31 ms·

I keep seeing these posts on how to block European users to avoid the GDPR. As a citizen of Europe, seeing these posts consistently making it to the front page

• logronoide 8y ago
  I wrote the blog post to show how Dilbert's boss would solve GDPR for his company. Don't take it seriously.
• foobarbazetc 8y ago
  It’s disappointing, sure... but is it surprising? To a lot of US-ians the GDPR is just some EU bureaucrat stopping them from making more $. Nothing matters apart from being able to do whatever you want and make $. It’s just a different mindset.
• dogecoinbase 8y ago
  If there's a successful business that blocks EU access due to GDPR, that's a huge immediate opportunity to enter that market in the EU (unless, of course, the business model is based on resale of personal information).
  • briandear 8y ago
    Which is exactly the point of the law — it’s a trade barrier.
    • j605 8y ago
      EU companies also have to abide by it so I don't know how it is a trade barrier.
  • reaperducer 8y ago
    Or unless the business model is location-based. The example from a previous HN article was the Chicago Tribune blocking EU access. Are you saying that there's a "huge immediate opportunity" for people in Europe to read local Chicago news? Not every business is global. In fact, 99%+ aren't.
• CodeWriter23 8y ago
  Consider this case, startup app in a niche market, only available on US app stores, and a one man dev team that needs to focus on app dev not compliance for some regulation that could never apply to their customers. Yet needs to be sure they don’t end up giving the company to the EU because someone over there signs up on a marketing list. That’s the startup I’m presently working on. We’ll expand beyond the US borders (and implement GDPR) when we advance to a larger revenue stream. But right now, GDPR compliance is a distraction that interferes with gaining enough traction to help us afford the engineering and legal resources to ensure such compliance. NOTE: we delete all client data when they cancel already. And we don’t do any creepy marketing.
  • ryanwaggoner 8y ago
    An admirable effort, but all the fans of this law seem to hear is "You're not 100% compliant with the GDPR? You're scummy and shady and don't care about my privacy. I hope you fail immediately because the world is better off without you." Meanwhile they'll be using VPNs to access your site anyway :)
    • CodeWriter23 8y ago
      This is interesting, an EU Activist thinks they can twist Facebook's and Google's arms into providing free service: (again, I'm not a fan of FB/Google invasive data mining driven advertising) http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-44252327 http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-44252327
  • lima 8y ago
    > NOTE: we delete all client data when they cancel already. And we don’t do any creepy marketing. This does sound like you'll have an easy time complying with GDPR! :)
  • djhworld 8y ago
    > _NOTE: we delete all client data when they cancel already. And we don’t do any creepy marketing_ So what's there to worry about? Sounds like you're well on your way to being compliant If anything, this allows you to be transparent with your users too.
• drspacemonkey 8y ago
  >Nothing has been learned In my limited view, this is pretty much the case. When I was telling our management team about the GDPR and how it relates to our new European-focused project, the first thing the CEO said was "how do we get around this?" Management decided we're not gonna comply with the GDPR and just hope nobody notices.
  • notananthem 8y ago
    Some of us do work for companies who respect and promote GDPR who are not based in EU, and we're hiring. Leave, that's a perfect example of terrible leadership.
    • jacquesm 8y ago
      Agreed. When the Volskswagen story broke that was my first repsonse: Management Failure. No matter how you slice it in a company that is run in a hierarchical fashion there is no way that an employee at some level decides to break the law in such a blatant manner without being pressured to do so in some way. Which in the longer term turned out to be right. I'd love to see Winterkorn behind bars for that one.
      • kuschku 8y ago
        Well, that was what VW said from the beginning. Although it was presented as "rogue engineer", the person they originally presented was the head of the entire department, and a VP at VW. And VW is suing Winterkorn in a civil case, too.
    • matte_black 8y ago
      It’s foolish to comply when there isn’t even one example yet of a small non-EU company successfully being hit with fines.
  • zmmmmm 8y ago
    > Management decided we're not gonna comply with the GDPR and just hope nobody notices. Although they don't say it that way, that seems to be what most GDPR advocates are implicitly advising. They keep saying not to panic and shut down your web site or block europeans because and the EU is not going to sue you as a first step, etc etc.
• newman8r 8y ago
  I can see why you'd be disappointed - if popular websites started blocking US customers I'd be pretty bummed out as well (even if it was easy to circumvent). As a dev though, I also understand the frustration. Creating startups is already time-intensive and stressful. A lot of us are on shoestring budgets. Most startups will fail. To a solo developer in the US, the idea of spending time understanding and complying with GDPR is daunting, it's more than just a hindrance to many. Still, I don't want to break European law, so maybe it's easier to block EU users at first and change policies later if profitable. I think blocking is at least showing you respect the law, compared to just doing nothing and being non compliant.
  • Panoramix 8y ago
    If a company does not understand GDPR it's fair to say I don't want them handling my personal data. And it's not like this is new, there was a 2 year period to prepare for this. "Most startups will fail": I do not see that happening. You will first receive a warning. The EU won't really care if you are a tiny startup. Unless you are running a shady business, there's not much to worry about.
    • newman8r 8y ago
      Not wanting to use non-GDPR compliant services is completely fair. I think it should be the user's choice. I think assuming the EU won't care about tiny startups is irrelevant - I want to follow the letter of the law, it's why I'd opt to block EU users instead of just ignoring the existence of the law.
    • outside1234 8y ago
      The problem is not with the spirit of GDPR. I am totally with that. The problem is the liability of it - as a small startup it is seriously scary to think that all it takes is one insane customer to pull the fire alarm and we'd have regulators and fines raining down on us even if we believe with all of our hearts we are doing it right. Hence, the blocking of the EU - its better to block at the beginning and then expand to the EU once we have revenue to support someone handling this as an employee.
• drstewart 8y ago
  I'm curious as to how many European companies comply with SOX, HIPAA, or COPPA just for the opportunity of making security/privacy compliance better?
  • IceyEC 8y ago
    How many European companies deal with US health data (HIPAA)?
    • ryanwaggoner 8y ago
      If it worked the same as GDPR, I could start forcing them all to just by emailing them my health records.
      • throwaway-hn123 8y ago
        Why do you keep trying so hard to demonstrate how ignorant you are?
    • briandear 8y ago
      I am a US citizen who, until last week lived in France. I wasn’t protected by HIPAA in Europe. Interestingly, HIPAA is stronger than the protections provided by U.K. law. For example, practitioners in the U.K. actually use Skype for mental health consultations — which would be a huge HIPAA violation in the US.
  • llukas 8y ago
    Please read about FATCA
    • briandear 8y ago
      That isn’t about data protection— it’s actually the opposite, it’s about Euro banks sharing data with US authorities. Furthermore the unintended consequence of FATCA is that many Euro banks stopped allowing accounts from Americans because they didn’t want compliance risk. GDPR is having the same effect: US companies will refuse service to Europeans because of compliance risk.
• throwaway974 8y ago
  GDPR has effects way beyond better user privacy. Sorry I've been pasting this in multiple GDPR related threads, but here it goes: I have a profitable, bootstrapped SaaS business based in US. It's not based on ads or selling data. I don't even have a freemium plan. Only a limited free trial after which you have to start paying. It's a trivial application that stores mostly already public data. Only email is required to login so that I can send password reset and other such communication. I've been talking to a very well known giant corporation (also based in US, but has many global offices) for months. The VP and director love my product and want to start using it right away for their department. But their legal team is scared shitless with 4% fines in GDPR. They are putting some draconian clauses, (various ISO certifications and such) in the contract that I, as a small company, cannot comply. That's their interpretation of GDPR. It doesn't matter whether it's right or wrong. The VP and Director are really nice people and I've developed very good rapport with them. But I'm afraid their patience will run out soon and they'll go back to using spreadsheets. A lose-lose situation. This is the side-effect of GDPR. I'm all up for GDPR. I have uBlock, have blackholed all Facebook domains, etc. But don't assume that GDPR doesn't affect normal business transactions. Of course, blocking European users doesn't do anything for me since I want to do everything I can to protect user privacy. But anyone who says, "Oh, how hard could it be?" has no idea what they are talking about.
  • briandear 8y ago
    The loudest GDPR advocates don’t care about you. 90 years ago they would have been the ones helping collectivize the farms, unintended consequences be damned. And this law’s effects are all about the unintended consequences. Anyone thinking government regulators are reasonable and benevolent has never dealt with said regulators beyond any trivial level. To make it more fun each member country handles enforcement, so now you have a risk of 28 different interpretations of the law. It’s madness. Even if you do everything right there is still a compliance risk. It’s like HIPAA in the US — HIPAA is pretty “easy” to comply with, but the consequences are so severe that it necessarily drives up operational costs significantly. Unless Europe is a significant part of your revenue, better to block Europe and decrease your risk to near zero rather than have a potential risk of catastrophic, company-ending fines. Because the fine isn’t against profit, it’s against total, worldwide revenue. So unless your European profit exceeds 5% of your worldwide revenue, no sane person would take that risk. Even without the enforcement risk, you still have to deal with potentially hundreds or thousands of information requests — even if you are doing everything by the book.
• Psilidae 8y ago
  If I were running my own company right now, this is probably the approach I would take. I'm a big privacy advocate, but I'm also anti-authoritarian and don't like being forced into things by overbearing laws. Blocking Europeans sounds a lot more reasonable than having to hire a lawyer and spend double the time and effort just to be compliant while writing a new JavaScript MVC Todo List app.
  • notananthem 8y ago
    Hey, rest of the world, I'm sorry the US is so terrible and that this, currently, with all the bs we're putting you through, is the status quo for online fedoras. Defending censorship under.. the guise of anti-authoritarianism. "Right wing anarchy."
  • wlll 8y ago
    GDPR is happening because for the last several (10s?) of years companies have been playing fast and loose with people's data. They've had their chance and they've blown it fairly comprehensively. The people (by and large government is run by the people, for the people, at least in some countries) have had enough. I've had enough, and this is us telling companies they've had their chance and not made the grade so we're dictating now. As a person, and father (who has to worry for the rest of my live about my offspring's health and happiness, and linked to that, privacy) I'm very happy with this law. I support it, as seemingly a lot of people do. That's not authoritarian, it's the will of the people. And no, I'm not some sort of communist beard stroker, I'm pretty central in my political beliefs and I also don't appreciate governments sticking their noses in where it's not welcome, but this, this is welcome.
• sdenton4 8y ago
  Are you familiar with the term 'unfunded mandate'?
• white-flame 8y ago
  > It would seem that Silicon Valley perceives the GDPR as more of a hindrance than an opportunity to offer users better privacy. Why would you think that SV would be interested in offering anything for its own sake? The vast majority of the model is to create new rent-seeking profit opportunities for investors, with internet users as a mere means to that end.
• jacquesm 8y ago
  > Nothing has been learned. Yet. Give it some time.
• djhworld 8y ago
  I really enjoyed this quote from [1] > I would be very wary of a company who claims this legislation is onerous. It is potentially life threatening to companies who do very shady things without your consent. That much is true. That is the entire point. I somewhat suspect those companies hiding behind the 'oh lets just block Europe' excuse just don't want to admit the extent of what they are doing with the data. US citizens should take note of this, because it's their data too. [1] https://medium.com/tsengineering/the-gdpr-blog-post-9a571b13079d https://medium.com/tsengineering/the-gdpr-blog-post-9a571b13...
  • icelancer 8y ago
    This might be it for like a very small handful of malicious companies. More realistically they are companies who have very little market share in the EU and their attorneys are very risk-averse and tell them a simple opt-out with few billing hours creates the most ROI. EU citizens should not be pissed off that second-order effects exist in the world. If they are, they need to take ECN 101/102 again and pay closer attention.
  • orangecat 8y ago
    I somewhat suspect those companies hiding behind the 'oh lets just block Europe' excuse just don't want to admit the extent of what they are doing with the data. If the cops showed up at your door asking to search your home, business, and Internet accounts without a warrant, would you let them? Why not? What are you hiding?
  • Matticus_Rex 8y ago
    If you don't think this legislation is onerous, you're not doing the work of implementing it. Now, in my company's case, a big enough chunk of our customers are in the EU that it was the right choice. Thing is? We changed almost nothing about the way we processed data. Data subjects are no better off because we've spent tens of thousands of dollars complying. Whether people comply or not, the fact of the matter is that this regulation is onerous. It's onerous even if you love the intent of it, and it's onerous even if you think it's worth it.
  • ww520 8y ago
• addicted 8y ago
  If this is anything more than fear of change (I suspect it isn't, once people get a little more accustomed to GDPR and some of the inevitable issues are ironed out), and other device owners start blocking EU citizens, I suspect GDPR may end up being a huge boon for Europeans. Much like China, which has managed to develop a huge internet industry because it doesn't have to compete with the American competitors, the EU's huge market will provide a lot of space for EU startups if the American competitors refuse to do business in Europe. But unlike China, the GDPR will make those European companies more competitive on the world scene rather than less. If the choice was between 2 services, one of which complied with GDPR and one which didn't, and explicitly excluded GDPR protected users, I'd assume the vast majority of regular consumers, but definitely businesses, would pick the GDPR compliant one.
  • adventured 8y ago
    American competitors aren't going to refuse to do business in the EU. They're going to comply with GDPR for EU customers, and in some cases across the board. I keep hearing how easy it is to comply. Then that's that, it's easy and there's money to be made, so US competitors will continue to be dominant as before.
• manigandham 8y ago
  It's not about privacy, its about poorly written regulation that leaves too much vagueness because its based on principles rather than hard rules. Good intentions are not enough, there must be clear paths to implementation and verification. Perhaps that should've been fixed instead of wondering why so many companies don't really want to deal with it. It will also do just about nothing in regards to the major companies that everyone had such a big privacy issue with in the first place, so not only is the regulation vague but it's also ultimately very ineffective.
  • mrweasel 8y ago
    >because its based on principles rather than hard rules They tried hard rules, rather than principles with the cookie laws and the companies around the world turned a good idea into a shit-show of popups while continuing to behave like nothing happened. Honestly the more I read and the more I see how different business react I start to view the GDPR as EU finally showing that will not accept businesses viewing it as a second rate legislator. The GDPR and reactions to Trumps policies an EU that is finally starting to behave like it's representing the best interest of 500 million people.
    • Matticus_Rex 8y ago
      95% of my GDPR work has done nothing for actual privacy. If this is how the EU "represents the best interest of 500 million people," then no thank you.
      • globuous 8y ago
        Can you elaborate please ? And what about the other 5% ? I mean, if companies cared about privacy in the first place, there probably wouldn't be the need for such a regulation. At the very least, GDPR will get the general population be conscious about what the hell is going on under most websites.
        • Matticus_Rex 8y ago
          Most of the costs of this (so far -- we'll see how it goes with subject rights; I spent several hours already working on a right to erasure request that was so confusing it will take a number of additional hours just to entangle and document) are learning the regulation (not privacy, but the regulation itself -- very different), doing documentation (the largest cost by far), and holding customers' hands. The last 5% wasn't all that meaningful; a few assorted things, like one of our S3 buckets that was storing encrypted backups of non-sensitive data with no expiration, and it got noticed during GDPR prep. It would have been noticed anyway (probably even before now). We've also lost customers (including a contract that would have been our second-biggest) because our competitor is either lying or doesn't know anything about the GDPR, and has convinced customers they're compliant. Their story sounds easier than ours; "We're in the EU, so we're compliant" as opposed to "Hey, you need to sign this DPA with us to be compliant." And no, many companies already did care about privacy. Companies are not faceless villains -- they're made up of people like you, assuming you have a job, and even aside from not wanting the bad publicity of breach or misuse most people want to use data correctly.
• falcon620 8y ago
  HN is full of morally totaly unscrupulous people. The typical Silicon Valley crowd actually celebrates the kind of privacy invasion that the GDPR is design to counteract. So, obviously it's no big surprise that these Silicon Valley bros post silly tips on how to avoid the GDPR by just blocking the pesky Europeans. They will learn. It's a financial certainty. On a separate note: I feel totally disgusted with the kind of people who are totally uninterested with the the fate of their users. It's not exactly uncommon in Silicon Valley. Fuck these guys.
• Kalium 8y ago
  > Nothing has been learned. I don't know about you, but I have learned a great deal! I've mostly learned that Eurocrats can't actually write useful regulation. Blah blah blah human rights blah blah reasonable measures. Next chapter. Blah blah envisage blah blah reasonable measures. Blah blah blah inter-government communications protocols blah blah codes of conduct. What's a reasonable measure? How do I know if I'm compliant? How do I know if a vendor is compliant? GDPR is a wonderful, incredible, essential document for laying out human rights for the digital world. It's also terrible and incomprehensible regulation.
  • shabble 8y ago
    Can you think of any good technical regulations that do lay out requirements & obligations in a useful manner without being massively outdated, trivially bypassable, or some sort of hugely onerous 'one size swamps all'? I mostly agree that the lack of concrete measures makes it horrible from a compliance view, but I'm not sure you can have both things, especially in a relatively immature area of law.
    • Kalium 8y ago
      US environmental regulations tend to spell out technical requirements, particularly around emissions. I would have been happier if they'd done something around setting up an administrative body that authors and updated regs.
  • pbhjpbhj 8y ago
    >How do I know if a vendor is compliant? // Did they ask for explicit permission to use your data? Do they provide the service if you only provide the data they actually need, rather than asking for a swathe of PII so they can sell it on? Do they provide info on how your data is stored, and who has access to it? Do they provide a way for you to view and/or delete all the PII they have on you?
    • Kalium 8y ago
      You're right! Those are all critically important questions to ask! It's just possible that they might not be completely exhaustive, though. Do they take reasonable measures to detect and inform me of a breach? Do they take reasonable measures to ensure it's me requesting data being deleted? Can they provide the same data about all Data Processors they make use of? It's possible that the answers to this might not be easily and readily answered in every single potential case one might encounter when dealing with specialist vendors. You're completely right to spell out those questions. It's just possible that there may be more to GDPR compliance - and certainty - than that in some cases.
• 13years 8y ago
  > Nothing has been learned I would say this is also applicable in reference to the unintended consequences of regulations
• tquinn 8y ago
  I feel the EU regulators could stand to learn something. If EU citizens are small portion of your users, and your tasked with parsing this document http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELEX:32016R0679 http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELEX... just blocking them doesn't seem like that bad of an idea, especially with the fines involved. I think the things that bother me is: 1) A College student working on a side project with no revenue are treated the same as some massive multi-national. 2) It's a foreign requirement that feels like a violation of sovereignty. Most business/startup owners complain about there being too much domestic regulations, now we have to worry about things outside of our own countries -- that also can come into conflict with our domestic tax authorities on things like data retention. An international agreement would be entirely different. 3) The GDPR requires clear and concise language, but have done nothing of the sort when writing the regulations. For most websites outside of the EU, could they not have produced a concise 1-2 page infographic produced by the regulators themselves?
  • Tomte 8y ago
    > A College student working on a side project with no revenue are treated the same as some massive multi-national. And why not? The result/harm is the same. It doesn't matter a bit whether a company's web site is handing its visitors' data over to Facebook or a "private site" does. The side project or the private site always have the option of not participating in the adtech frenzy. But of course they want to participate (free money!), even if they find out much later that almost no money is coming their way.
    • manigandham 8y ago
      No, it's not the same. The lack of proportionality is precisely why the UK/EU is such a hard place to conduct business. These rules don't stop anything about ads, they just make them less targeted. Not a big deal, but it will increase the costs of serving users and thus decrease the total amount of commercial projects started.
      • Tomte 8y ago
• nkkollaw 8y ago
  Pretty awful. I guess they can afford it.
• takeitto 8y ago
  I am European browsing from a non-EU IP. Seems to me a blanket ban on EU IPs is both draconic and ineffective. As for SV seeing GDPR as more of a hindrance: SV was build on the freemium model of gathering as much data as possible. Companies were funded under the assumption that their user growth would lead to valuable data stores. GDPR and an increased privacy aware public are existential threats to these companies, as there is little chance to pivot to a non-data-use company. You have to start over. I hope we will look back at these companies as ugly centralizing dinosaurs, as little by little, the consumers realize the power they gained back (or always had) over their usage and data, does not justify these business models to exist. (Also, GDPR, even when seen as an opportunity, _is_ a hindrance to implement. Regulation in response to market evils is known to be heavy-handed and clumsy).
  • guelo 8y ago
    > ban on EU IPs is both draconic and ineffective It doesn't matter it's ineffective. The block means they're complying with GDPR's requirement that they not target Europeans.
    • takeitto 8y ago
      But they still process European user data if they do not block my IP. So they are not complying at all with GDPR's main requirement, just a poorly singled-out subclause.
      • snissn 8y ago
        Do EU laws protect you in China? I feel, partially, that going through a proxy means you are more under the discretion of the laws of the country with which the last proxy is operating under. Do you disagree? It's all very confusing
      • abiox 8y ago
        you're saying that blocking eu ip is insufficient. so you can, at leisure, forcibly subject anyone to attack by gdpr, against their will, by circumventing their access controls. the only way for all businesses around the world to avoid abuse and subjugation to eu regulators, who they cannot influence, is to not exist at all?
• Bromskloss 8y ago
  Do they have any opportunity now that they haven't always had?
• __jal 8y ago
  > than an opportunity to offer users better privacy I have a site that I did this with. I also wish the US would pass a law like this. And I beg to differ. No, I don't believe this is self-contradictory. The issue is risk. I'm a one-man band - the site in question does make money most of the time, but not much, and it has always been much more of a hobby/labor of love than a business[1]. And when any legal change means I might end up with legal grief or potentially not be visit European relatives again, even if I generally approve of the change, I'm going to knife it because there is no planet on which the site means more to me than the risk. My plan right now is to let the big boys who can afford it take the initial lawsuits and let them shake out what the vagaries mean, then come back in a year or so and see what my exposure would be if I let ya'll back in. [1] Oh, and it should already be complaint, at least as I understand 'compliant'; I added notices and rejiggered a few things for selective denial and whatnot. I never have and never will sell/rent/share user data, don't integrate with any surveillance/ad networks, etc. But I have no confidence that someone won't see me as a likely target to use to make some point, and hiring a legal consultant for something this size would take it from slightly profitable to a future break-even measured in many years.
• ww520 8y ago
  That's because GDPR is regulating and fining without representation to non-Europeans. Blocking Europeans is a defensive measure.
• russdill 8y ago
  I have a similar, but opposite feeling. Genealogy sites, even free US based ones, are (such as WikiTree) taking GDPR very seriously. Rather than risk being sued out of existence, they are marking any and all content involving living individuals as private unless the individual has an active account on the site. This makes it difficult, if not impossible, to find links to living individuals. A ton of people have done a ton of work to build a shared public tree, and some 50-100 years of it are getting chopped off the bottom.
• str33t_punk 8y ago
  I think the response from European citizens on hackernews has been disappointing. I see many refuse to accept any of the negatives of GDP
  • codexon 8y ago
    I am sure most of them are consumers and don't run their own websites. The GDPR is even an issue for people running simple blogs and forums. Many public software for these don't even have the features for GDPR compliance.
• markmark 8y ago
  I'd love a browser plugin that indicates a site I'm visiting is blocked in the EU. I'm not in the EU, but if I site cares that little about my privacy that they don't want to comply with GDPR then I don't want to use it. I might just start browsing through a VPN terminating in the EU anyway.
• mlindner 8y ago
  It's certainly a hindrance. I can't look at core dumps from code running in Europe now. It's a mess.
• blunte 8y ago
  The companies that don't want to deal with GDPR are more than free to stop serving the EU. Then alternatives to these companies (services) will spawn within the EU. It's a bit like a good forest fire. Out of the monocultural ash sprout (life sustaining) varieties.
• deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
• shados 8y ago
  Dealing with laws is hard. Dealing with laws that aren't even from your country is very hard. When you're in "move fast and break things" mode, getting stuff working for SOME users is better than having a complete solution for all users that come much later. It's not even just about ignoring Europeans. A lot of these products and software solutions start "only available in California", or hell, only in SF. That's even true for some stuff from big companies like Amazon. Then as you grow, you can start tackling more barriers and regulations from other countries. I mean, there's plenty of companies that won't ship to my address because they don't do business with the US. Or when I lived in Quebec, I could not participate to a lot of contests because it wasn't worth it for these entities to deal with Quebec's gambling laws. That's ok. Even if you agree with the general idea of GDPR, even if you want to implement the tightest privacy rules you can't in your software, there's more to it than that. I've watched lawyers duke it out over some of the details. My employer takes GDPR very seriously and we've done everything in our power to comply, not just with the letter, but also with the spirit of the law. But we're big, we have money, and we're actively trying to grow internationally. 10+ years ago when the company was barely afloat? I'm not sure they would have been able to deal with the fine prints even if they wanted to. There's more to GDPR than sending a silly email and adding a "Delete all the things!" button.
• joejerryronnie 8y ago
  Many people view The EU's recent actions (GDPR, Vestager's crusade, etc) as a blatant attempt to weaken the dominant US tech sector so that Europe can try to compete.
• mrep 8y ago
  I like the better privacy stuff. What really pisses me off about GDPR is the whole "you cannot deny us your content even if it goes directly against your business model. Instead, you have to have give us all of your shit for free and then provide us an opt-in for your business model to work." What used to be a full opt-in to the content and business model of a site, the EU wants to only get the content and choose whether or not they want to support a sites business model. You cannot have your cake and eat it too. If you want the sites content, then you should also agree to their business model to actually support it. Unsurprisingly, now that you cannot tie a sites value with their business model, many companies are choosing to leave the EU as they assume most people don't want to pay for the content they consume (in addition to other things).
• hyprCoin 8y ago
  I just spent the last few weeks on this and the regulators took a 'tech should conform to my understanding' approach. It's horrible legislation, time consuming across a still-emerging field (talk about hindering progress..) and I'm not even part of the EU. I am tempted to just shut off my services to the EU until I redeploy everything as dapps and wipe my hands of this nonsense. Let EU deal with blocking eth because it doesn't conform to the way they think technology should work.
• draw_down 8y ago
  I think EU citizens should take this as a good sign- the law is working. If nobody reacted to it, it would be a sign that the law doesn’t do anything. And the whole idea here is that I’d businesses don’t feel like complying with the regulation, then the EU doesn’t feel welcome letting them do business. And if we all believe capitalism is as wonderful as we say it is all the time, then businesses will spring up to fill the demand left behind. But if that doesn’t happen... hmm. Maybe it wasn’t such a great idea after all.
• mongolsa 8y ago
  Silicon Valley folks need to pay their mortgages, fancy cars and Faberge eggs. Privacy to their victims is a minor concern.
• tomrod 8y ago
  Innovation costs money. GDPR threatens part of their model, but the tradeoff is calculated.
• arbitragy 8y ago
  My gut tells me Europe will use GDPR to further attack (and fine) large US tech companies (Facebook, Google, Apple, etc.). Everybody is likely breaking these sorts of laws in some small way, but I doubt the EU will bother going after a small startup. If you can't avoid a lawyer, I doubt you're worth being prosecuted.