4 ms·

It’s somewhat tricky. I operate a discourse instance. I have absolutely no desire to collect any personal information on my users(it is a free website and I am

It’s somewhat tricky. I operate a discourse instance. I have absolutely no desire to collect any personal information on my users(it is a free website and I am an anarchist), but I also live in the US and haven’t looked in to GDPR. The website is a hobby. I pay for the severs myself and do not display ads or use any tracking. I don’t intend to violate GDPR but I don’t know what it’s impkications are. For now I continue to make the site available for all, but if I felt there were legal implications to including Europe, I’d have to decide whether to block that region or do my due diligence. I’d want to include Europe given the subject of my site, but it’s something I haven’t looked in to yet. I do sometimes view sites that make a big deal out of it as whining, but I admit that I’m not familiar with what compliance requires.

oh_sigh 8y ago
GDPR only matters if your business is based in Europe, or targets European consumers in some substantial way. If you run a Madison, WI local newspaper, you don't need to choose between blocking EU users and following GDPR. You just ignore it and nothing will happen.
- checkyoursudo 8y ago
  To me this seems like the reasonable answer. I guess I don't understand why this Madison website would even care about EU users or GDPR and why it would bother blocking visits it thinks are from the EU? Because they don't want to get bogged down in EU law? I've had clients with real cross/inter/multi-jurisdictional issues. This would not be one of them.
  - oh_sigh 8y ago
    Right - my point is that a lot of non-EU businesses over-reacted based on a poor understanding of the GDPR. Maybe their CIO read a blog post about American company X closing themselves to European customers, because they truly did attempt to market to Europeans and didn't think complying was worth it, and said 'Well, it ain't to hard to geo-block the EU' and went for it.
arketyp 8y ago
This scenario doesn't get enough attention and sympathy. Things have been going downhill with internet freedoms for a long while, with tech giants usurping content and the way we navigate the web etc. But, living in Sweden, I had not felt such a blow to my freedoms as when these signs started popping up, pretty much over night. Europeans especially seem to be quite alright with this law since it supposedly only protects them. But a regulation is always, by priciple, a resitriction on some freedom. The GDPR may in fact be quite benign, but to me it's an obvious slippery slope where it is not hard to see this thing indeed evolve into something like the firewall of China. The EU is transparently considering protectionism with things like railways and telecom where foreign nations want to invest in the EU infrastructure. It's naive to think anything else of the internet. The GDPR was the innocent first baby step towards the European Wide Web.

oh_sigh 8y ago

GDPR only matters if your business is based in Europe, or targets European consumers in some substantial way. If you run a Madison, WI local newspaper, you don't need to choose between blocking EU users and following GDPR. You just ignore it and nothing will happen.

checkyoursudo 8y ago
To me this seems like the reasonable answer. I guess I don't understand why this Madison website would even care about EU users or GDPR and why it would bother blocking visits it thinks are from the EU? Because they don't want to get bogged down in EU law? I've had clients with real cross/inter/multi-jurisdictional issues. This would not be one of them.
- oh_sigh 8y ago
  Right - my point is that a lot of non-EU businesses over-reacted based on a poor understanding of the GDPR. Maybe their CIO read a blog post about American company X closing themselves to European customers, because they truly did attempt to market to Europeans and didn't think complying was worth it, and said 'Well, it ain't to hard to geo-block the EU' and went for it.

arketyp 8y ago

This scenario doesn't get enough attention and sympathy. Things have been going downhill with internet freedoms for a long while, with tech giants usurping content and the way we navigate the web etc. But, living in Sweden, I had not felt such a blow to my freedoms as when these signs started popping up, pretty much over night. Europeans especially seem to be quite alright with this law since it supposedly only protects them. But a regulation is always, by priciple, a resitriction on some freedom. The GDPR may in fact be quite benign, but to me it's an obvious slippery slope where it is not hard to see this thing indeed evolve into something like the firewall of China. The EU is transparently considering protectionism with things like railways and telecom where foreign nations want to invest in the EU infrastructure. It's naive to think anything else of the internet. The GDPR was the innocent first baby step towards the European Wide Web.