Voting on Codeberg's new privacy policy

Nobody cares about privacy policies. Except when they do.

Deadline tomorrow !!! Everything you've ever posted becomes public from tomorrow. Even messages that have been deleted or the photos not allowed It costs nothing for a simple copy and paste, better safe than sorry. Channel 13 News talked about the change in Facebook's privacy policy. I do not give Facebook or any entities associated with Facebook permission to use my pictures, information, messages or posts, both past and future. With this statement, I give notice to Facebook it is strictly forbidden to disclose, copy, distribute, or take any other action against me based on this profile and/or it: contents. The content of this profile is private and confidential information. The violation of privacy can be punished by law (UCC 1-308- 1 1 308-103 and the Rome Statute). NOTE: Facebook is now a public entity.

Once in a while some big tech platform updates their privacy policy to award themselves even more access to our personal data. WhatsApp’s 2021 privacy policy update springs to mind, as well as any number of scandals about privacy on platforms like Facebook or TikTok.

Every time it happens, communities scramble to understand the changes after the fact and pressure the company to walk back some aspect of the changes. Sometimes, like with the “Deadline tomorrow!!!” copypasta screenshot above, there wasn’t even a policy change to begin with, and peoples’ latent sense of distrust and powerlessness just led them to hedge their bets and copypaste the magic words onto their wall.

In that context I thought it was actually pretty cool receiving this email from Codeberg this week inviting members to vote on their new privacy policy.

After a lot of work and long discussions, the draft for the new privacy policy is in its final form and ready for voting. An update to our privacy policy is absolutely required legally due to the DSGVO since quite a long time ago - the first draft was presented at the last annual assembly, and now we are finally at a state that's legally checked and reviewed in-depth by some of you.

As a member of Codeberg e.V. do you support the following resolution:

”The members of Codeberg e. V. hereby agree to update the privacy policy according to https://codeberg.org/Codeberg/org/pulls/54"

I wrote about joining Codeberg earlier this year. This type of vote is the payoff for pooling your resources in democratic, community-led infrastructure. You get a meaningful say in how it evolves instead of just playing catch-up after corporate headquarters drops their latest announcement.

More than ever I’m convinced this is the future we should choose for the free software and open source world. And it’s easy to join the revolution yourself over at join.codeberg.org once you’ve created your account.