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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

#51

Post by ghaff »

IshKebab wrote: post #45
ghaff wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

The point is that, if I'm not making material money from EU residents today, it may be easier for me to just make it clear that I'm not trying to do business in the EU than figuring out if I need to do anything to become compliant. I may in fact be 100% compliant, but it may take effort to figure that out and there's potentially still some risk.

Personally, I do no tracking on my sites so it's irrelevant to me but I understand why news sites with primarily local readership would decide dealing with the EU is more trouble than it's worth.

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

#52

Post by krageon »

_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.

This is the EU, not the US. This law was specifically crafted to prevent the kind of reptilian behavior that you're describing here. I honestly (and perhaps naively) expect you to understand the source material a little bit better if you're going to make blanket statements about it here.

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

#53

Post by tzfld »

flohofwoe wrote: post #48

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 solutio…

And how can be a business sustainable in this way?

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

#54

Post by simion314 »

mseebach wrote: post #43
simion314 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Many people are using ad blockers and this number is increasing, the tracking business model is doomed with or without GDPR.

Are we sure that targeted ads are better then topic ads or is this a myth created by some big companies.

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

#55

Post by simion314 »

icebraining wrote: post #46
simion314 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Exactly, and until they find some EU advertisers they can put some static ads.

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

#56

Post by toolslive »

flohofwoe wrote: post #48

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 solutio…

US users who want the same, lovely, experience can route via Europe (for now).

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

#57

Post by geerlingguy »

tzfld wrote: post #53
flohofwoe wrote: post #48

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 solutio…

And how can be a business sustainable in this way?

People will actually visit the site... so they get traffic. They could then advertise to through more creative, less user-unfriendly ways (besides having giant ad networks that store tons of user data on each person, along with 20 different vendors’ trackers to make sure each department gets the same data about each user in a very slightly different way).

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

#58

Post by sschueller »

_mlxl wrote: post #9

Blocking access at geographic level across pretty clear signal they don't care about users/readers in those regions (I think it's hard to argue otherwise, the law has been coming for 2 years). Obviously they cater to people interested in local news in those regions. However, I hope they will rectify and allow access again for EU users at some point soon. It seems to go against the idea of a borderless internet, and I…

Too bad that they would actually have to block EU citizens not territories.

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

#59

Post by mlthoughts2018 »

tzfld wrote: post #53
flohofwoe wrote: post #48

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 solutio…

And how can be a business sustainable in this way?

One way to think of it is that “a business” is not “a user tracking, ad targeting website.” Whatever the business is, it’s not equal to the website, which is just one means of distribution of information or content.

If the business was so predicated on user tracking and selling that data or using it to target ads, I think GDPR (in spirit) is saying “that’s not a business” and requiring a greater form of transparency and informed consent before a website can inflict that on a (possibly unwitting) user.

I’m not trying to say this point of view is right or wrong, just that I think there is a spirit here in the intention of GDPR to say “that’s not something we’ll allow to be called a business model.” (Obviously it doesn’t fully go that far, but it’s the idea.)

It’s not that different in spirit than regulating usury or payday loan businesses. If your business model profitably works only because it preys on people, the spirit of the regulation is to say, “that’s not a business model,” and regulate or disallow it. Usury laws in the case of excessive short-term interest rates; GDPR in the case of excessive user tracking and data privacy concerns.

So when you ask, “how can be a business sustainable in this way?” it sort of has the wrong premise.

Instead, if the business could not be profitable without this then it wasn’t actually ever a business— rather it was some other data exploitation entity, and the lack of an alternate way to be profitable in compliance with GDPR is a signal that the entity was unable to determine a way to exist without causing the kinds of harm that GDPR aims to prevent.

Again, I’m just trying to represent what I think the spirit is behind the GDPR choices— not saying they were right or wrong.

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

#60

Post by ghaff »

losvedir wrote: post #28
lcfg wrote: post #5

GDPR hysteria.

I could buy "hysteria" as an explanation for the little startup apps or blogs that have shown up on HN these last few days, but these papers have revenues in excess of $2 billion. I have to assume there was some due diligence involved.

In general, the online site of a newspaper doubtless does a lot of ad tracking. To the degree that readership is mostly local (as it is for most newspapers with relatively few exceptions), geofencing seems like a pretty rational response to potential compliance headaches. More trouble than it's worth is a wholly rational business justification for a case where a geo is currently unimportant and there's no business plan to expand there in the future.
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