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Creating a new SoylentNews privacy policy: Town hall #1

Journal by dalek

I've been approached about working on a new privacy policy for SoylentNews and have agreed to do so. This journal is the first step in that process.

SN currently runs on Rehash, which is written in Perl and dates back to Slash 2.0. Many privacy-related considerations in Rehash are dictated by decisions made by the Slashdot admins nearly 25 years ago when they wrote the original code. The age of this code and its dependencies on tools like mod_perl make it nearly unmaintainable, meaning that SN may implement a new code base sooner rather than later. This is a pivotal time to discuss a new privacy policy for SN, an the decisions made now will likely influence the implementation of whichever new code base powers SN in the future.

SN has three primary stakeholders, which are 1) the ownership, 2) the staff, and 3) the community. To be successful, any site policy needs the support of all three of these stakeholders. That means the community needs to be actively engaged in the process.

My first steps will be to solicit input from the SN community and to spend most of my time listening. There are three important questions to discuss:

1) Problems: What privacy-related considerations are important to you, the members of the SN community? What are your concerns? As long as the issues are reasonably relevant to privacy, anything should be on the table here. This includes things like what user data gets stored, how long it is retained, who has access to it, the right to be forgotten, anonymous commenting, and anything that can reasonably be construed as a privacy issue.

2) Process: All three stakeholders must be supportive of any privacy policy for it to be effective. Therefore, once a privacy policy is drafted, we need a process for all three stakeholders to approve this. I anticipate the biggest questions here will be how you, the members of the SN community, get to voice your support or to request amendments to the policy. What process would the community like us to follow for enacting policy? Do all logged-in users get to vote? Does the community elect representatives?

3) Potential Solutions: Once you, the members of the SN community, make your privacy concerns heard, we need potential solutions for those concerns. These solutions will be limited by a few constraints. To allow for robust discussions and make SN a welcoming community, we need the ability to track abuse of the site (e.g., spam comments, sock puppet account creation, gaming the moderation system, etc...) to prevent disruption of the discussions. SN is required to comply with the laws in relevant jurisdictions such as the United States and the state of Delaware. Any solutions have to be practical, given the limited financial and human resources. Working within those constraints, SN policy should go above and beyond what is merely required by law, and to maximize the privacy of the members of the community.

I'll start by posting three journals at least 7-10 days apart to discuss each of these issues. For this journal, I want to focus on the first point, which is what privacy concerns you have, What is important to you, as members of the SN community, and what do we need to address in the new privacy policy? While any discussion of privacy matters is on-topic in this journal, I'd like to try to keep the discussion focused as much as possible on privacy-related problems that we need to address.

There are a few ground rules in this discussion:

1) If you're giving examples of specific privacy concerns, please don't include actual user names or people. Please use hypothetical terms, or use generic names like "person A" and "person B."

2) The new privacy policy is forward looking, meaning that the discussion should focus on how we can be better in the future, and not on holding people responsible for past mistakes or how the existing code is written.

3) Please keep the discussion civil and welcoming. Everyone deserves a chance to participate in this discussion and to be heard. Please keep the discussion constructive and refrain from posting personal attacks. Privacy is for everyone, and that means everyone deserves to be heard. I ask that you please don't try to dominate the discussion or shout other people down, and instead let everyone make their opinions known.

4) Please keep the discussion on-topic. Any privacy-related matters are on-topic, but issues like story selection are beyond the scope of this policy. Let's keep issues like politics out of this discussion, too.

5) Please don't moderate people down unless they're off-topic, trying to dominate the discussion, shouting people down, or posting personal attacks. Even if you disagree with someone else, please don't moderate them down unless they're violating the ground rules for this discussion. I want everyone to be heard.

I pledge that I'll read every comment that you post. My direct input to this discussion will be minimal, and I probably won't post at all except maybe to answer questions or ask for more detail if appropriate. I'm not here to debate with people. I just want to listen to your concerns. Anonymous Cowards are welcome in this discussion, but all comments that I post will be from the dalek account. I have unchecked the "willing to moderate" box in my user preferences, which means that I am not moderating any comments in this discussion. I am just here to listen.

I want to make these discussions as inclusive as possible. That means I intend to allow Anonymous Coward input to all of these journals. In exchange for keeping these discussions open, I ask that you please keep these discussions on track. I will post future journals, but for now, I want to know what your privacy concerns are, and what topics we need to address in the new privacy policy.

 

Reply to: An Actual Privacy Policy

    (Score: 3, Informative) by NotSanguine on Wednesday May 31, @07:12PM

    by NotSanguine (285) <{NotSanguine} {at} {SoylentNews.Org}> on Wednesday May 31, @07:12PM (#1309092) Homepage

    I adapted the below policy from one I created for a non-profit website I created and managed for some time. Since I adapted it from a site with different needs/requirements, the policy is incomplete and will require additional modifications in order to represent the ideals and interests of SN. But it's a (and, a good one IMNSHO) start.

    dalek and SN management/staff/assignees: Please feel free to use the policy below, in part or in full as you feel appropriate.

    New SoylentNews Privacy Policy v0.01

    SoylentNews.Org Privacy Policy

    Personal Information

    No personal information will be stored on the http://www.SoylentNews.Org [soylentnews.org] site, (except as specifically authorized), and every effort will be made to protect the integrity and privacy of such information.

    SoylentNews.Org, its management, staff or assignees will never sell personal information collected on this site, nor will they use such information for purposes other than specifically related to the operation of the SoylentNews.Org website.

    Under no circumstances will personal information* be stored on the www.SoylentNews.Org [soylentnews.org] site by SoylentNews.Org, its management, staff or assignees.

    [Note: This *may* need to be modified to address personally identifiable subscription information, although I'd prefer that all payment information be stored (briefly) separately, and not in the site's main database. ]

    SoylentNews.Org, its management, staff and assignees will never, under any circumstances reveal email addresses, names, street addresses and/or telephone numbers [N.B.: Since except for subscribers, only an email address, and not necessarily even a valid one is required to register, this only applies to subscribers, whose information should not be stored *at all* after payment confirmation is secured] to anyone without explicit authorization and/or a legal, court-approved order for such information.

    From time to time, SoylentNews.Org may offer services to allow subscribers to contact each other. For these services, SoylentNews.Org, its management and assignees makes no warrantee of fitness for any purpose, including maintaining the privacy of users' personal information.

    All personal information will be held in confidence and will only used for the purposes of managing and administering the https://SoylentNews.Org [soylentnews.org] site. Should such information be shared by users on the site, SoylentNews.Org, its management, staff and assignees disavow any responsibility or liability for the use of that information by third parties for any purpose.

    If a subscriber chooses to share their personal information with other subscribers via any mechanism made available through the SoylentNews.Org web site or other conveyance provided by SoylentNews.Org, its management, staff and assignees disavow any responsibility or liability for the use of that information by third parties for any purpose.

    Under no circumstances will SoylentNews.Org, its management, staff or assignees be liable or otherwise legally responsible for the theft, misuse or other unauthorized use of personal information.

    Comments and Journal Entries:

    Comments and journal entries are owned** by the poster of such comments and journal entries.

    While SoylentNews.Org does reserve its rights under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996 [house.gov], the site, its management, staff and assignees will endeavor to avoid removal of user-submitted content as long as such content is legal and respects the rights of other users***.

    Agreement to, and Severability of, this policy:

    Any person or entity registering on, providing contact information, or subscribing to the SoylentNews.Org web site explicitly agrees to all the terms of this privacy policy.

    This policy applies to the www.SoylentNews.Org [soylentnews.org] website and supporting systems.

    If any portion of this policy is found, by any competent jurisdiction, to be invalid or unlawful, the remainder of this policy will continue to be in force.

    The terms of this policy may be modified at any time at the discretion of
    SoylentNews.Org. It is the responsibility of the subscriber to review the terms of this policy on a regular basis. Current versions of this policy can be found at http://www.SoylentNews.Org/privacy.html [soylentnews.org].

    *Personal Information: Data such as legal names, street addresses, email addresses and telephone numbers which would enable direct contact and/or identification of the subject of that information.

    **Copyright of comments and journal entries are assigned to those who posted such items as of the time and date of posting. All quoted materials in such comments/entries will be considered "fair use," and should be attributed to the author/speaker of such quoted material. Under no circumstances will SoylentNews.Org management, staff or assignees be liable for any tort or harm caused by such third-party comments/entries.

    ***While what constitutes illegal content is different from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, such determinations on SoylentNews.Org are governed by the laws of both the United States and the State of Delaware (IIRC, that's where the PBC is registered, no?). SoylentNews.Org will remove such illegal content at its discretion and/or in response to a court order from a relevand jurisdiction. Some content isn't illegal, per-se, but reduces the usability and viability of SoylentNews.Org. Such content includes, but is not limited to (such decisions are at the discretion of SoylentNews.Org management and assignees) doxxing, posting links to illegal materials (e.g., CSAM, copyrighted materials offered without recompense to the copyright owners, etc.), repeated abusive messages to or about specific users, and spam.
    [Note: This is one area which will likely require significant discussion. Let's have that discussion!]

    SoylentNews.Org will (except in the case of illegal materials which might make the site liable for hosting such materials) use the user moderation system to address bad faith, spam and abusive comments/entries, unless (at the discretion of SoylentNews.Org's mangement, assignees and/or staff) such material is disruptive to, or negatively affects the operations of SoylentNews.Org.

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