3 ms·

Here's my take, as a Romanian developer (since 2004ish). One day I got a letter from the national authority regarding personal data where I was asked to reply

by wave84 11mo ago

Here's my take, as a Romanian developer (since 2004ish). One day I got a letter from the national authority regarding personal data where I was asked to reply to 15 questions regarding a personal project of mine, invoking the GDPR. The sanctions for not complying within 5 days was an incremental fine of 600 euros PER DAY, until I complied. This letter was directed to me as a natural person (not even my company). Another story: I had a publishing website with some ads on it. The moment full GDPR went into effect, some years ago, revenue instantly dropped by 30% because the cookie banner I was using wasn't part of the approved european framework for cookie banners (they created an entire organization for this, called IAB). Most of the "approved" cookie banners are insanely overengineered nonsense and almost all of them cost a lot of money. And they kill your performance metrics. And when I finally gave in and implemented one of those, revenues dropped even more because I was losing readers who just quit without consenting at all. Third and final anecdote: at one point I was contracted by a Romanian DTH television company who mostly operated with prepaid customers. According to GDPR, they were supposed to anonymize data they no longer needed, but because their clients were seasonal or less predictable, that turned out to be ridiculously hard. Their legal department, together with external contractors such as us ended up spending months to adjust their systems to conform to GDPR, and the result was their losing business and time, while being unable to properly serve older customers because they could no longer identify them. So in my opinion, despite originally being well intended, GDPR opened a huge can of worms, created a lot of issues and made everyone's life harder on the internet, for no real benefit. On the contrary, the large companies could afford the legal counseling that they needed, but the smaller ones were hit hardest.

immibis 11mo ago
Did you consider running non-tracking ads? Of course not because even after the 30% drop, the spyware still pays more, right? But destroying websites with spyware is literally what the law is for - the people have voted to nuke your website from orbit.
troupo 11mo ago
> because the cookie banner I was using wasn't part of the approved european framework for cookie banners (they created an entire organization for this, called IAB) There's your mistake. It's not approved. The EU literally sued them for coming up the bullshit banner: https://www.euractiv.com/news/top-eu-court-finds-widely-employed-consent-system-violates-eu-privacy-regulation/ https://www.euractiv.com/news/top-eu-court-finds-widely-empl... It's in the name: IAB stands for Interactive Advertising Bureau. They couldn't give two shits about your site. All they care is about testing the limits of the law to get their hands on any and all user data. Their banners originally were explicitly illegal: https://noyb.eu/en/where-did-all-reject-buttons-come https://noyb.eu/en/where-did-all-reject-buttons-come (this describes mostly OneTrust banners, but IAB's banners were the same) and https://noyb.eu/en/say-no-cookies-yet-see-your-privacy-crumble https://noyb.eu/en/say-no-cookies-yet-see-your-privacy-crumb... (IAB's banner turned your "no to tracking" into "yes to tracking") > So in my opinion, despite originally being well intended, GDPR opened a huge can of worms, created a lot of issues and made everyone's life harder on the internet, for no real benefit. Translation: shitty businesses made life of everyone harder on the internet and blamed regulations for their own behaviour. From IAB (and OneTrust and Admiral and other scummy greedy leeches') banners to idiots at companies who assume that data on their customers is no longer needed to ... provide services to those same customers. Yes, it exposed a can of worms. Worms decided its their god-given right to stay.

by wave84 11mo ago

immibis 11mo ago

Did you consider running non-tracking ads? Of course not because even after the 30% drop, the spyware still pays more, right? But destroying websites with spyware is literally what the law is for - the people have voted to nuke your website from orbit.

troupo 11mo ago

> because the cookie banner I was using wasn't part of the approved european framework for cookie banners (they created an entire organization for this, called IAB) There's your mistake. It's not approved. The EU literally sued them for coming up the bullshit banner: https://www.euractiv.com/news/top-eu-court-finds-widely-employed-consent-system-violates-eu-privacy-regulation/ https://www.euractiv.com/news/top-eu-court-finds-widely-empl... It's in the name: IAB stands for Interactive Advertising Bureau. They couldn't give two shits about your site. All they care is about testing the limits of the law to get their hands on any and all user data. Their banners originally were explicitly illegal: https://noyb.eu/en/where-did-all-reject-buttons-come https://noyb.eu/en/where-did-all-reject-buttons-come (this describes mostly OneTrust banners, but IAB's banners were the same) and https://noyb.eu/en/say-no-cookies-yet-see-your-privacy-crumble https://noyb.eu/en/say-no-cookies-yet-see-your-privacy-crumb... (IAB's banner turned your "no to tracking" into "yes to tracking") > So in my opinion, despite originally being well intended, GDPR opened a huge can of worms, created a lot of issues and made everyone's life harder on the internet, for no real benefit. Translation: shitty businesses made life of everyone harder on the internet and blamed regulations for their own behaviour. From IAB (and OneTrust and Admiral and other scummy greedy leeches') banners to idiots at companies who assume that data on their customers is no longer needed to ... provide services to those same customers. Yes, it exposed a can of worms. Worms decided its their god-given right to stay.