Patterns of Inquiry in a Community Forum for Legal Compliance with Privacy Law

Software developers have variable access to legal advice depending on the size and maturity of their organization. To supplement direct access to legal counsel, some developers seek advice through public forums, such as Reddit. This paper presents an exploratory case study to analyze questions posted on Reddit that concern compliance with the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). We analyze seven posts, selected using stratified sampling, then extract and code facts within the post to discover a taxonomy of discourse patterns, which describes how developers reason over legal privacy requirements. We report results on types of facts, their conclusory statements, and the main focus areas of developers when seeking legal advice.