Hey everyone,
You've seen the emails, you've heard the scare tactics! You're probably worried about how it affects you or whether it affects you. It affects anyone that has a user that lives in the EU and honestly it's probably just good practice honestly.
- What does GDPR mean and why is it important? General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is a new EU law that requires some special compensations are made to EU users. Some stuff has existed for years however the new law is here to make organizations/sites more responsible for how they handle data.
- What do I have to do to be GDPR compliant? Well there are a few steps and we here at the initiative are working on guides to help you. For one, you have to notify users of their cookies (like here on the initiative https://rpginitiative.com/cookies) this lets them know what cookies are set and why they are set. You additionally need a Privacy policy that explains what information is collected and how it's used. You can see our privacy policy here. If you do use third parties (like Google Analytics) you do have to notify users (this has technically always been a policy of using the service but probably more important now). So if you use third parties (recaptcha etc) make a note of them and let us know and we'll attempt to help you get the right notice.
- How is the Initiative here for you? Unfortunately we can't help everyone because different hosts and whatnot but we're going to attempt to help you where we can. If you're hosted on the Initiative we're already in the works of assisting in GDPR compliance guides to help you (and us) feel safe. If you aren't hosted on the Initiative and still want help we will see what we can do to assist you the best we can in explaining things so you can do it too.
- What is the right to be forgotten? This means you must provide a person a way to "disappear" off your site. Anything identifiable. Including Original characters, applications, accounts and similar items would be required to be removed. It can even mean that you need to remove their posts as some characters are extremely unique to the player. As an example if someone plays Captain Kirk... well a million people could pick up that canon that isn't exclusive to the user. However if they play an OC (especially if they are like me and port their users everywhere) that character, the game play etc could potentially be identified as them. This would mean that this accounts posts would need to be removed. Of course the worry here is "But what about the story". Since the person is aware that they are submitting to your site and what they are submitting for (the story) posts are not acceptable "personal data" to remove. If you were collecting personal data without their consent or knowledge then this would fall under this "right to be forgotten" process.
- What about data portability? Data portability is exclusive to be able to take your personal info and transfer it to another place of the same type. While that would mean pulling your accounts and importing them into another roleplay this isn't exactly a feasible, or even reasonable thing that roleplayers can properly accommodate. There are a few reasons why but the top reasons are because accounts aren't something goes with you everywhere. For example, my username on roleplays for like... ever has been Morrigan, however, I'm still asked if I'm Morrigan from XYZ roleplay and of course about 95% of the time, I'm not that Morrigan. There is no other data collected that is "automated" for a roleplayer. Applications is something you actively choose to do and actively participate in. Data portability is more being able to transfer data to another firm for personal reasons. For example transferring to a new hospital, transferring to a new law firm or transferring to a new phone.
GDPR is still a pretty vague thing and we promise that Morrigan is watching it pretty closely to be sure that not only we at the Initiative stay complaint but help you too. We will work to get the assets you need for GDPR and continue to grow as the law does.
Regards,
The Initiative Staff