoken in the first place?

Australia has gone the other way and is instead making people much more aware of their rights and responsibilities (and liabilities) when operating as a publisher, because when you post messages in a public place you are indeed publishing. And just to hammer that message home we've been arresting and charging some people over their posts with charges ranging from "using a carriage service to harass or intimidate" to full blown terrorism charges.