4 ms·

HN should ban links to sites with policies like that. It certainly reduces the value of HN. It's essentially spam to anyone here.

by emn13 7y ago

dredmorbius 7y ago
Good suggestion. I've submitted it to hn@ycombinator.com
manfredo 7y ago
What, are we going to ban links that are blocked by the Great Firewall of China because the 1.3 billion mainland Chinese can't view it (a group about 2x the population of Europe)? Region-blocked content due to legal reasons is extremely common and it long predates GDPR. Plenty of YouTube videos are region blocked due to copyright differences.
- emn13 7y ago
  There's no region blocking being forced on this poor site by anybody. The site is choosing this absurd behavior itself. And that's fine and all. But unless HN aims to be local-interest only, pretty please don't bother me with junk like this. At least redirect me to some nice rick astley, so I can appreciate the sad joke.
  - manfredo 7y ago
    > There's no region blocking being forced on this poor site by anybody. The site is choosing this absurd behavior itself. Well, it's "choosing this absurd behavior itself" insofar as risking tens of millions of dollars in fines for violating murky and ambiguous that can be interpreted differently in any of the 28 member states counts as "choosing the behavior itself". And companies blocked by the great firewall can simply choose to comply with whatever the CCP tells them to do, too. So in a sense they're choosing to be blocked as well. > And that's fine and all. But unless HN aims to be local-interest only, pretty please don't bother me with junk like this. At least redirect me to some nice rick astley, so I can appreciate the sad joke. The EU consists makes up 7% of the global population. The fact that EU residents can't access the content hardly makes it "local-interest".
    - emn13 7y ago
      > Well, it's "choosing this absurd behavior itself" insofar as risking tens of millions of dollars in fines for violating murky and ambiguous that can be interpreted differently in any of the 28 member states counts as "choosing the behavior itself". And companies blocked by the great firewall can simply choose to comply with whatever the CCP tells them to do, too. So in a sense they're choosing to be blocked as well. That's just nonsense. It could (shocking I know) (1) try not to save personally identifiable data for undefined periods of time; and (2) accept that it has no business presence in the EU and thus flout the law with no repercussions; or (3) use a modicum of common sense and notice that just because there exist maximum penalties for truly egregious behavior doesn't mean they're in any risk of those if they're non-malicious, especially given the not-exactly hard-to-find actually assessed penalties are nothing like what you're saying there for behavior that's much worse than anything I can imagine a local news station doing unless they really are Machiavellian; and (4) note that GDPR regulators have approximately a googleplex of more relevant cases, and are literally never ever going to be interested in them; and (5) not forget they;re likely in some technical sense breaking untold laws in all kind of jurisdictions even closer to home, and the sky isn't falling. This is just FUD. And comparing the censorship by the great firewall with the truly onerous restriction not to cyber-stalk all of your users is a farce.
      - manfredo 7y ago
        It takes a hell of a lot more than a "modicum of common sense" to comply with GDPR. If you really just think that saying "well I'm not going to save PII indefinitely" is enough, you're setting yourself up for a lawsuit. Did you go through every layer of your stack and ensure that every tool and platform you use doesn't log or persist PII? Did you think of justifications for every use of PII? Did you consult with attorneys on these justifications, or are you just hoping that all 28 member states of the EU agree with your personal opinion? And don't forget you need to build a system to give people all the info you have on them at their request. Points 3, 4, and 5 basically amount to, "well, as long as I have good intentions I'm sure the government won't sue me even if I do screw up and violate GDPR". You might be willing to risk your business on this assumption. But if that's the case then I sure wouldn't want my retirement funds invested in your company. Put yourself in the shoes of a West Virginia local news station. What percentage of your revenue comes from EU users? Does it even remotely justify the cost to audit all of your tech and make it GDPR compliant - let alone run the risk that one of the 28 EU member states interprets GDPR differently than you do? Chances are, it doesn't. This is the natural consequence of regulation. People who don't have interest in complying with it leave the market.
dang 7y ago
Such a list would need to be created and maintained. I'm not sure that would be a great use of limited resources. The practice we've been following so far is switching URLs to a more accessible article on the same story. And users often post workarounds in the threads. For example, this may work for you: https://web.archive.org/web/20190530100102/https://www.wowktv.com/news/west-virginia/rare-earth-elements-could-be-big-business-for-wv/2037113435 https://web.archive.org/web/20190530100102/https://www.wowkt....
- dredmorbius 7y ago
  The behaviour could be to some extent either autodetected via remote proxies or crowdsourced, possibly via trusted contributors. Even a partially-effective list of high-profile instances would be useful. Removal procedure might also be considered. Automated, with an integrated proxy check, might work.
  - dang 7y ago
    Our experience with automating things like that is that it's too hard to get right. Maybe we could if we tried hard enough, but at the cost of other things that probably matter more.
    - dredmorbius 7y ago
      Fair enough, though submitted.

HN should ban links to sites with policies like that. It certainly reduces the value of HN. It's essentially spam to anyone here.

by emn13 7y ago

HN should ban links to sites with policies like that. It certainly reduces the value of HN. It's essentially spam to anyone here.

dredmorbius 7y ago

Good suggestion. I've submitted it to hn@ycombinator.com

manfredo 7y ago

What, are we going to ban links that are blocked by the Great Firewall of China because the 1.3 billion mainland Chinese can't view it (a group about 2x the population of Europe)? Region-blocked content due to legal reasons is extremely common and it long predates GDPR. Plenty of YouTube videos are region blocked due to copyright differences.

emn13 7y ago
There's no region blocking being forced on this poor site by anybody. The site is choosing this absurd behavior itself. And that's fine and all. But unless HN aims to be local-interest only, pretty please don't bother me with junk like this. At least redirect me to some nice rick astley, so I can appreciate the sad joke.
- manfredo 7y ago
  > There's no region blocking being forced on this poor site by anybody. The site is choosing this absurd behavior itself. Well, it's "choosing this absurd behavior itself" insofar as risking tens of millions of dollars in fines for violating murky and ambiguous that can be interpreted differently in any of the 28 member states counts as "choosing the behavior itself". And companies blocked by the great firewall can simply choose to comply with whatever the CCP tells them to do, too. So in a sense they're choosing to be blocked as well. > And that's fine and all. But unless HN aims to be local-interest only, pretty please don't bother me with junk like this. At least redirect me to some nice rick astley, so I can appreciate the sad joke. The EU consists makes up 7% of the global population. The fact that EU residents can't access the content hardly makes it "local-interest".
  - emn13 7y ago
    > Well, it's "choosing this absurd behavior itself" insofar as risking tens of millions of dollars in fines for violating murky and ambiguous that can be interpreted differently in any of the 28 member states counts as "choosing the behavior itself". And companies blocked by the great firewall can simply choose to comply with whatever the CCP tells them to do, too. So in a sense they're choosing to be blocked as well. That's just nonsense. It could (shocking I know) (1) try not to save personally identifiable data for undefined periods of time; and (2) accept that it has no business presence in the EU and thus flout the law with no repercussions; or (3) use a modicum of common sense and notice that just because there exist maximum penalties for truly egregious behavior doesn't mean they're in any risk of those if they're non-malicious, especially given the not-exactly hard-to-find actually assessed penalties are nothing like what you're saying there for behavior that's much worse than anything I can imagine a local news station doing unless they really are Machiavellian; and (4) note that GDPR regulators have approximately a googleplex of more relevant cases, and are literally never ever going to be interested in them; and (5) not forget they;re likely in some technical sense breaking untold laws in all kind of jurisdictions even closer to home, and the sky isn't falling. This is just FUD. And comparing the censorship by the great firewall with the truly onerous restriction not to cyber-stalk all of your users is a farce.
    - manfredo 7y ago
      It takes a hell of a lot more than a "modicum of common sense" to comply with GDPR. If you really just think that saying "well I'm not going to save PII indefinitely" is enough, you're setting yourself up for a lawsuit. Did you go through every layer of your stack and ensure that every tool and platform you use doesn't log or persist PII? Did you think of justifications for every use of PII? Did you consult with attorneys on these justifications, or are you just hoping that all 28 member states of the EU agree with your personal opinion? And don't forget you need to build a system to give people all the info you have on them at their request. Points 3, 4, and 5 basically amount to, "well, as long as I have good intentions I'm sure the government won't sue me even if I do screw up and violate GDPR". You might be willing to risk your business on this assumption. But if that's the case then I sure wouldn't want my retirement funds invested in your company. Put yourself in the shoes of a West Virginia local news station. What percentage of your revenue comes from EU users? Does it even remotely justify the cost to audit all of your tech and make it GDPR compliant - let alone run the risk that one of the 28 EU member states interprets GDPR differently than you do? Chances are, it doesn't. This is the natural consequence of regulation. People who don't have interest in complying with it leave the market.

dang 7y ago

Such a list would need to be created and maintained. I'm not sure that would be a great use of limited resources. The practice we've been following so far is switching URLs to a more accessible article on the same story. And users often post workarounds in the threads. For example, this may work for you: https://web.archive.org/web/20190530100102/https://www.wowktv.com/news/west-virginia/rare-earth-elements-could-be-big-business-for-wv/2037113435 https://web.archive.org/web/20190530100102/https://www.wowkt....

dredmorbius 7y ago
The behaviour could be to some extent either autodetected via remote proxies or crowdsourced, possibly via trusted contributors. Even a partially-effective list of high-profile instances would be useful. Removal procedure might also be considered. Automated, with an integrated proxy check, might work.
- dang 7y ago
  Our experience with automating things like that is that it's too hard to get right. Maybe we could if we tried hard enough, but at the cost of other things that probably matter more.
  - dredmorbius 7y ago
    Fair enough, though submitted.