7 ms·

Sadly not available in Europe. Three years after GDPR and these big news outlets still haven't figure how to provide content without invasive privacy breaches.

by Cynddl 7y ago

Sadly not available in Europe. Three years after GDPR and these big news outlets still haven't figure how to provide content without invasive privacy breaches. > Unfortunately, our website is currently unavailable in most European countries. We are engaged on the issue and committed to looking at options that support our full range of digital offerings to the EU market. We continue to identify technical compliance solutions that will provide all readers with our award-winning journalism.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
koheripbal 7y ago
Our company website is the same. We just decided it wasn't worth it to cater to EU users, so we geo-blocked the whole continent.
- Cenk 7y ago
  Instead of turning off the whole site for EU users, why not just turn off the tracking for them?
  - fit2rule 7y ago
    Obviously, because then US users would be treated 'unfairly' and could end up using the EU as a way to get around that tracking, too ..
  - toast0 7y ago
    Turning off a site for EU is pretty easy: setup a geo IP lookup and return a sad page; minimal testing and you're unlikely to break it. Turning off trackers is harder, you do the same geo IP, but then you have to find all the places you put trackers, and disable them, and test the site without them, and somehow make sure when the next tracker is inserted, it doesn't go to EU. If your code is well managed, it might be easy, but if you're a newspaper, who knows. They may have several different generations of template systems, with older articles staying on what they were published with, or older articles may be static html with embedded trackers.
  - pb7 7y ago
    They have no obligation to bend over backwards for a market they’re not interested in.
- presumably 7y ago
  What will your company do for California users, and other states as they adopt similar privacy laws following the success of the GDPR?
  - seanmcdirmid 7y ago
    They might actually do the same. It depends on what they lose by losing that market...in California’s case, it is far enough away that advertisers for the Chicago Tribune are probably not interested in those views anyways. Supporting the GDPR isn’t free, those technical and legal costs have to be justified by saving an appropriate amount of lost revenues.
    - matthewmacleod 7y ago
      "Supporting" the GDPR is basically following best practices for data security in any case, so if you aren't already doing it, then you or your users will likely get a nasty surprise in short order anyway.
      - seanmcdirmid 7y ago
        That isn’t true though. If you are claiming that you don’t need a lawyer to go over the rules and you don’t need engineers to re-architect the system to be compliant, then you don’t have anything to lose in a lawsuit when you inevitably mess all of that up. All laws are nuanced, just thinking that you are already doing the right thing isn’t enough to avoid legal liability.
  - parliament32 7y ago
    Honestly, also do the same until the revenue you and your friends generate outweighs the cost of implementing these things. Currently, it doesn't, and it's up to the beancounters to decide when it's worthwhile. Personally I don't have a stake either way in the matter. I can see the argument from both sides. But the entire point of a business is to generate revenue, and we can't do that if we start trying to comply with every local chirp and by-law places decide to pass.
ssully 7y ago
The gist is a Chicago woman in her 60's traveled to China, and a few days after returning she felt ill. Her doctor worked with the CDC to diagnose that she contracted the disease. She has been hospitalized and is currently stable. As for the Tribune's availability it sucks, but is not surprising. They are a big paper in the Midwest, but they definitely do not have the resources compared to bigger publications, nor do I think do they have any kind of focus on the international market.
seanmcdirmid 7y ago
What would the Chicago Tribune get out of spending the time and money needed to conform to extra-territorial European laws? I’m pretty sure their advertisers aren’t willing to pay for eyeball views from Paris.
- bosie 7y ago
  Wouldn't a larger ad agency like google solve this problem for them? How localised are newspaper ads?
aianus 7y ago
That's what you get for trying to export your nonsensical values to the USA.
- dang 7y ago
  Please keep nationalistic flamebait off HN. It leads to nationalistic flamewars, which we don't want here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - aianus 7y ago
    Perhaps irrelevant and offtopic GDPR complaints should be disallowed as well, similar to complaints about paywalls.
parliament32 7y ago
What's the point? It's not like many people in the EU are interested in this paper, becoming compliant is definitely not worth the cost from a business perspective.

by Cynddl 7y ago

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

koheripbal 7y ago

Our company website is the same. We just decided it wasn't worth it to cater to EU users, so we geo-blocked the whole continent.

Cenk 7y ago
Instead of turning off the whole site for EU users, why not just turn off the tracking for them?
- fit2rule 7y ago
  Obviously, because then US users would be treated 'unfairly' and could end up using the EU as a way to get around that tracking, too ..
- toast0 7y ago
  Turning off a site for EU is pretty easy: setup a geo IP lookup and return a sad page; minimal testing and you're unlikely to break it. Turning off trackers is harder, you do the same geo IP, but then you have to find all the places you put trackers, and disable them, and test the site without them, and somehow make sure when the next tracker is inserted, it doesn't go to EU. If your code is well managed, it might be easy, but if you're a newspaper, who knows. They may have several different generations of template systems, with older articles staying on what they were published with, or older articles may be static html with embedded trackers.
- pb7 7y ago
  They have no obligation to bend over backwards for a market they’re not interested in.
presumably 7y ago
What will your company do for California users, and other states as they adopt similar privacy laws following the success of the GDPR?
- seanmcdirmid 7y ago
  They might actually do the same. It depends on what they lose by losing that market...in California’s case, it is far enough away that advertisers for the Chicago Tribune are probably not interested in those views anyways. Supporting the GDPR isn’t free, those technical and legal costs have to be justified by saving an appropriate amount of lost revenues.
  - matthewmacleod 7y ago
    "Supporting" the GDPR is basically following best practices for data security in any case, so if you aren't already doing it, then you or your users will likely get a nasty surprise in short order anyway.
    - seanmcdirmid 7y ago
      That isn’t true though. If you are claiming that you don’t need a lawyer to go over the rules and you don’t need engineers to re-architect the system to be compliant, then you don’t have anything to lose in a lawsuit when you inevitably mess all of that up. All laws are nuanced, just thinking that you are already doing the right thing isn’t enough to avoid legal liability.
- parliament32 7y ago
  Honestly, also do the same until the revenue you and your friends generate outweighs the cost of implementing these things. Currently, it doesn't, and it's up to the beancounters to decide when it's worthwhile. Personally I don't have a stake either way in the matter. I can see the argument from both sides. But the entire point of a business is to generate revenue, and we can't do that if we start trying to comply with every local chirp and by-law places decide to pass.

ssully 7y ago

The gist is a Chicago woman in her 60's traveled to China, and a few days after returning she felt ill. Her doctor worked with the CDC to diagnose that she contracted the disease. She has been hospitalized and is currently stable. As for the Tribune's availability it sucks, but is not surprising. They are a big paper in the Midwest, but they definitely do not have the resources compared to bigger publications, nor do I think do they have any kind of focus on the international market.

seanmcdirmid 7y ago

What would the Chicago Tribune get out of spending the time and money needed to conform to extra-territorial European laws? I’m pretty sure their advertisers aren’t willing to pay for eyeball views from Paris.

bosie 7y ago
Wouldn't a larger ad agency like google solve this problem for them? How localised are newspaper ads?

aianus 7y ago

That's what you get for trying to export your nonsensical values to the USA.

dang 7y ago
Please keep nationalistic flamebait off HN. It leads to nationalistic flamewars, which we don't want here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- aianus 7y ago
  Perhaps irrelevant and offtopic GDPR complaints should be disallowed as well, similar to complaints about paywalls.

parliament32 7y ago

What's the point? It's not like many people in the EU are interested in this paper, becoming compliant is definitely not worth the cost from a business perspective.