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> Considering California has 40M people, that's not a cohort businesses can shut off from the internet. As someone who lives in a 447-million European Union an

> Considering California has 40M people, that's not a cohort businesses can shut off from the internet. As someone who lives in a 447-million European Union and who keeps on getting HTTP 451 responses from various US-based services and websites after GDPR has gone into effect, I can't help but chuckle at your comment.

tschwimmer 4y ago
The most common users of "We're sorry but we can't be bothered to figure out how to comply with GDPR" notices I've seen are for smaller US-based media organizations. The newspapers like the Ft. Worth Star Telegram or the St. Louis Post Dispatch (random examples, not sure if they actually block EU traffic) have (probably correctly IMO) concluded that the cost to comply with GDPR is likely to be more the than the revenue that could be gained by allowing the occasional EU reader and so have concluded that the most rational choice of action is to block access from the EU. This is a very different proposition than saying that Tik Tok, Youtube and Facebook would block CA-based users. In addition to the obvious fact that they all have hundreds or thousands of employees in CA, they would be forgoing one of their most important markets in terms of advertising. Furthermore, a lot of the top creators on these platforms live in greater LA. It's a non-starter. If you're doing anything social for anything that's not an domestic only market (e.g. VKontakte, WeChat) then you need California.
- dotancohen 4y ago
  > have concluded that the cost to comply with GDPR is likely to be more > the than the revenue that could be gained by allowing the occasional EU reader Why would anybody read the news from a source whose prime motivation is anything other than dissemination of information? Not to excuse the profit motivation, but simply not setting any cookies is as simple a "fix" as is blocking access, unless one were to argue for the marginal cost of serving the occasional additional webpage.
  - tschwimmer 4y ago
    There may very well be 0 web developers on the staffs of these newspapers. They could have bought 3rd party software, or they could have paid a consulting company to build a custom news site. In either case, your simple fix is not so simple. Even knowing that not setting cookies for EU users could be a high bar, and actually implementing is far out of reach. Say they go to the original consultant, who tells them they can pay $xx,000 to have GDPR compliance, or $x,000 to block EU users. Hopefully this starts making more sense. GDPR looks easy to comply with if you imagine you work for the newspaper. Instead, imagine that you literally are the person who currently works for the newspaper and it will become a bit more clear why they've made the decisions they've made.
jamal-kumar 4y ago
I love how easy it is to comply with GDPR. It's like actually sort of a boon to not have to keep stupid amounts of data on my users. I almost don't mind the idea of just 451'ing California and telling them "Sorry, your politicians are REALLY fucking dumb". It would be waaaaaaaaaaay easier than putting up with this absolute walnut-brained moment. The craziest thing about the lack of data protection laws in the USA is just how EASY it is to glean WAY TOO MUCH INFO on any American. I need to know two data points about you (say your last name and phone number) and from that it costs me like a few dollars or maybe more for more info (on pipl they jacked up the rates really hard), and I can tell you stuff like "Oh yeah your grandpa died in the holocaust" - All this barely knowing who you are, and getting access to these APIs is like a written test away in many states for a PI license. It's completely fucked.

tschwimmer 4y ago

The most common users of "We're sorry but we can't be bothered to figure out how to comply with GDPR" notices I've seen are for smaller US-based media organizations. The newspapers like the Ft. Worth Star Telegram or the St. Louis Post Dispatch (random examples, not sure if they actually block EU traffic) have (probably correctly IMO) concluded that the cost to comply with GDPR is likely to be more the than the revenue that could be gained by allowing the occasional EU reader and so have concluded that the most rational choice of action is to block access from the EU. This is a very different proposition than saying that Tik Tok, Youtube and Facebook would block CA-based users. In addition to the obvious fact that they all have hundreds or thousands of employees in CA, they would be forgoing one of their most important markets in terms of advertising. Furthermore, a lot of the top creators on these platforms live in greater LA. It's a non-starter. If you're doing anything social for anything that's not an domestic only market (e.g. VKontakte, WeChat) then you need California.

dotancohen 4y ago
> have concluded that the cost to comply with GDPR is likely to be more > the than the revenue that could be gained by allowing the occasional EU reader Why would anybody read the news from a source whose prime motivation is anything other than dissemination of information? Not to excuse the profit motivation, but simply not setting any cookies is as simple a "fix" as is blocking access, unless one were to argue for the marginal cost of serving the occasional additional webpage.
- tschwimmer 4y ago
  There may very well be 0 web developers on the staffs of these newspapers. They could have bought 3rd party software, or they could have paid a consulting company to build a custom news site. In either case, your simple fix is not so simple. Even knowing that not setting cookies for EU users could be a high bar, and actually implementing is far out of reach. Say they go to the original consultant, who tells them they can pay $xx,000 to have GDPR compliance, or $x,000 to block EU users. Hopefully this starts making more sense. GDPR looks easy to comply with if you imagine you work for the newspaper. Instead, imagine that you literally are the person who currently works for the newspaper and it will become a bit more clear why they've made the decisions they've made.

jamal-kumar 4y ago

I love how easy it is to comply with GDPR. It's like actually sort of a boon to not have to keep stupid amounts of data on my users. I almost don't mind the idea of just 451'ing California and telling them "Sorry, your politicians are REALLY fucking dumb". It would be waaaaaaaaaaay easier than putting up with this absolute walnut-brained moment. The craziest thing about the lack of data protection laws in the USA is just how EASY it is to glean WAY TOO MUCH INFO on any American. I need to know two data points about you (say your last name and phone number) and from that it costs me like a few dollars or maybe more for more info (on pipl they jacked up the rates really hard), and I can tell you stuff like "Oh yeah your grandpa died in the holocaust" - All this barely knowing who you are, and getting access to these APIs is like a written test away in many states for a PI license. It's completely fucked.