6 ms·

> Unfortunately, our website is currently unavailable in most European countries. We are engaged on the issue and committed to looking at options that support o

> 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. Fuck you too

tomrod 6y ago
Can you blame them? At least they are honest about their adherence instead of something like StackOverflow's "accept everything or die" banner ~~ads~~ pop-ups.
- eMGm4D0zgUAVXc7 6y ago
  They're *NOT* honest: > We are engaged on the issue No you're not, the GDPR has been active for 3 years now, or 5 years if you include the time where it wasn't mandatory, if you were engaged it would have been fixed already. > and committed to looking at options that support our full range of digital offerings to the EU market. Yea, so how about the option of just disabling privacy invading code on your website, which would probably take much less than 3 years? > We continue to identify technical compliance solutions that will provide all readers with our award-winning journalism. More repetition of the same empty "we're DOING SO MUCH!". But well, at least it doesn't say "We care about our European readers" like most of such blocked websites say. That one usually makes my blood boil: You're not caring at all. If you were caring, you wouldn't lock out 448 million people for years!
  - cortesoft 6y ago
    But what is their incentive to do that work? They probably don’t make any money from European users, or at least not enough to make the effort worthwhile... so why should they do it?
    - eMGm4D0zgUAVXc7 6y ago
      - It is called the "WORLD WIDE web", not the "local web". If you go to a place you ought to respect its fundamental purpose, no matter if it is a physical place or a virtual one. - We live in a highly globally interconnected society. Actions everywhere on the planet have consequences everywhere on the planet. If the US fabric of society blows up after their previous clinically insane president incited violence for years, that WILL have consequences for Europe. If only for the thousands of nukes they have and the trillions they spend on military and invading unstable regions. Also remember that we're being asked to spend tons of money on the NATO to aid in defending US interest. It is thus of very HIGH interest for me as a European to know WTF is going on in the US because it may end up killing us all, and even if not we still pay for their shenanigans. So denying us knowledge of affairs we're *very* involved in is rude. - My country's military has been in Afghanistan for 20 years because of the US invasion. Nobody knows for how long we will be target of terrorist attacks for that. And as a thank you for all of this, I can't even read your local news sites. I wonder how much the US would be enraged if that situation were reversed?
      - RcouF1uZ4gsC 6y ago
        > It is called the "WORLD WIDE web", not the "local web". So who gave the EU the right to be making rules for the entire “WORLD WIDE” web? If the EU has the right to be making laws for their jurisdiction, then websites in other jurisdictions also have the right to ignore the EU laws and exclude EU members.
        eMGm4D0zgUAVXc7 6y ago
        Why would they have to obey the laws if they're not part of the EU? They could just leave their website online as is, no need to block it if the laws don't apply to them anyway.
        setr 6y ago
        GDPR applies if you collect data from an EU citizen[0]. However, I'm not clear how they would enforce/collect it -- perhaps by treaty? Or if you show up in the country after the fine has been applied and left unpaid. So blocking EU consumers is a perfectly reasonable thing to do, as per the worldview of the EU. You're either in it, or you're not. [0]https://gdpr.eu/companies-outside-of-europe/ https://gdpr.eu/companies-outside-of-europe/
- black_puppydog 6y ago
  Of course I can blame them. More for being full of shit than anything else.
devenblake 6y ago
Site's covered in globs of advertisements and video anyway. You'd click off even if you could see it, don't worry.
bigwavedave 6y ago
> Fuck you too Maybe I'm wrong in this assumption, but to me the section you quoted sounds like they're saying "we're not GDPR compliant, so we can't participate in that market right now"; it's not a "fuck you, Europe" kind of thing. But hey, you know what they say about assumptions.
- ryandrake 6y ago
  OPs quote was full of the usual contentless corp-speak. "We are engaged on the issue...", "committed to looking at options..." and "We continue to identify..." These phrases are a nice, pleasant and important-sounding way of saying "We aren't actually doing anything at all, despite GDPR having been adopted over five years ago."
  - whydoyoucare2 6y ago
    Ok? It's a local newspaper from Florida, why should they be expected to do extra work to support Europeans? You're not entitled to access their site. These local papers are struggling to keep the lights on to serve their communities. YOUR government decided to make GDPR this stringent, and the European Parliament ignored warnings about exactly this happening. You can get your reporting second hand from a European source that follows your laws, at cost to you, or be left out of the loop because your continent expects the rest of the world to follow their laws. The choice was made in Europe. You reap what you sow.
    - philjohn 6y ago
      It's a local newspaper, but owned by the third largest newspaper publisher in the US and uses a shared CMS.
    - simion314 6y ago
      I would be fine with a bit more sincerity, something like: "we don't care about privacy, so go somewhere else". Or if you want to translate it you can put a message like "the EU market is too small for us to even consider implementing non tracking ads, we are sorry we can't sell your data anymore!"
meepmorp 6y ago
It's not unreasonable to want top avoid the regulatory compliance headache that is GDPR, especially for people who aren't likely to be regular users of the site.
not1ofU 6y ago
Solution - 1. FoxyProxy (firefox add-on). 2. Google for US free proxy (took about 5 minutes to find one). 3. Profit. As the others who responded to you have already pointed out, was probably not as interesting to you as the headline suggests.
wayoutthere 6y ago
Let’s be realistic here, EU users aren’t a core use case for a local newspaper in Florida. GDPR classification is not high up on the priority list for a local newspaper, so a risk averse lawyer says to just block the whole continent. It’s the worst of US and EU culture combined to achieve the worst possible outcome.
- black_puppydog 6y ago
  I never said I didn't understand their motivations. But that doesn't mean their conclusion (and formulation) doesn't come down to a "fuck you" in the end.
  - HenryBemis 6y ago
    Plain and simple. Yes they do say '..... you'. I translate that as: we don't care about you. You don't bring any revenue. None of our advertisers care to advertise to an EU audience. Example: And why would a restaurant in Florida care to advertise to someone in Paris? What are the chances that someone in Paris will think "oh I need to eat that burger in XYZ Florida resto?" (ok my example for Paris-burger-Florida is semi-sarcastic - but true. what are the odds? - what is the cost vs potential benefit?)
  - jacobsenscott 6y ago
    The GDPR is an FU from EU bureaucrats to the world, not the other way around.
- levi-turner 6y ago
  I don't disagree to the conclusion but the Sun-Sentinel is owned by the Tribune Publishing Company, which is the third largest newspaper publisher in the US. Often the subsidiaries use the same core CMS / tech. Compare the Sun-Sentinel to another paper owned by Tribune: https://www.pilotonline.com/ https://www.pilotonline.com/ It seems a bit odd to not believe there is not only a way to handle this more gracefully but also that Tribune could handle this globally for all of their newspapers.
  - 6y ago
throwaway823882 6y ago
It's a website about Florida. They are doing you a favor.
- black_puppydog 6y ago
  Single valid counter point here. :)
yesenadam 6y ago
Please consider that on HN you not only get to vent, but other people have to read it. Scrolling onto your comment felt like coming across a dog poo on a walk in the park. Nothing good about it. I looked at a few pages of your comment history, and too many of them are like that. I'm sorry you have so much anger... Thanks.

tomrod 6y ago

Can you blame them? At least they are honest about their adherence instead of something like StackOverflow's "accept everything or die" banner ~~ads~~ pop-ups.

eMGm4D0zgUAVXc7 6y ago
They're *NOT* honest: > We are engaged on the issue No you're not, the GDPR has been active for 3 years now, or 5 years if you include the time where it wasn't mandatory, if you were engaged it would have been fixed already. > and committed to looking at options that support our full range of digital offerings to the EU market. Yea, so how about the option of just disabling privacy invading code on your website, which would probably take much less than 3 years? > We continue to identify technical compliance solutions that will provide all readers with our award-winning journalism. More repetition of the same empty "we're DOING SO MUCH!". But well, at least it doesn't say "We care about our European readers" like most of such blocked websites say. That one usually makes my blood boil: You're not caring at all. If you were caring, you wouldn't lock out 448 million people for years!
- cortesoft 6y ago
  But what is their incentive to do that work? They probably don’t make any money from European users, or at least not enough to make the effort worthwhile... so why should they do it?
  - eMGm4D0zgUAVXc7 6y ago
    - It is called the "WORLD WIDE web", not the "local web". If you go to a place you ought to respect its fundamental purpose, no matter if it is a physical place or a virtual one. - We live in a highly globally interconnected society. Actions everywhere on the planet have consequences everywhere on the planet. If the US fabric of society blows up after their previous clinically insane president incited violence for years, that WILL have consequences for Europe. If only for the thousands of nukes they have and the trillions they spend on military and invading unstable regions. Also remember that we're being asked to spend tons of money on the NATO to aid in defending US interest. It is thus of very HIGH interest for me as a European to know WTF is going on in the US because it may end up killing us all, and even if not we still pay for their shenanigans. So denying us knowledge of affairs we're *very* involved in is rude. - My country's military has been in Afghanistan for 20 years because of the US invasion. Nobody knows for how long we will be target of terrorist attacks for that. And as a thank you for all of this, I can't even read your local news sites. I wonder how much the US would be enraged if that situation were reversed?
    - RcouF1uZ4gsC 6y ago
      > It is called the "WORLD WIDE web", not the "local web". So who gave the EU the right to be making rules for the entire “WORLD WIDE” web? If the EU has the right to be making laws for their jurisdiction, then websites in other jurisdictions also have the right to ignore the EU laws and exclude EU members.
      - eMGm4D0zgUAVXc7 6y ago
        Why would they have to obey the laws if they're not part of the EU? They could just leave their website online as is, no need to block it if the laws don't apply to them anyway.
        setr 6y ago
        GDPR applies if you collect data from an EU citizen[0]. However, I'm not clear how they would enforce/collect it -- perhaps by treaty? Or if you show up in the country after the fine has been applied and left unpaid. So blocking EU consumers is a perfectly reasonable thing to do, as per the worldview of the EU. You're either in it, or you're not. [0]https://gdpr.eu/companies-outside-of-europe/ https://gdpr.eu/companies-outside-of-europe/
black_puppydog 6y ago
Of course I can blame them. More for being full of shit than anything else.

devenblake 6y ago

Site's covered in globs of advertisements and video anyway. You'd click off even if you could see it, don't worry.

bigwavedave 6y ago

> Fuck you too Maybe I'm wrong in this assumption, but to me the section you quoted sounds like they're saying "we're not GDPR compliant, so we can't participate in that market right now"; it's not a "fuck you, Europe" kind of thing. But hey, you know what they say about assumptions.

ryandrake 6y ago
OPs quote was full of the usual contentless corp-speak. "We are engaged on the issue...", "committed to looking at options..." and "We continue to identify..." These phrases are a nice, pleasant and important-sounding way of saying "We aren't actually doing anything at all, despite GDPR having been adopted over five years ago."
- whydoyoucare2 6y ago
  Ok? It's a local newspaper from Florida, why should they be expected to do extra work to support Europeans? You're not entitled to access their site. These local papers are struggling to keep the lights on to serve their communities. YOUR government decided to make GDPR this stringent, and the European Parliament ignored warnings about exactly this happening. You can get your reporting second hand from a European source that follows your laws, at cost to you, or be left out of the loop because your continent expects the rest of the world to follow their laws. The choice was made in Europe. You reap what you sow.
  - philjohn 6y ago
    It's a local newspaper, but owned by the third largest newspaper publisher in the US and uses a shared CMS.
  - simion314 6y ago
    I would be fine with a bit more sincerity, something like: "we don't care about privacy, so go somewhere else". Or if you want to translate it you can put a message like "the EU market is too small for us to even consider implementing non tracking ads, we are sorry we can't sell your data anymore!"

meepmorp 6y ago

It's not unreasonable to want top avoid the regulatory compliance headache that is GDPR, especially for people who aren't likely to be regular users of the site.

not1ofU 6y ago

Solution - 1. FoxyProxy (firefox add-on). 2. Google for US free proxy (took about 5 minutes to find one). 3. Profit. As the others who responded to you have already pointed out, was probably not as interesting to you as the headline suggests.

wayoutthere 6y ago

Let’s be realistic here, EU users aren’t a core use case for a local newspaper in Florida. GDPR classification is not high up on the priority list for a local newspaper, so a risk averse lawyer says to just block the whole continent. It’s the worst of US and EU culture combined to achieve the worst possible outcome.

black_puppydog 6y ago
I never said I didn't understand their motivations. But that doesn't mean their conclusion (and formulation) doesn't come down to a "fuck you" in the end.
- HenryBemis 6y ago
  Plain and simple. Yes they do say '..... you'. I translate that as: we don't care about you. You don't bring any revenue. None of our advertisers care to advertise to an EU audience. Example: And why would a restaurant in Florida care to advertise to someone in Paris? What are the chances that someone in Paris will think "oh I need to eat that burger in XYZ Florida resto?" (ok my example for Paris-burger-Florida is semi-sarcastic - but true. what are the odds? - what is the cost vs potential benefit?)
- jacobsenscott 6y ago
  The GDPR is an FU from EU bureaucrats to the world, not the other way around.
levi-turner 6y ago
I don't disagree to the conclusion but the Sun-Sentinel is owned by the Tribune Publishing Company, which is the third largest newspaper publisher in the US. Often the subsidiaries use the same core CMS / tech. Compare the Sun-Sentinel to another paper owned by Tribune: https://www.pilotonline.com/ https://www.pilotonline.com/ It seems a bit odd to not believe there is not only a way to handle this more gracefully but also that Tribune could handle this globally for all of their newspapers.
- 6y ago

throwaway823882 6y ago

It's a website about Florida. They are doing you a favor.

black_puppydog 6y ago
Single valid counter point here. :)

yesenadam 6y ago

Please consider that on HN you not only get to vent, but other people have to read it. Scrolling onto your comment felt like coming across a dog poo on a walk in the park. Nothing good about it. I looked at a few pages of your comment history, and too many of them are like that. I'm sorry you have so much anger... Thanks.