[Feature] Removing account

[fervi]

Hello. According to GDPR law, I would like Steem to have the option to completely remove my account from the network.

Of course, someone can say - you can't delete data from the blockchain network. This is not true. Hard fork is a solution that allows you to "break the rules" of the network. This means that using Hard Fork it is possible to delete (total) account with its data.

So please add an account deletion option that will delete an account at the nearest Hard Fork, so that Steem will be compliant with European law.

[steemdevelopment]

Forcing a chain level change when not all users are from the EU makes no sense. Ask front ends to do this for you. Putting something like this could be used to censor users.

[fervi]

Steem can't just stick to the rules one-sidedly. The blockchain network is an agreement between users and STINC. STINC repeatedly breaks contracts with users using Hard Forks, so I as a user can say that they can use the same mechanism for users if they want to.

Personally, I think that breaking the rules is a competence of all interest groups in the steem network.

[TimCliff]

The blockchain is not an agreement between users and Steemit, Inc. The witnesses are the ones who decide whether or not to adopt a hardfork.

[fervi]

@TimCliff

Not really. Steemit selects his witnesses using accounts such as pumpkin, freedom etc. What makes the users who choose witnesses have nothing to say.

That's why I left Steem - it's a waste of time to fight for a better Steem, since there are only frauds here, mainly Steemit.

I don't try to tell myself that it will be better.

That's why I'm interested in how to force witnesses to remove their accounts - because it should be possible, I once talked to various witnesses and in theory it is possible.

[steemdevelopment]

Well, it's never going to happen because the change you propose would allow abuse to happen. Witnesses can already remove things, but good luck getting the top 20 to agree because any who accepted changes like that would lose their top 20 slots.

Also, steemit does most of its moves on a frontend portal, so if you need to do anything you need to talk with every frontend portal. The witnesses decide what gets in the chain, and as for freedom from what I aware know no one really knows who freedom is. Otherwise, stick to using google to blocking your content.

[fervi]

It is very likely that you will find out who the Freedom account holder is. This is because Steem was a quiet project. There were about 10 real people on the platform at the time (they just create a multiple accounts)

You can read about it in the first entry on Bitcointalk and in Dan Larimer's entry on his blog.

---

Of course, I am aware that the witnesses will not be willing to introduce such an option. This does not change the fact that these are only 20 people who have to comply with the law. I'm pretty sure there's a similar law in the U.S.

[steemdevelopment]

Nope The US does not have this law. And if it has one it not anywhere close to what the EU is doing. the US or non-US countries are not liable to the EU or its citizens. This chain and its users have no obligation to any country outside its governing body. And if they try to press witnesses the servers will likely just switch countries and to decentralized hosting facilities.

A change like this would allow any country or 3rd party to strong arm witnesses and or content creators. The steem blockchain only stores text, it can store images but the very small form which inertia showcased years back. We make sure things like child porn and other horrendous content don't find a living here on the chain by not rewarding such actions. As for people wanting their account's removed or data, this is not the problem of the chain.

You can now edit your post's if you wish to remove your content and can delete content that has no votes on it I'm not sure if the irreversible block applies to this though. But requesting chain level laws for specific regions even our own seems to defeat the purpose of a decentralized ledger that doesn't have a central governing body since its distributed.

Edit: This data does not touch the web, without frontends allowing it to.

[fervi]

Yeah, I've been in cryptocurrency for years, in Steem for two. I know how it works.

It is quite an interesting problem, because in Bitcoin the attack, which will allow to change blockchain costs 600 000 dollars per hour (it is a hypothetical hiring of computing power - so you can do it if you have that money). There's no protection in Steem other than believing that you can't do anything.

What happens if, for example, the Witnesses from my country are obliged to delete data - splitting the network?

The law probably allows you to block (if possible) content from any network. Do you think that if I upload data to the HTTP website it's possible to block it, but not to FTP?

[syvb]

There would be many issues with this:

• If this were implemented, I would write a script to make a copy of all data relating to accounts pending deletion prior to the hard fork and post that publicly, removing the "being forgotten" aspect
• Requests for deletion would need to be public, so the accounts can be deleted, and so they can be included in hardforks
• EU law requires data to be deleted in one month, and historically we haven't had a hard fork monthly
• Deleted accounts may have transacted STEEM/SBD. If a deleted account sent me 1 STEEM, how would that show up in my transaction history?
• Reward pool history from deleted accounts would need to be factored into calculations somehow.
• What would happen to transactions creating accounts that later become deleted? Since the account name is in the account creation transaction, which is signed, this transaction would need to be deleted from all nodes. But since creating accounts costs STEEM or RC, this would cause issues keeping track of account balances.
• A hardfork isn't really needed for this. One could just delete all transactions from a given user from their database, which would "forget" the user
• Nothing can ever be removed from a blockchain. Steem would need to get rid of the current blockchain every HF, replacing it with a new one. (all former transactions, except ones relating to deleted accounts, would be in the initial state)

blockchain network is an agreement

It is not an agreement between anyone. The "blockchain network" is just a collection of free C++ files.

in theory it is possible

It would require quite a bit of work to implement this, though.

You can now edit your post's if you wish to remove your content and can delete content that has no votes on it I'm not sure if the irreversible block applies to this though.

When editing and deleting posts, all former versions of a post remain on the blockchain.

It is quite an interesting problem, because in Bitcoin the attack, which will allow to change blockchain costs 600 000 dollars per hour (it is a hypothetical hiring of computing power - so you can do it if you have that money). There's no protection in Steem other than believing that you can't do anything.

Steem blocks are irreversible after 63 seconds.

The law probably allows you to block (if possible) content from any network. Do you think that if I upload data to the HTTP website it's possible to block it, but not to FTP?

It is not possible to remove data from the Steem blockchain. You could hard fork, but that would be a different blockchain. From the perspective of a Steem node running HF19, enough witnesses decided that no more transactions should be allowed to be processed, at the block HF20 occured. If a hardfork to remove accounts from the Steem blockchain were to successfully occur, that would be creating a different Steem blockchain, just one that 75% of current witnesses thought was a good replacement.

[VIM-Arcange]

According to GDPR law, I would like Steem to have the option to completely remove my account from the network.

The Steem network does not fall under the GDPR law. Steem witness @ura-soul contacted UK's Information Commissioner's Office when GDPR came into effect and made a detailed post with their answer on this subject.

TLDR;

... if there is no 'data controller' - e.g. a legal entity that is responsible for determining what kind of data is stored by the system/network, then the system cannot fall under the control of the GDPR!

[Steem network] would not be illegal and would also not need to conform to the GDPR ... because Steem, the blockchain, is an open source code project that ... is not owned/controlled by a legal entity.

The full post can be found here: https://steemit.com/steem/@ura-soul/gdpr-compliance-for-steem-who-is-responsible-an-update-after-speaking-with-uk-gov

[fervi]

Well, there's always another way to do it. If STINC has more than 50% tokens, they can force the Hard Fork themselves by choosing witnesses, can't they?

You could hard fork, but that would be a different blockchain. This is why they call it "Hard fork". This is a split of the network caused by breaking the rules. The rest is a matter of a new chain.

[syvb]

@fervi All the issues I described apply regardless of whether the hardfork is forced by a majority stackholder. Furthermore, Steemit has no way to force nodes to run arbitrary code, including code that would delete accounts. Nodes that didn't opt in to the hard fork would still retain the deleted account data. When a hardfork occurs on Steem, witnesses (effectively) vote to permanently stop block production on the old network, and begin block production on a new network, which in all past cases happened to be a fork of the old network. So if Steemit Inc. were to attempt to do what you described, they would actually just be using their 50% of tokens to shutdown the SteemV0.20 network. (and create a new, similar Steem network)

[fervi]

Other trick, even without Hardfork I think (so better?)

Possible?

So technically you don't touch blockchain, you just don't send informations about some API's data

[steemdevelopment]

Accepting code to allow the deletion of accounts is the best way to commit witness suicide. As we said before this is a frontend application issue. I'd be willing to bet this will never change unless there is some drastic global regulation change.

It's the frontend applications that provide this data to google or other search engines. If they supply information to the EU it's them who must regulate there own sites.

[fervi]

But why a witness cannot censor, and why an interface should have such a possibility. Maybe the interface should be impartial and the witness should not.

Maybe the Witnesses should censor globally. Then one person solves the problem, and if someone would like to disappear (according to EU law) from the network, he would have to write to every interface in the world, every interface forks, etc., and so on. It's very tiring and doesn't solve the problem.

Or am I wrong? :D That's a very interesting point. Even in Bitcoin you can revoke transactions (if you are rich enough) and legally (without a fork).

There is also another issue - whether the Witnesses are not now censoring people, but pretending that they are not doing so on the surface. After all, only ~140 people have a full node, and I doubt they would check if Witness sends the right things through API.

[VIM-Arcange]

@fervi, as mentioned in my previous reply, the Steem blockchain does not fall under the EU GDPR law! As a result, the ability to delete accounts or other information is NOT required. If you're not happy with that, go find another platform.

The main role of witnesses is to secure the blockchain, not to "manage" or "censor" it's content.

After all, only ~140 people have a full node

You're wrong. Only a few witnesses (less than a dozen) run a full node and publicly expose its content via API.

[fervi]

full node and publicly expose its content via API.

Yep, 22 I think.

Of course, the Witness protect the blockchain - which they create themselves. This means that they can do (from the general side) what they want.

The second project is possible to do, only the Witnesss do not want it. What is the guarantee that in a year or two they will not introduce it?

I wonder if this isn't a "blockchain" game. Cryptocurrency like Bitcoin or Ethereum have it guaranteed by the Proof of Work mechanism.

Steem probably has a mechanism - proof of faith. People are supposed to believe that you won't change Blockchain.

Of course, we're talking hypothetically. Nothing guarantees that one day Witnesses will not play Gods someday.

I think it is worthwhile to end this thread and wait until the final day.

[Smash-ter]

I'm coming in here 4 years later and bruh the excuse of not adding an account deletion feature is honestly the dumbest things to ever come from anything.