That feels potentially incomplete, because there’s still the question of how to deal with an instance that refuses to honor federated removal requests, or which claims to but lies and secretly keeps a backup. If for example the legal/regulatory system was to decide that the original instance was responsible for ensuring user data is deleted even from federated servers, then the potential existence of such non-deleting servers would be a huge problem for the network as a whole.

Practically speaking, can they actually regulate it, beyond going after instance owners that are themselves based in the EU? I mean, they can pass laws, but given that instances are not large companies that might want to do business in Europe, I’m not sure what stops an instance owner not located within their jurisdiction from just ignoring them and not paying any levied fines or similar. They could require ISPs then block that instance or something I suppose but keeping up with an evolving list of tiny websites that don’t necessarily advertise themselves much and so might slip under regulator’s radar for awhile is probably much more difficult to block compared to a single corporate run site.

Not that I’m suggesting that Lemmy shouldn’t make an effort to comply with regulations requiring people be able to delete their data, if anything, such a system if successful would make it harder for companies to take advantage of it by setting up servers to secretly collect what data they can, for example, I’m just questioning if it’s really possible for a government to meaningfully enforce rules on some small group of random mostly volunteer people who may likely be operating from another country anyway.

Honestly I do get why it got so much media attention. Media companies exist to make money, to do that they need to get people’s attention. Submarines, especially civilian ones that go deep like this, are rare and unusual things, so this story, while of little practical consequence to most, is very good at getting people’s interest.

The way I see it, making jokes about this kind of thing is a fundamentally human reaction. People often react to grim scenarios with humor, consider all the jokes about things like wars that exist- and being trapped in a failing submarine is a pretty grim thought that people might seek to distract themselves from by twisting it into humor. I don’t think joking about an event like this that resulted in deaths is the same thing as wishing for people to die, they are, after all, already dead, and uncomfortable as the thought is, the dead are not as far as we can probably know capable of taking offense to anything. There is no possible harm that jokes or anything else can do to them anymore.

Obviously I would consider it pretty rude to joke about it around someone who knew one of the deceased, since you can at least cause emotional distress to those people, but I don’t see a problem with joking about it on the general internet.

Another thing to consider is that some of the jokes have been mocking the quality of the sub itself, rather than the people on board (save for the ceo I guess). If you cheap out on stuff and that decision kills people, I think it’s perfectly reasonable for people to mock you over it.