Just to be clear: I'm in the UK (as are my businesses), I'm generally an advocate of strong privacy protections, I can and do put my money where my mouth is by

Just to be clear: I'm in the UK (as are my businesses), I'm generally an advocate of strong privacy protections, I can and do put my money where my mouth is by supporting various organisations that defend such protections, I have read the entire GDPR and a large amount of guidance related to it, I have consulted with other experts on it, and from day one my businesses have always followed careful practices in terms of how much data we collect, what we do with it (nothing at all shady) and how we store it. In short, my view that the GDPR is bad law doesn't come from a culture shock, a lack of familiarity, or a lack of understanding or expert advice. It comes from not liking poorly-written EU laws that are open to abuse, and from direct personal experience (described in more detail in other comments, so I won't that repeat here) that such laws can actually be abused in practice with potentially serious consequences. And it comes from not liking vague regulation where you don't know how far you really have to go to comply and what the real rules of the game are, and misjudging in either direction has a cost.