This isn't the solution people think it is. The only thing Google needs to do now to make it legal is to force a prompt asking for your consent where if you disagree you are completely blocked off from the site. That is, assuming Alexander Hanff, the one carrying on this narrative since 2016, is correct and interpreted the response correctly. In Article 5 of the 2002/58/EC there is a second paragraph that states the following:
Paragraph 1 shall not affect any legally authorised recording of communications and the related traffic data when carried out in the course of lawful business practice for the purpose of providing evidence of a commercial transaction or of any other business communication.
I'm no lawyer, but I tell you who has them in droves, Google and YouTube, whom I'm sure have already discussed whether their primary means of business revenue, ads, could be construed as a commercial transaction for which evidence is needed. I'm not sure how a two page reply from the EU commission to his request telling him Article 5 applies really helps the guy out if Article 5 also includes the means by which YouTube is allowed to run scripts that provide evidence that ads have been able to be properly reproduced.
Still, assuming Alexander Hanff is right, Google just needs to add a consent form and begin blocking access to all content if users disagree, so it seems to me his claim is damned if he is right, and damned if he isn't right.
These rules just make lemmy.world to be a poor man's substitute to reddit, and seems to go against what the fediverse was all about.
First of all, permanent bans. These are great when you deal with people who are never going to change and who are clearly breaking the ToS. The problem is, people change, and admin moderation never is 100% right because no one is 100% right all the time, especially when having to deal with a massive scale of users. Considering how integral social networks are to people's lives, and that some people are literally children who are growing up, we really should be given a remediational system with them rather than simply "instaban" if this is supposed to be a better social network than the commercial fast buck alternatives.
Second, if you permanently ban users, you run into the same problems as reddit. What happens to all of their previous comments? Do you clear them out from the system even though they had nothing to do with the ban? Do you give users the option to delete it? Do you keep in on the platform without their consent? Do you allow banned users the possibility to export their comment onto other fediverse hosts who might not have the same opinion in regards to a ban as you? How are you complying with the GDPR?
Third, if you try to suggest that a banned user can't come back and use your platform, what about when they comment from another lemmy host account? Are you going to break the fediverse to enforce bans, or is it local account based only? Are you going to ban lemmy hosts if they refuse to permaban the same people you pemaban?
Fourth, this sort of seems like a three strike system. So, like a "look, I got two strikes way back and suddenly now twenty years after I get a strike, and because of those two, I get banned".
Overall, it's very, very vague. Attacking and harrassing groups sounds pretty clear, until you consider how easily it could be applied to mere criticism about a group someone doesn't like. "participation in individual communities will only be acceptable on the condition that you abide by their rules" seems pretty clear, except when you consider communities whose moderators remove comments under false premises of rule breaking without any explanation. "You waive Lemmy.World ... from any claims resulting from any action taken by Lemmy.World, and any of the foregoing parties relating to any investigations by either us or by law enforcement authorities." - I see many lawyers try to sneak this one, but there are very few courts that wouldn't allow me to file a claim even with this under a Terms of Service I haven't even had to explicitly indicate I agree with if, say, lemmy.world decided to violate my GDPR protections because censors in China didn't like a comment I made about Tiananmen Square, requested my personal private data lemmy.world has on me, and they decided to give it to them.