13 ms·

I feel like you’re making a bigger deal out of this than necessary, unless you’re doing some shady stuff with our data. From what I can tell from various legal

• pembrook 8y ago
  Instapaper is owned by Pinterest. Pinterest is a large high profile company with millions of European users and would be a potential target of regulators looking to establish precedents of enforcement with a big name. I highly doubt this decision was made lightly and was probably informed by actual legal professionals with knowledge of the regulators in question and not the 3rd party opinion of some guy on the internet who "feels like its not that big of a deal."
  • jacquesm 8y ago
    But he's spot on about contacting the regulators because they already know they won't be in compliance. Now would be a good time to do just that, and if the actual legal professionals thought it was a good idea to ban EU citizens but keep their data then maybe they should get better lawyers because that certainly won't work.
    • deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
    • Normal_gaussian 8y ago
      hmmm... If I had an instapaper account it would be interesting to submit a GDPR request tomorrow, and see what kind of reply I got. Now I don't, but I'm sure there are plenty of other interested people around.
      • danpalmer 8y ago
        In all likelihood, the answer from most companies would be "sorry we don't yet have the ability to provide that data, it's on the roadmap, you'll have to wait".
        • slededit 8y ago
          This is ridiculous, its not like they didn't have notice.
          • Grollicus 8y ago
            But that's the reality. At least they're working on it and the fact that a lot of companies massively overreact means they at least take data protection serious now.
            • slededit 8y ago
              You don't ignore a law for 2 years and then just after it comes into force say "at least we're working on it". Honestly I thought the GDPR was a bit of an over reaction when it came out 2 years ago but seeing how little respect companies have for our data over the last few weeks I've been convinced it was necessary.
              • Operyl 8y ago
                As an engineer, with as much else is going on on a day to day basis it's not surprising. A lot of the vagueness around the GDPR still hasn't been resolved, nobody wanted to get a head start just to be told "oops, we actually meant this" and have wasted countless engineering/lawyer hours as a result.
                • slededit 8y ago
                  You would only take that liberty if you didn't have much respect for the law and its ability to touch you. I suspect companies are a lot more careful with each years new IRS rules even though they don't yet have case law and are often issued on much shorter notice.
  • merinowool 8y ago
    > would be a potential target of regulators looking to establish precedents of enforcement with a big name. Shouldn't law apply equally to everyone? One could have thought that setting an example "to show them!" wouldn't have occurred in a civilised country.
    • bearcobra 8y ago
      In a world of limited resources, it makes sense that regulators would pursue enforcement against entities that impact a large number of people.
      • kodablah 8y ago
        In such a world, it would make more sense to limit the scope of the law until enforcement can catch up. Minimally enforced laws that are enforced subjectively are problematic regardless of why.
        • Tyrek 8y ago
          Are you suggesting that the US government suspend income tax while they hire enough people in the IRS to go through every individual's tax return?
          • xevb3k 8y ago
            Minimal enforcement can be used to make everyone a criminal. You then selectively apply the law against people you don’t like. Taxation (I would hope) is not minimally enforced.
          • kodablah 8y ago
            No, I'm suggesting they don't add any more compliance rules with new punishments unless they staff up.
    • s73v3r_ 8y ago
      Regulators only have so many hours in the day. Prioritizing high visibility infringers can persuade lower visibility infringers to get into compliance.
  • grey-area 8y ago
    Most other companies haven't made the same decision, what's different about Instapaper? Do they share reading habits with multiple third parties perhaps?
    • danpalmer 8y ago
      This is increasingly my suspicion. I'd expect that they could have solved any technical issues around disabling tracking or letting users opt-in/out by now, which leads me to suspect that they have their business model based on being able to share certain data. It's very possible that they've A/B tested GDPR compliant flows/messaging, and found that their metrics/revenue dropped enough that they feel they have to do something more drastic. Although the argument against that is the fact they have literally just disabled access for European users.
    • matwood 8y ago
      GDPR has basically turned the lights on all of the companies doing questionable things with user data. Shutting down or turning off the EU is a huge red flag.
      • ggg9990 8y ago
        No it’s not. The way big companies are dealing with the GDPR is to ask their lawyers what to do. The lawyers define compliance very expansively since they’re not the ones doing the work and they are the ones who will be blamed if the EU comes after the company. So they say, “every single trace of anything related to user data must be purged.” So the company asks every engineering team to fill out a 200 point checklist about what they are doing with user data. So, unless you’re saying that “Pinterest’s site reliability team can’t answer question 192 about how user data is deleted from the incident management system logs when an event is traced” is a “huge red flag” then you are exaggerating the issue.
  • danpalmer 8y ago
    My "feels like its not that big of a deal" is based on my own companies approach, legal advice I've seen, and internal training. I realise that Pinterest is large and I'm sure they have sought legal advice, but that doesn't stop this coming across as an overreaction, if one assumes that they _aren't_ using the data in ways that explicitly violate the rights granted by the GDPR. Now if they are explicitly violating those rights, that's another story! I'd rather attribute it to ignorance than malice though.
  • celticninja 8y ago
    Probably worth reading this. https://jacquesmattheij.com/gdpr-hysteria https://jacquesmattheij.com/gdpr-hysteria EU agencies would prefer compliance over fines and would work with businesses to help them. As the article suggests, prosecution/fines will come when all other avenues are exhausted not the starting point.
    • downandout 8y ago
      Says some random dude on the Internet that seems to be a tremendous fan of GDPR. I prefer to base my understanding of laws on the text of the law. This one says that no warnings are required and that fines can be up to 20M EUR.
      • ggg9990 8y ago
        Neither of you are right. The EU is not going to go out guns blazing with $20m fines for small companies. They’re also not going to host a drum circle for companies to harmoniously join the movement towards better user privacy. They’re going to get some big fines out there on big companies (who doesn’t love free money) and also go after smaller companies actively doing bad things with user data. Yes, they could, but in the same way that the person standing at the bus with you could punch you in the face. It might happen, but realistically, it probably won’t, and you’re probably not actively prepping for it.
      • vertex-four 8y ago
        Under existing law companies can be fined somewhat ridiculous amounts for data breaches and essentially never are, so why exactly would the enforcement strategy change for the GDPR? Maximum sentences just aren’t an EU thing, nobody gets them unless they’re wilfully causing damage to people and this isn’t their first time. I don’t know if America does things differently, but based on what I know, it doesn’t - maximum fines and sentences are essentially never passed out there either.
      • celticninja 8y ago
        Where do you see the "no warnings are required"? Article 58 says that fines can be issued along with, or in place of, other enforcement action. That isn't "no warnings". Plus if you read the text of the law you would note that it is very clear that the size of the fine is dependent on 11 factors, many of which revolve around future compliance and efforts made by the business to resolve the breach and showing willingness to conply.
• downandout 8y ago
  I feel like you’re making a bigger deal out of this than necessary, unless you’re doing some shady stuff with our data. Seeing this completely false sentiment repeated over and over again is getting exhausting. Only a tiny fraction of the companies avoiding EU traffic due to GDPR have any intention of “doing shady stuff with your data”. GDPR is highly complex, and as of tomorrow, allowing EU traffic invites massive liabilities that most companies outside the EU won’t be willing to take on. While Instapaper likely will eventually relaunch in the EU because of its footprint there, the reality is that EU residents are going to be blocked from a large percentage of the world’s websites. The liability is just too great and the rewards too small for most companies outside the EU. You guys chose to make your traffic radioactive. These are the consequences.
  • s73v3r_ 8y ago
    "Only a tiny fraction of the companies avoiding EU traffic due to GDPR have any intention of “doing shady stuff with your data”." Says who? If they weren't doing shady stuff, they wouldn't be pulling out of the EU. The excuses of being complex are just that, excuses.
    • downandout 8y ago
      Says who? Says anyone with common sense. What percentage of sites do you think employ data scientists or would even know where to go to sell your data? Most sites do nothing more than throw GA on their website, and maybe some Adsense. You people decided to paint that as something evil. That’s your decision to make, but just understand that most of the rest of the world wants no part of $20M potential fines and will simply take their ball and go home. This law will have the net effect of creating two Internets - one for the EU and one for the rest of us.
      • mort96 8y ago
        Well, Instapaper is owned by Pinterest. Pinterest strikes me as a company of such a size that they'd have no problem finding some way to monetize the data gathered from their users.
• justboxing 8y ago
  > Your current reaction seems like a huge and unnecessary It's most likely action based on what their suits (Lawyers) recommended, and not a reaction.
  • danpalmer 8y ago
    Possibly, although other lawyers are saying other things, and my understanding of the official guidance suggests this is an overreaction.
• deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
• programmarchy 8y ago
  You seem to be presuming guilt before innocence. Most strong advocates of GDPR seem to have this attitude. Perhaps the regulators will, too. Using that line of reasoning, Pinterest is making a very prudent decision.
• mikekchar 8y ago
  If you get a request today, you've got a month to comply, so in a way you're right. However, it really depends on how big your company is and how little you have prepared. Your absolute minimum is to have a statement that says that you are going to use the data you gather for contract purposes and to list the 3rd parties that you need to send that data to for contract purposes. But then, if you are using data for other purposes, it's a bit complicated because you'll have to refrain from doing so until you are compliant. It doesn't necessarily have to be shady stuff. Even if you aren't sure if what you are doing is contract basis or not, it can be a pain. It's not necessarily massively difficult, but if you woke up yesterday and thought "OMG! We haven't done GDPR! What are we going to do?", then I can see this. I've written earlier about how the company I'm working for now has changed what it is doing with data, even though I don't think they were doing anything shady previously. But it's more like, "Do we really want to list a lot of things and piss off the customer?" So now there are heated discussions of what 3 (or whatever other small number) of things we might collect data for because we believe that's the kind of limit that the customer will tolerate. All of these discussions take time -- especially in a large organisation. And you can see in discussions on HN, there is going to be a large backlash of "Why do we have to do this anyway? Can't we just ignore it?" which wastes a lot more time. Sounds like they want to be compliant, but are just not ready yet. A miss on their part, but hopefully they will get things in order quickly.