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

news.ycombinator.com

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

#111

Post by tannhaeuser »

unishark wrote: post #89
feketegy wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I used to see only that, but lately I've been seeing cases where once you choose the "manage cookies" option, all the nonessential cookies are opted out by default.

That's how it's been handled for nearly 100% of the sites I went to for the last two years (that actually do contain ads, or use tracking for pointless internal analytics, that is). Or a variation thereof similarly letting you switch off most tracking using no more than two clicks.

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

#112

Post by KSteffensen »

pydry wrote: post #23
CogitoCogito wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not really offended that I can't see all content from Europe, but the idiotic newspeak like "Our European visitors are important to us." is almost offensive. I don't see why they aren't just honest.

Toxic positivity. It's a pervasive feature of American culture.

The concept of supermarket greeter blows my mind. As a customer this would be a reason to NOT go to that supermarket. As a potential employee I would have to be starving before I took that job.

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

#113

Post by sen »

DangerousPie wrote: post #10

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.

So basically the US now has its own split off version of the web, only visible to other Americans.

The Great Firewall of the USA, or maybe The Great American Firewall.

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

#114

Post by KSteffensen »

redis_mlc wrote: post #58
anm89 wrote: 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.

Sorry to break your bubble.

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

#115

Post by mmarq »

DangerousPie wrote: post #10

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.

Having worked on and lead 3 GDPR compliance projects, I can say that the cost of GDPR compliance is close to zero if your business is not tracking users or selling their data without consent. This assuming you are following best practises for storing users’ data (ie encryption, limited access to authorised personnel, etc…). If you store data without encryption, allow randos to access users’ personal data, you shouldn’t even be in business.

Also the EU is quite tolerant with breaches, as in if you are found in breach they will give plenty of time to address it (which often means removing a tracking cookie you forgot about or add it to your cookie policy).

At this point GDPR is way too tolerant, given that in 99% of cases you get away with a banner that makes it impossible to refuse tracking.

So not being GDPR compliant, which at this point means a bit more than being decent with users, says more about the business model of these companies than about anything else.

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

#117

Post by mmarq »

argvargc wrote: post #82
DangerousPie wrote: post #10

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.

IANAL, but can't they just word a disclaimer and checkbox? Something like: "Our European visitors are important to us... but the cost of GDPR-compliance for a US-focused site is high. For your own GDPR protection, we advise you not to access our site. However, if you choose to do so, you agree to waive any and all rights granted to you under the GDPR. [ ] Agree"

Which is like saying “this building doesn’t follow engineering best practices, it may fall on your head at any moment” and expect to get away with that.

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

#118

Post by kristaps »

unishark wrote: post #89
feketegy wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I used to see only that, but lately I've been seeing cases where once you choose the "manage cookies" option, all the nonessential cookies are opted out by default.

I make it a point to click "reject all" if the initial dialog only allows accepting some implicit default preferences.

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

#119

Post by jsbdk »

PennRobotics wrote: post #56
bradleyjg wrote: post #42

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.

Writing words takes time and effort. Time and effort cost money.

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

#120

Post by flyinghamster »

zerof1l wrote: post #88

Use VPN. And use browser extension like uBlock Origin. You can access blocked content and you get privacy.

I'd love to be able to drop NoScript and uBlock Origin, but the web has become such a shitshow that they're vital security tools.

But it's ridiculous that we have to go to such insane lengths, for privacy or even for access. Noscript, in particular, can be very annoying, but it saves me from a lot of worse annoyances.

This also crosses over to the crawling horror of IoT, where every device maker wants your sweet, sweet data. Oh, sure, we can throw our IoT devices on a carefully-firewalled VLAN - provided we have networking gear with that capability and the knowledge to use it, neither of which is likely for the average consumer.

I never imagined I'd live in a real-life cyberpunk dystopia when I first read "Johnny Mnemonic" in Omni so many years ago, but here we are.

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