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GDPR: US news sites unavailable to EU users over data protection rules

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Re: GDPR: US news sites unavailable to EU users over data protection rules

#41

Post by mrtksn »

firic wrote: post #10

Things like this will test how much EU citizens value their privacy. Of course there will be some sites they will not be able to visit but time will show if they are okay with that. These rules are very similar to rules limiting loans. No matter how desperate a person is and how low credit they have, in the US you can't give them a loan for above a certain amount of interest. That could be terrible for a poor person…

So EU citizens will either revolt and destroy EU or read their news from somewhere else? More likely, will do the usual thing people do for geo-locked content: Use proxy or pirate until a convenient solution takes off. That convenient solution will be GDPR compliance by the offender or a competitor.

I mean, mild annoyance is nothing compared to the annoyance of war thorn continent, I wouldn't bet too much on the destruction of EU or even withdrawal of GDPR

Re: GDPR: US news sites unavailable to EU users over data protection rules

#42

Post by simongray »

_Codemonkeyism wrote: post #29
simongray wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Forcing users to accept a 20 page EULA is not compliant, that's what's so great about this directive. If all you have to do to be compliant is add a new clause to your 20 page EULA, then the law would have no purpose - we're already trained to just click accept when presented with any kind of lawyerese. The whole point is to get away from that.

IANAL I've not said that this is the only thing you need to do. EULAs don't make you compliant. I've said websites will have EULAs (and be internally compliant) and do everything - except selling - with your data that they do now. The only real benefit of the GDPR for users is that old (e.g. 2y) data needs to be deleted and companies can't keep your personal data 10y for future use cases. But you can do most of the t…

That's not the only real benefit. The strongest benefit is that all tracking and sharing of collected data is made explicit to all users in plain language and now requires explicit opt-in. Before this directive, companies could just hide that shit somewhere in their EULA. It's this practice that's being regulated.

Re: GDPR: US news sites unavailable to EU users over data protection rules

#43

Post by mseebach »

simion314 wrote: post #38
hartator wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not directly? solveAllGDPRIssues();

If you have a webpage with text and iamges, no user accounts and subscriptions then why you prefer to block the users then load the page without tracking, and show some static ads,better then nothing. Showing a popup with things like -we have Google analytics that track you in this way -we have FB scripts that do this -we have ad company X script that tracks this -we have Y product that tracks your focus .... would a…

No, it's not better than nothing. In fact, it's worse than nothing. Which is why they're not doing that.

It's extremely difficult for classic news media to make money in the internet-world. They're not tracking you because they hate privacy, they're tracking you because they need to show you ads to earn a few cents to pay for their newsroom.

Re: GDPR: US news sites unavailable to EU users over data protection rules

#44

Post by akie »

ghaff wrote: post #31
imdutch wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can still run a free website and be compliant with the GDPR. The EU/EEA is the largest market in the world, closing yourself for an market that size will hurt more than changing a few thing to be compliant.

>closing yourself for an market that size will hurt more than changing a few thing to be compliant Only if I make significant money from that market. If most of my revenue/profit comes from the US and it's problematic to "do business" in the EU or China, why wouldn't I want to just cut access off rather than dealing with potential hassles? The fact that it's potentially a large market is irrelevant to me. In this cas…

Well, you could! We’d be happy for you to make some space for a competitor who doesn’t make his money selling personal data.

Re: GDPR: US news sites unavailable to EU users over data protection rules

#45

Post by IshKebab »

ghaff wrote: post #31
imdutch wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can still run a free website and be compliant with the GDPR. The EU/EEA is the largest market in the world, closing yourself for an market that size will hurt more than changing a few thing to be compliant.

>closing yourself for an market that size will hurt more than changing a few thing to be compliant Only if I make significant money from that market. If most of my revenue/profit comes from the US and it's problematic to "do business" in the EU or China, why wouldn't I want to just cut access off rather than dealing with potential hassles? The fact that it's potentially a large market is irrelevant to me. In this cas…

They could still make some money from showing non-tracking ads to European users and tracking ads to American ones. Perhaps not as much, but as they have already written the content I don't see why you would just give up on that revenue stream.

Re: GDPR: US news sites unavailable to EU users over data protection rules

#46

Post by icebraining »

simion314 wrote: post #30
_Codemonkeyism wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wished everyone who says "GDPR hysteria" would cover legal costs for those who are hysteric.

For a site that shows text and images you have a simple solution change the code if(isUserInEU()) showBlobkingPopup();) else loadAllTrackingScripts(); into if(isUserInEU()) loadNonTrackingScripts(); else loadAllTrackingScripts();

The problem is ads. Many networks track their users, and the site is responsible for that too. Eliminating all ads means the EU users become only a cost.

They need to integrate GDPR-compliant ad networks to serve to EU users, and they probably didn't do the work.

Re: GDPR: US news sites unavailable to EU users over data protection rules

#47

Post by IshKebab »

akie wrote: post #23
_Codemonkeyism wrote: post #14

In 1y every website will have a click through EULA with 20 pages that loads before everything else and doesn't store IPS - and which no one is reading - privacy served. Just when they install from the App store or install Microsoft Office.

"Click here to agree to everything we do" schemes are explicitly forbidden by the GDPR. You need to individually opt-in to every single use case, and you need to consent to every transfer to each individual third party as well.

And yet, that seems to be the solution most sites are already taking. "Click here to agree to tracking and continue to our site." Concrete example: theverge.com

Hopefully they will be slapped down for it pretty soon.

Re: GDPR: US news sites unavailable to EU users over data protection rules

#48

Post by flohofwoe »

Alternatively there's this: https://eu.usatoday.com/

No ads, no tracking, no cookies, not even Javascript. Just plain HTML+CSS and JPEG images. The whole front page is around 650 KByte, and by far most of this is in the image files. As a result the page looks very clean and loads very fast.

This is what all news web sites should look like, not just for EU readers (although I fear that this is just a temporary solution until they've figured out that whole GDPR thing...

Re: GDPR: US news sites unavailable to EU users over data protection rules

#49

Post by mrtksn »

ghaff wrote: post #31
imdutch wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can still run a free website and be compliant with the GDPR. The EU/EEA is the largest market in the world, closing yourself for an market that size will hurt more than changing a few thing to be compliant.

>closing yourself for an market that size will hurt more than changing a few thing to be compliant Only if I make significant money from that market. If most of my revenue/profit comes from the US and it's problematic to "do business" in the EU or China, why wouldn't I want to just cut access off rather than dealing with potential hassles? The fact that it's potentially a large market is irrelevant to me. In this cas…

When you don't a competitor steps in and if the day comes that you want some EU sales, you will have to spend huge sums to establish your brand if you are not a huge brand that's on TV shows and the News all the time.

Geo-locked products are nothing new. I lived in a communist country, few EU countries and a middle eastern country and I can promise you that when a certain brand is not available a local competitor pops up and after the original brand becomes available it stays remain a curiosity unless it's a massive pop culture icon(McDonald's, CocaCola, Amazon, Netflix etc. - stuff that's on American TV shows all time. The TV Shows are also geo-locked but local pirates make them available few hours after the USA. Even in Cuba).

So, it's not a simple problem of if(profit < feel like worth it) then block EU.

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