as this area of GDPR is still being figured out.

Interesting. So does that mean you think it COULD be covered by the GDPR, perhaps from a court decision at a future date? That at least it’s a possibility, even if unknown right now?

this is not covered under GDPR

Interesting contradiction. I’d say there only three states: it is covered, it is not covered, and it’s unknown.

Anyways, here’s a fact:

UK’s Information Commissioner’s Office … told Veale that Twitter’s response “failed to comply with the requirement of the data protection legislation”

Of course you’d be right if you said it hasn’t been taken to court yet and that particular case lacks a court ruling to back it up. So if that’s your requirement for it to count, then that’s fair. Still, I would generally go with the guidance from the ICO here rather than try my luck in court, absent compelling reasons.

I think the case by case thing is addressed somewhat from the Mastodon post. Someone reposting a meme wouldn’t contain any personal info to erase under GDPR, but another post that’s an ask me anything with a person’s picture and other verifiable credentials would be. In the latter case I’m not sure you could anonymize the content without making it unuseful and uninteresting.

And it would take a lot of time and effort to review every post and comment and perform the anonymization. And deanonymization is a legitimate concern too. So I guess Reddit could try to play hardball here but it would probably cost them.