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> pretty sure you are suppose to be able to download your content

I'm not sure that such content would count, though I'd have to review the wording of the GDPR to be sure. Its intent is to cover information about you that companies/people have collected or derived - which may not include things you have written about other things.

Even if the GDPRs "right to know what is stored about you" provisions does cover this sort of content, if they have truly deleted the it then they don't have to provide it as they don't have it to provide, and they are not compelled to keep it so that they can provide it on request. I have no idea whether they do truly delete the content in these cases or not, but they might if they've taken it offline due to a generic "inappropriate content" rule: if I deemed something posted to my site inappropriate I would want it properly gone so it couldn't be accidentally made available on my platform again due to some future cock-up on my part. Their ToS and other documentation my offer some clarity on what their policy is here.

As a side note (with somewhat insincere apologies for how snarky I am about to sound): regulations & laws aside, I tend to have little sympathy for people who keep data in an external system with no local (or otherwise independent) backup!

> I'm not sure that such content would count, though I'd have to review the wording of the GDPR to be sure. Its intent is to cover information about you that companies/people have collected or derived - which may not include things you have written about other things.

All the actual legal guidance I have seen says it does count, because the content can be cross-references with third parties to identify the author and the fact that they once posted this text on this service. This, if they close their account or delete the specific article the content must be purged.

If the content has been deleted then they don't have to give it to them. Backups aren't covered by GDPR.

> So, what are the alternatives? According to France’s GDPR supervisory authority, CNIL, organisations don’t have to delete backups when complying with the right to erasure. Nonetheless, they must clearly explain to the data subject that backups will be kept for a specified length of time (outlined in your retention policy).

It's talking about right to erasure, but it would apply for requests for personal information. They don't have to crawl through their backups for you, only the current data.

GDPR covers personal data -- not content.

Hm hm, are you sure? And what is the difference between personal data and content? My pictures are pd or content? And if I publish them?

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Data_Protection_Regula...

Now, obvliously, the content may contain personal data, or possibly be personal data (if it's pictures of people) and in that case I assume it would be covered.

I'm not convinced your interpretation is correct. GDPR Article 4[1] states that "personal data" means "any information relating to an identified or identifiable natural person (‘data subject’)", so it covers anything you produce that's somehow related to you.

[1] https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CEL...

Well, as said, if the content itself can be considered personal data then sure.

My entire point was that "personal data" as defined in Article 4 is any data related to you, not just names, photos and so on

In theory even the personal writing style might be considered "personal" as it could be used to identify individuals, but I don't think that lawmakers thought that far.

I could be wrong (i'm no expert) but i remember part of the GDPR is about "data portability" and is exactly that: you should easily be able to export all the data you've provided. https://gdpr-info.eu/art-20-gdpr/ I would assume this includes articles you've written.

Personal data can be used to identify you. Email, Full Name, Address, Nationality, Spoken Languages etc.

Some of these are very direct like your name and address. But since other personal data can be combined to create an identifying fingerprint of you it may or may not be covered.

There's a gray area in between of course were you really need to check the legal situation, but public content on a public forum is definitely not covered.

I'd say that while a single comment on a forum might not be enough to identify you, the sum of your comments can easily do (because of pieces of personal information you let slip in this or that comment); then everything you write must be considered personal data, unless there is a way to tell apart or remove the personal information from your comments.

Think about pictures: the picture of a landscape you took on a holiday doesn't identify you, but other pictures in your library might do (they contain faces, places, etc.). All together, the pictures can tell who you are and where you've been and when and with whom.

T&Cs may say otherwise but if they keep copies then it seems copyright law is probably better here than GDPR (which really covers PII). I'm not sure you could get them to hand over copies though (eg in their backup archives) but you could make them destroy those copies, in theory.