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 w

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.