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Because bitter HN users will call you shady if you don’t fully comply with their pet law, no matter how ambiguous or onerous :)
by ryanwaggoner 8y ago
Because bitter HN users will call you shady if you don’t fully comply with their pet law, no matter how ambiguous or onerous :)
- dmitriid 8y agoThis "pet law" is the law of 500 million people, has been in effect for two years (two years was a grace period to comply with it), and exists exactly because shady businesses didn't even comply with existing data protection laws. It's not "bitter HN users". It's bitter European citizens. No wonder that it's mostly American companies who have the most trouble complying with it.
- ryanwaggoner 8y agoPass whatever law you want, just don’t expect me to care. This law has nothing to do with me. If you don’t want to do business with me because I’m not compliant, don’t send me server requests, data, or money.
- dmitriid 8y ago> Pass whatever law you want, just don’t expect me to care. That was exactly the position of too many companies: pass whatever law, I don't care. Well. It has gone on for too long, so, hopefully, now companies will start to care. > If you don’t want to do business with me because I’m not compliant, don’t send me server requests, data, or money. The EU is 500 million people. It looks to me that it's you who doesn't want to do business just because you think that other countries' laws and other countries' rights are bullshit and you don't care about them. I say, good riddance.
- ryanwaggoner 8y agoI treat all my users fairly and protect their data, and I am not intentionally targeting any EU users with anything I do online.
- throwaway-hn123 8y agoGet back to growth hacking, you dumb cunt.
- TomAnthony 8y agoYour previous comments notwithstanding, this comment does have a legitimate point. If you truly do intend to take good care of your users’ data, then the goal should be to have you demonstrate that whilst making it as easy as possible for you to do so (without compromising the said care). I’m hoping that over the coming weeks and months the enforcement of GDPR and various court cases will add clarity and allow the development of improved guidelines for becoming compliant. If a random SaaS company that users emails for logins and communication with active customers could look at a simple 5 point check list which they could check though in a day then things would be better for everyone. Less burden for customers, wider services for users, and those firms that can see they could make a few small changes to become compliant would be more incentivised to do so.
- packet_nerd 8y agoCool dude. You don't plan to take care of my data I certainly don't want to be entrusting you with it.
- ryanwaggoner 8y agoFalse equivalence. I don't misuse any user data, never have or will. But I'm still not compliant, nor will I be for the foreseeable future, unless someone can tell me why I should care about a law from some other country that has no mechanism of enforcement?
- packet_nerd 8y agoYou may handle my data appropriatly, but how the hell do I know? Take some guy on the Internet's word for it? What I do know is that massive numbers of services like yours are missusing, mishandling, or lossing my data every year. I'm not OK with that.
- ryanwaggoner 8y agoOK, if you don't trust me, then please avoid using my service. It's no problem for me. But I won't jump through hoops to reassure you. The cost is too high for too little benefit. Two things could swing this in another direction: 1. The EU figures out how to levy fines or force compliance against small businesses in other countries. 2. The revenue loss from EU users and possibly others is so large that the benefits once again outweigh the costs. Very skeptical on both counts. Until then, the GDPR goes on a large pile of perhaps well-meaning laws passed by foreign governments that don't apply to me and that I can safely ignore.
- king_phil 8y agoIs that the professional opinion of IndieHive LLC as well?
- ryanwaggoner 8y agoI treat all my users fairly and protect their data, and I am not intentionally targeting any EU users with anything I do online.
- ajmurmann 8y agoIt's not necessarily that American companies are having trouble complying. Some of them like the ones the article is about just have little incentive to do so. If I'm in essence doing no business in Europe it's more efficient to just block European visitors. Having grown up in Europe I'm much more sensitive to privacy concerns than most Americans, but it's not proper to assume that anyone who just blocks European visitors is up to something nefarious. It just doesn't make business sense for everyone to comply.
- packet_nerd 8y agoWhether they are "nefarious" might depend on who you ask, I suppose, but anyway, fair enough. As an American who cares deeply about online privacy, I will be actively avoiding US companies who don't comply with European privacy laws (easy way to filter). I'm willing to bet the real incentives will turn out to be bigger than many of these companies think.
- Grue3 8y agoChina has a billion people. I'm not seeing people urging everyone to comply with Chinese censorship laws for some reason.
- dmitriid 8y agoThere are very few Western companies in China. These companies go out of their way to comply with Chinese laws.