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Comment by logronoide | Hacker News Reader

That is fascism. Everybody deserves the same rights, no matter what they think. If you think she is promoting a speech of hate, go to the court and try prove it.

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Everyone has the same rights. Francesca has the right to spout nonsense. Joshua has the right to tell everyone she's doing it. The government doesn't care about either.

Joshua has broken the ToS of Discuss because he has access to the tool and got an email address that belongs to Francesca. He used a privileged access to obtain her PII. Under the GDPR that is simply illegal. In Western Europe his behavior could take him to a court.

This is a site where we discuss about privacy in technology, and this is an example of how people with privileged access to PII should follow the higher standards, no matter how disgusting are the opinions, like the ones from Francesca.

Breaking the TOS of Disqus is between Nieman Labs and Disqus; their likely response would be termination of services. Francesca has no standing to enforce someone else's contract she's not part of.

The GDPR doesn't really apply here in the US. No part of this dispute happened in the EU or to EU citizens.

The email address doesn't belong to Francesca, it belongs to her employer, Temple University. She used her work email to create a Disqus account.

And the agreement between Disqus and a university lab isn't law.

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