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As a founder, the cruel business logic very much favors removing support/refusing to onboard European users. After consultation with GDPR experts, this, unfort

As a founder, the cruel business logic very much favors removing support/refusing to onboard European users. After consultation with GDPR experts, this, unfortunately, is the conclusion we came to at my company as well - and is the same one that many other smaller companies will arrive at as they try to comply with this unwieldy and burdensome regulation. It might take a few years, but the incredibly unhealthy end result of this law will be two Internets: one that people in the EU have access to, which will mostly be operated by large companies that can afford to implement GDPR, and another including all sites that the rest of the world can access. My guess is that this will also have a significant negative impact on EU startup funding, as the risk of being wiped out by fines for even minor violations of this very complicated law that is subject to unique legal interpretations in each of 28 different countries is quite high. Few investors are going to take on that kind of risk. In short, this law is already on track to create a fractured Internet that deprives EU citizens of access to the vast majority of Internet services, and consolidates the private data that their regulators are so worried about in the hands of a few giants.

exergy 9y ago
I used to work for an automotive company. The EU pollution standards were always the strictest. So we made multiple versions of our vehicles, with the cleanest ones for the European market. Even though it only saved us a few cents per vehicle, we used worse parts for non EU markets. Guess where the air is purest?
- glogla 9y ago
  Actually European cities have really shitty air becausr of all the diesels. Thay can't be outlawed soon enough.
- q12we34rt5 9y ago
  >Guess where the air is purest? Not the EU, that's for sure. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/12/science/who-says-europe-trails-us-in-reducing-air-pollution.html https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/12/science/who-says-europe-t...
netrus 9y ago
Maybe that's a chance for European internet startups? Entry barriers for foreign startups give European companies a headstart, while successful, more mature foreign companies will comply with EU standards to get access to the market. Sure, Europe loses access to products of early stage startups, but maybe that's a good trade-off? (Disclaimer: I have no hard opinion on this matter, just a thought).
- downandout 9y ago
  I think that any startup that allows EU traffic to access its services is going to be a tough sell to investors in a GDPR world. Who wants to put, say $1 million, into a startup that could easily be fined that amount or more for inadvertent violations? There's a whole other world of markets out there and only one that imposes this risk on companies. GDPR just introduces too much risk, even for those companies with the best of intentions.
tedeh 9y ago
"The vast majority of internet services" I haven't seen a single service preparing to explicitly tell EU users to go somewhere else, except random comments on HN claiming so. Also the EU economy is about the size of the US so can't easily be ignored fortunately. Also, why does a company or anyone else "own" personally identifiable information in the first place? The logic is completely inverted and we seem to have all been OK with it in the first place. Why does a company like Facebook "own" what is mine from the beginning — is it just because it is in a row in their database? Is it because I once clicked OK on a TOS? Now I can revoke this consent and Facebook and others have to comply. Previously they could just tell me to FO. Sounds like a great win for users!
- downandout 9y ago
  Again, large companies will have no problem implementing it. They have multi-million dollar budgets for lawyers etc. At first, most smaller companies won't turn away EU traffic, nor will they comply with GDPR. But as more companies become aware of the regulation and the extraordinary financial liability that comes with EU traffic, most outside the EU will simply turn away that traffic. It might take a few years or even a decade - but it will happen. It won't take too many horror stories about how small companies were destroyed by huge fines out of Germany, for example, to turn the blocking of EU traffic into standard operating procedure. The issue isn't really even about any desire on the part of companies to abuse personal data. It comes down to the many ways that even companies with the best of intentions can violate this regulation.
  - AstralStorm 9y ago
    You seem to be forgetting that small companies have small databases. Getting removed from a manually handled filling cabinet is easy. Add is from a manually managed database, even when it is backed up regularly. It is also trivial to enforce a routine manual scrub of small amounts of private data. The only people who might have trouble are "small" data resellers having millions of accounts of personal data. It is good they will have to comply.
    - 9y ago

exergy 9y ago

I used to work for an automotive company. The EU pollution standards were always the strictest. So we made multiple versions of our vehicles, with the cleanest ones for the European market. Even though it only saved us a few cents per vehicle, we used worse parts for non EU markets. Guess where the air is purest?

glogla 9y ago
Actually European cities have really shitty air becausr of all the diesels. Thay can't be outlawed soon enough.
q12we34rt5 9y ago
>Guess where the air is purest? Not the EU, that's for sure. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/12/science/who-says-europe-trails-us-in-reducing-air-pollution.html https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/12/science/who-says-europe-t...

netrus 9y ago

Maybe that's a chance for European internet startups? Entry barriers for foreign startups give European companies a headstart, while successful, more mature foreign companies will comply with EU standards to get access to the market. Sure, Europe loses access to products of early stage startups, but maybe that's a good trade-off? (Disclaimer: I have no hard opinion on this matter, just a thought).

downandout 9y ago
I think that any startup that allows EU traffic to access its services is going to be a tough sell to investors in a GDPR world. Who wants to put, say $1 million, into a startup that could easily be fined that amount or more for inadvertent violations? There's a whole other world of markets out there and only one that imposes this risk on companies. GDPR just introduces too much risk, even for those companies with the best of intentions.

tedeh 9y ago

"The vast majority of internet services" I haven't seen a single service preparing to explicitly tell EU users to go somewhere else, except random comments on HN claiming so. Also the EU economy is about the size of the US so can't easily be ignored fortunately. Also, why does a company or anyone else "own" personally identifiable information in the first place? The logic is completely inverted and we seem to have all been OK with it in the first place. Why does a company like Facebook "own" what is mine from the beginning — is it just because it is in a row in their database? Is it because I once clicked OK on a TOS? Now I can revoke this consent and Facebook and others have to comply. Previously they could just tell me to FO. Sounds like a great win for users!

downandout 9y ago
Again, large companies will have no problem implementing it. They have multi-million dollar budgets for lawyers etc. At first, most smaller companies won't turn away EU traffic, nor will they comply with GDPR. But as more companies become aware of the regulation and the extraordinary financial liability that comes with EU traffic, most outside the EU will simply turn away that traffic. It might take a few years or even a decade - but it will happen. It won't take too many horror stories about how small companies were destroyed by huge fines out of Germany, for example, to turn the blocking of EU traffic into standard operating procedure. The issue isn't really even about any desire on the part of companies to abuse personal data. It comes down to the many ways that even companies with the best of intentions can violate this regulation.
- AstralStorm 9y ago
  You seem to be forgetting that small companies have small databases. Getting removed from a manually handled filling cabinet is easy. Add is from a manually managed database, even when it is backed up regularly. It is also trivial to enforce a routine manual scrub of small amounts of private data. The only people who might have trouble are "small" data resellers having millions of accounts of personal data. It is good they will have to comply.
  - 9y ago