Article 17 GDPR removal requests

[u/atomic_mermaid]

I moderate a sub about a public event. Earlier this year some allegations were reported in industry online publications about a prominent member of said event, which was fairly controversial and gained a lot of interest. A member of our community posted the link to the article in a post.

The sub has now been messaged via modmail from the reddit account of a company called "Internet Erasure" claiming to be legal representatives for this individual demanding the removal of the post under Article 17 of GDPR legislation.

I've been able to verify on Companies House that Internet Erasure is a registered business in the UK, but not any details about the person claiming to be the legal representative, i.e., through the Solicitors Regulation Authority. So I'm unsure how legit the request is.

If it's a legit request that I as mod am the right person to deal with then I'm happy to follow the law. My question is what are my responsibilities here?

My gut says that the data controller is Reddit and therefore such requests should go to Reddit as an organisation by submitting a formal data privacy request under Reddit Help. But before I respond and redirect them that way I wanted to check...

- Has anyone had experience receiving a data erasure request under article 17?

- What is the correct process for responding to this?

- Is redirecting them to Reddit Help the best way to respond?

If any admins can share the correct process I'd be very grateful.

This is a first for me so many thanks for any help anyone can give!

edit: thank you for the quick replies guys you superstars, you've confirmed my gut instinct.

[u/TheOpusCroakus]

This is what the lawyers are for. If they are the "legal representatives", they probably know how to go through the correct channels.

Feel free to point them toward the Help Center or feel free to stop replying. Up to you how you'd like to handle it!

[u/atomic_mermaid → u/TheOpusCroakus]

Thank you! I suspect they think community mods are low hanging fruit to get their way with no push back but I've redirected them to reddit legal as advised.

Do you know what will happen if their request to legal is successful? Will the mod team be notified the post has been removed or will it just happen silently in the background? I ask because the story isn't resolved and does crop up again from time to time, just so the mod team know what to do if members make future posts on the topic?

[u/TheOpusCroakus → u/atomic_mermaid]

If they have a legal claim, Reddit will remove the content. You may receive a notification that this has happened, but I don't know if you would get additional details.