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GDPR for lazy people: Block all European users with Cloudflare Workers

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Re: GDPR for lazy people: Block all European users with Cloudflare Workers

#831

Post by czardoz »

jeremyt wrote: post #479

I’ve been reading hacker news for about a decade, and it’s getting to the point where I don’t think there are many entrepreneurs and/or technical people on here anymore. The number of people who are saying it’s no big deal to comply with this huge law, especially for very small startups, is mind boggling. Let’s just take one feature: the requirement that you can permanently delete all of your information. Most early-…

I think businesses should just charge EU customers more for their products, in order to make up for the compliance costs of GDPR. That should make most people happy.

Re: GDPR for lazy people: Block all European users with Cloudflare Workers

#832

Post by inopinatus »

TomK32 wrote: post #829
jeremyt wrote: post #479

I’ve been reading hacker news for about a decade, and it’s getting to the point where I don’t think there are many entrepreneurs and/or technical people on here anymore. The number of people who are saying it’s no big deal to comply with this huge law, especially for very small startups, is mind boggling. Let’s just take one feature: the requirement that you can permanently delete all of your information. Most early-…

You have delete as a boolean? My standard (well, Mongoid::Paranoia) is a timestamp and after a reasonable time to cover accidental deletions (like facebook does) a worker job can do the actual deletion.

DHH has a video about how this is implemented in Basecamp. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AoxoPfilKqE

Re: GDPR for lazy people: Block all European users with Cloudflare Workers

#833

Post by erkkie »

jeremyt wrote: post #479

I’ve been reading hacker news for about a decade, and it’s getting to the point where I don’t think there are many entrepreneurs and/or technical people on here anymore. The number of people who are saying it’s no big deal to comply with this huge law, especially for very small startups, is mind boggling. Let’s just take one feature: the requirement that you can permanently delete all of your information. Most early-…

The world is not coming to an end, the sky is not falling.

Nothing has to be automatic as far as the deletion requests go. It's fine for you to go through the db manually and grant a specific request within 30 days.

If you're big enough to get enough requests to not be able to handle the load, you can afford a couple of days of dev work.

It's mind boggling the amount of people who's interpretation of GDPR is overzealous (to the max) based on third party interpretations. Get to the source of it and you might find it's not that bad.

You're only in trouble if your business model actually relies on doing things to the data your users would not want you to do (which could be argued is for the better good).

Re: GDPR for lazy people: Block all European users with Cloudflare Workers

#834

Post by axlprose »

ponyfleisch wrote: post #823
axlprose wrote: post #739

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Would you eat in a place like that? a vast majority of the food places in my home country were like that when I was growing up, and such places likely still make up a sizable portion of the food businesses down there now. I can't help but be a bit offended by this attitude, because it seems to not only be implying that these businesses are likely to be operating in bad faith, but that the world would legitimately be…

> because it seems to not only be implying that these businesses are likely to be operating in bad faith I think there is a subtle difference between negligence and bad faith. > but that the world would legitimately be better off without them as well Well, that's precsiely what laws forbidding businesses like that say. "We'd rather not have them if they can't stick to those rules." Are you making the argument that th…

>"We'd rather not have them if they can't stick to those rules."

Right, but the alternative in certain situations is having no businesses at all, as was the case in my home country.

>Are you making the argument that the west is generally over-regulating food safety and public health? If so, on what basis? Looks to me like a variant of the old "when i was young we didn't have [seatbelts|gun regulation|hard hats on construction sites] and i turned out just fine!"

No, and again, it's offensive that this is legitimately the first thing that comes to mind when somebody from a developing nation says that it's local population has reasons for doing things the way it does. Nowhere was I arguing that public safety is a bad thing, and don't appreciate having words put in my mouth. I was merely stating the fact that businesses down there almost unanimously don't have the resources to be hiring lawyers, or whatever other services that they would need in order to guarantee compliance with overly strict regulations like you see in the west. If such regulations were in place, and they were strictly enforced somehow, what would happen is that nearly all entrepreneurship would disappear altogether, except possibly for the wealthy (which are often the most corrupt down there), or outside investors with potentially dubious motives for dealing with the local population. It would literally price-out the very people you'd be trying to help with your regulations.

I never said that situation was better than the west, or that things were somehow better "back then" (I much prefer living in the US today), I was saying it was better than nothing, and that these entitled western sentiments can't feasibly be applied everywhere to positive effect. Has it come to the point now that small villages will be needing to apologize to westerners for liking the convenience of having some semblance of commerce in their neighborhoods, due to all the benefits that brings, like not having to worry about cooking dinner in equally poor conditions every night at home? It's not an attack on the west, it's annoyance with the west's over-the-top moralizing of the choices different people make under constrained circumstances that westerners seem to forget exist.

Re: GDPR for lazy people: Block all European users with Cloudflare Workers

#835

Post by [deleted] »

Spooky23 wrote: post #628
ng12 wrote: post #610

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's a thought: regulation like this is, along with the heavy-handed ideology that lead to it, is the reason why the EU is still lagging regarding technical innovation. I think this attitude is the primary reason Silicon Valley took hold in the USA and that the EU has nothing comparable. If the EU wants to legislate itself out of the future they're more than welcome to do so -- and I applaud every site who makes th…

Is it? Visit Germany sometime. Drive through the countryside. Most parts of the US look like a hollowed out shell by comparison.

[deleted]

Re: GDPR for lazy people: Block all European users with Cloudflare Workers

#836

Post by mdpopescu »

kennywinker wrote: post #734
fanzhang wrote: post #702

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In legal contracts "whereas" often expresses sentiment but it's really the actual terms that matter. Having drafted a number of contracts, I feel most contracts generally have a section that approximates "whereas everyone wants things to go well and everyone to benefit..." That's great that your company works well with GDPR. I imagine many companies will. I'm also sure that the impact on your backups could have been…

That’s the wrong analogy. How about “everyone who is in new york for any amount of time had to not be actively harming new yorkers”. Sure some people who want to actively harm new yorkers are going to go away and never come back... but they’ll all be better off for it - and really every other state should probably pass a similar law. Edit: duely noted. Libertarian capitalists of hacker news do not agree.

I find it amazing that you came up with the most one-sided argument you could think of ("not actively harming") and still didn't realize how badly it can misfire.

Here's a hint: my dentist is actively harming me when taking out a tooth.

Re: GDPR for lazy people: Block all European users with Cloudflare Workers

#837

Post by perlgeek »

jeremyt wrote: post #479

I’ve been reading hacker news for about a decade, and it’s getting to the point where I don’t think there are many entrepreneurs and/or technical people on here anymore. The number of people who are saying it’s no big deal to comply with this huge law, especially for very small startups, is mind boggling. Let’s just take one feature: the requirement that you can permanently delete all of your information. Most early-…

> Most early-stage startups use the (in 2008, when I did mine) best practice of “delete=1”. Changing your whole database over to permanent cascade delete is only easy if you’re a very experienced programmer or who knows what he’s doing.

If you can't handle cascading deletes, continue to set delete=1 and overwrite the other columns with random data / empty strings / whatever.

Less risky than implementing cascading deletes, but still effectively gets rid of PII.

Re: GDPR for lazy people: Block all European users with Cloudflare Workers

#838

Post by Myrmornis »

gerdesj wrote: post #655
eli wrote: post #633

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's reassuring to hear that the GDPR is not meant to target little startups and projects but I would like it a lot better if it said that in the actual law, rather than just trusting all current and future regulators to treat me kindly. If it's only meant to be used against big companies or extreme offenders, why doesn't it say so? It seems like the spirit of the law and the language of the law are not aligned and i…

"but I would like it a lot better if it said that in the actual law" Have you read the bloody law! http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELEX... This is legislation designed to protect not only me (as an individual) but you as well (as a probable foreigner) from me!

Please point to the specific section you’re referring to.

Re: GDPR for lazy people: Block all European users with Cloudflare Workers

#839

Post by closeparen »

kennywinker wrote: post #734
fanzhang wrote: post #702

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In legal contracts "whereas" often expresses sentiment but it's really the actual terms that matter. Having drafted a number of contracts, I feel most contracts generally have a section that approximates "whereas everyone wants things to go well and everyone to benefit..." That's great that your company works well with GDPR. I imagine many companies will. I'm also sure that the impact on your backups could have been…

That’s the wrong analogy. How about “everyone who is in new york for any amount of time had to not be actively harming new yorkers”. Sure some people who want to actively harm new yorkers are going to go away and never come back... but they’ll all be better off for it - and really every other state should probably pass a similar law. Edit: duely noted. Libertarian capitalists of hacker news do not agree.

This comment is personal data about you, specifically your political views. It's now in my browser cache. If you were to ask me to clear it, I'd probably say no. Am I actively harming you?

Re: GDPR for lazy people: Block all European users with Cloudflare Workers

#840

Post by xstartup »

GDPR is set to destroy American tech/media companies along with those from developing nations.

Europe has got most of its wealth through imperialism back in time robbing countries of Africa and South Asian countries.

This is the primary reason countries of South Asia/Africa so poor today.

Before imperialism, most of Europe was poor while countries like China and India were way richer.

India is just 70 years old by comparison which is not long enough to make back the lost wealth due to its sheer size and diversity.

Now, American companies are able to an extract huge amount of money from European nations using mostly legal (maybe unethical?) using companies like Google and Facebook. They are set to make this illegal.

It's nothing more than a wealth preservation strategy. European nations can't compete against America and rising nations (India, China etc...) due to their aging population in near future.

So, they are going to shut off the market by making unreasonably harsh laws which are quite difficult to comply with.

You are finding compliance difficult because it's intentionally part of their design.

Keep an eye open and expect more unreasonable laws coming out of EU in near future. They are not going to stop here.

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