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Comment by perspective1 | Hacker News Reader

User beware: "You are granting us with a non-exclusive, permanent, irrevocable, unlimited license to use, publish, or re-publish your Content in connection with the Service."

...and

"We may remove or modify any Content submitted at any time, with or without cause, with or without notice."

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It’s my understanding that covers us to actually display your content on our website and distribute on social etc. which is sort of the bread and butter of a discussion community.

The latter is surely standard across any community for moderation.

Users have the ability to edit and remove their own content to take it off the platform.

Happy to receive any advice on how this could be more palatable!

IANAL but doesn't `irrevocable` means that user legally can't remove their own content from the platform?

Me neither, the wording is referring to the license to display the content rather than the content itself. I couldn’t go back and check all social posts, newsletters, quoted messages etc. every time somebody edits a post or changes their avatar, for example.

I think I can do more to guarantee certain rights with regards to a users content though and will get some advice on communicating that.

Thank you!

IANAL either, but I do not read that as a lack of permission to remove your own content. It sounds more like a statement that the the user cannot expect the site owners to remove all their content on demand.

Which sounds like it is in direct conflict with GDPR.

GDPR applies to personally identifiable information, this may apply to some content posted. Of course no ToS can override your rights under GDPR and there are tools built-in to comply with any data requests.

GDPR grants you control of your data, including the right to have it removed. And if you have tools built in to comply with such requests, then you absolutely can remove the "irrevocable" clause from your TOS.

As I say I am no lawyer but will be getting some more personalised advice on wording since we seem to be growing! I hope you can see there are no ill intentions but I understand that it is good to have these things in black and white. Many thanks. :)

Actually, GDPR apply to personal datas and not published content. If you can "anonymize" the content (meaning: taking out the author name and any pseudo-identifiable information) then GDPR won't be a problem.

However, taking out the author name from a content could be seen as a kind of copyright infringement... so the content produced need to be co-copyrighted by the platform

that first clause is what gives them the right to distribute your messages, images, profile pic, etc, to other users of the platform.

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