This is interesting. I wonder if you could get away with saying that by storing the cookie you are consenting, in particular as this is _hacker_ news. And you could withdraw consent by simply deleting the cookie. You’d still have your “account” and related comments; I can’t figure out if the comments themselves are “personal data”. I feel like they ought not be though the linkage of author to commend might be.
btw I’m using HN as a convenient example; i don’t consider the maintainers to be naughty.
> I wonder if you could get away with saying that by storing the cookie you are consenting
No. Consent is opt-in only. It must be "freely given, specific, informed and unambiguous indication of the data subject's wishes by which he or she, by a statement or by a clear affirmative action, signifies agreement to the processing of personal data relating to him or her" (Recital 11)
>And you could withdraw consent by simply deleting the cookie. You’d still have your “account” and related comments
The data would remain on HN, and thus would still be processed by YC. If deleting the cookie deleted the data then that would be okay, but it doesn't.
>; I can’t figure out if the comments themselves are “personal data”. I feel like they ought not be though the linkage of author to commend might be.
Personal data is any data about an identified or identifiable individual. So not every comment would - by itself - be personal data. But some would be, and the corpus of comments by an individual might be considered personal data in the whole.
>btw I’m using HN as a convenient example; i don’t consider the maintainers to be naughty.
I find it frankly incredulous that YC doesn't know about the GDPR, and yet they refuse to comply. Does that not qualify as "naughty"?
They are small potatoes and may simply not care about European fines as afaik they have no presence in Europe. Next year they will be subject to CCPA and if they care to support that, GDPR will pretty much be supportd too.
btw I’m using HN as a convenient example; i don’t consider the maintainers to be naughty.