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It's been three years. Stop saying your European visitors are important to you

news.ycombinator.com

51–60 of 192 posts

Re: It's been three years. Stop saying your European visitors are important to you

#51

What I don't understand is, why are these local US news sites required to comply with GDPR? I wouldn't think they'd have any obligation to follow it (or any possible recourse for not doing so) unless they have business operations in the EU. Are these local news sites in fact all owned by multinationals that do have operations in the EU? Edit: I'm getting downvoted -- just in case it helps to clarify, I'm not trying t…

Any company that serves EU residents has to comply. If they block users from the EU, they don't have to comply. Fines can be massive (up to 2% global revenue).

Nexstar might not have any European assets, but non-compliance might not be a smart move if they get fined and business executives travel to Europe...

Re: It's been three years. Stop saying your European visitors are important to you

#52

Maybe the blocked content is just divine retribution for the abhorrent cookie consent buttons we all have to press 20 times a day now.

I've never even been to Europe, and I still get them. What are we Americans, chopped liver?

Re: It's been three years. Stop saying your European visitors are important to you

#53

“We care about your privacy.” is also a real joker. Those boxes often provide no “opt-out all” button and force you to “object” to “legitimate interests” one-by-one even if you do “opt-out”.

How GDPR is implemented is a total shitshow. It clearly says that it's an OPT-IN, not opt-out and one has to uncheck everything one by one.

We're creating a fucking dystopia just to click on more ads.

Re: It's been three years. Stop saying your European visitors are important to you

#54

Maybe the cost of GDPR compliance just isn't worth the small amount of revenue that they might make from European visitors? US visitors are probably much more 'valuable' in terms of advertisement revenue, and also much more likely to be a subscriber. And I say this as a European myself. It sucks that I have to jump through hoops to access some sites but I can't really blame them.

It’s a bit silly because serving the content without cookies doesn’t cost more than not serving anything. It’s not like a restaurant where serving a steak means you now have one less steak, it’s just data that you can copy as much as you want.

I mean, data transfer is not totally without costs.

At a few thousand reads per day, a MB or so per read... this is costing up to FIFTY DOLLARS PER YEAR to just... give our content away for free?!

Re: It's been three years. Stop saying your European visitors are important to you

#56

Lawmakers and voters sometimes act as if regulations are free. They think “wouldn’t it be nice” and pass on the costs to businesses. They aren’t in fact free.

Words are free.

Stop saying banned customers are great.

This is my argument.

Re: It's been three years. Stop saying your European visitors are important to you

#57
post #7

Jeez, what a mess. To extend the McDonald’s analogy, when McDonald’s is serving its American customers, it doesn’t heed European laws about beef and potatoes. Because those laws are irrelevant to them, they have no bearing on McDonald’s making money (again in the context of serving their American customers). McDonald’s is never going to check what Brussels says about dairy before they make a milkshake in Spokane. Sor…

This: > McDonald’s is never going to check what Brussels says about dairy before they make a milkshake in Spokane. Sorry. conflicts with this: > law is introduced, business figures out the easiest way to deal with it and get back to what they were doing, rinse and repeat. So which is it? If they care about Brussels, then they are willing to go the extra mile. If they don't care, why put up the block anyways?

Most companies (and most individuals, I'd say) want to do what's necessary to not be bothered. It's doubtful these organizations have any great fear of EU regulatory bodies, but if showing a warning (that the user can subsequently bypass) shows they made an effort and staves off 90% of complaints, it'll be worth it.

Re: It's been three years. Stop saying your European visitors are important to you

#58
post #20

Is this really what's considered good content on HN at this point? I come here specifically to avoid junk like this. Disappointing.

Several times I've said that HN should block European IP addresses. Nothing they have to say is relevant in the US.

And pay your own damn defense budgets.

Re: It's been three years. Stop saying your European visitors are important to you

#59

Maybe the blocked content is just divine retribution for the abhorrent cookie consent buttons we all have to press 20 times a day now.

Maybe because everyone (According to Facebook anyway, which is very not true) there wants to track - GDPR ain't really about the cookies, it's about the mismatch of corporate America's desire to track versus Europe's desire to not get tracked. Heck, American companies are breaking American law, at least in California.
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