Can a user be deleted?

(New topic continuing from Murena Fairphone 4 now available for pre-order - #30 by FairphoneHulk to avoid too much off-topic discussion there)

It seems the user is gone over there. (= the /e/OS / Murena forum)
Perhaps he got to know something he wasn’t supposed to know … and now we know it, too.

grafik

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But where is he gone?
I thought that a user cannot be deleted, just deactivated…

  1. Different forum, different operators, different modus operandi (even if it uses the same forum software in this case).

  2. By deactivating I guess you mean anonymising. This is a common option in case a user wishes to leave, so that all posts are kept readable in order to not destroy forum context if possible (example, you can find more posts by such users by starting a search with @anon, you’ll get user suggestions then).
    Suspending an account seems to be an even less intrusive option, found here for instance.
    Deleting a user instead should also be possible, of course, but that might be admin territory instead of moderator territory. Since I’m neither … Any insight for this forum here, @moderators?

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:wink:

Edit: And maybe today was the day of Urs to give himself a new nickname, here he is also no longer ursn…, but @anon83191809

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So again we all need a blitzdingsen…

Es ist weder lustig noch sehr vertrauenserweckend, wenn man nicht mal Herr über seine eigenen Daten ist in einer Umgebung, die sich ach so den anderen sozialen Medien überlegen fühlt.

Aber ich werde Mittel und Wege finden, mich hier ohne Zutun von irgendwelchen vor allem hochnäsigen Leuten zu verabschieden.

There should be a difference between requesting/deleting collated personal data and deleting statements that have been made in a public place (rewriting history), in my opinion.

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GDPR has a “right to be forgotten”. So legally here is no difference really.

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There has to be a way to delete a user and all of their posts. @anon83191809 is completely right. It is illegal for this to not be possible.

The data subject shall have the right to obtain from the controller the erasure of personal data concerning him or her without undue delay and the controller shall have the obligation to erase personal data without undue delay

This very clearly says erasing and not “anonymising”.

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But it only refers to personal data. And all personal data is imho removed.
EDIT: more information can be found e.g. here:

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:100:
And as far as personal data in postings goes, those have been publicly posted ba the users themselves. Should they no longer be able to edit their own postings, sending a request to the moderators will do the trick.
Obviously moderators can not check all postings of a user for personal data (there might be dozens or even hundreds of them). When we recognize such data (as phone-numbers or e-mail) we usually anonymize that data instantly, sending the user a PM, since we don’t want to be the “source” for unwanted spam or cold-calls for anyone.
(And a moderator might not recognize something to be considered personal data by a user, as it might make this user identifiable to someone with a deeper knowledge of that person.)

Ps:
The right to delete data con not cover all the postings, as this would give the user the power to destroy parts of the forum this person has actively participated in. After deleting the postings, there might be threads, that are no longer coherent, as vital parts/arguments are missing; take thread opening posts for an example.
And all that, even though none of the postings are linked to an identifiable person anymore.
Doesn’t even seem logical.

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I don’t even see why would anyone absolutely want its user deleted if all data relative to him ie, login, profile, email, etc… informations have been erased. This is what anonymising a user mean, and that’s perfectly sufficient.
You cannot ever trace back to the user after it’s been fully anonymized, therefore except the will to make life hard for the admin it doesn’t make sense to insist on the request of deleting the user entirely.

It depends upon what is posted. Some content can still be ‘personal’ i.e. relevant only to that user.

However such content having been in the public domain would not really seem to warrant deletion, though it may be requested.

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