Over the course of a few years, doing these things might take up as much time as it would to learn a new language. For a side project, I’m not sure that’s a smart trade-off.
How so? Just build yourself a tiny tool that takes an email address or username and sends them their database entries along with the standard explanations about why you need that data.
For my side projects that will be around two hours per project and then 2 minutes for every request.
Or am I missing something?
You're assuming automated responses will satisfy requestors and, for the unsatisfied, be seen favorably by each of the twenty-eight national regulators, today and into perpetuity.
In any case, I got curious about your 2 hours / project + 2 minutes / request metric. One can achieve "basic fluency" in a number of languages within 480 hours [1]. We thus find a trade-off hyperbola [2]. For 1 project, after 14,340 requests you could have learned a new language. For 5: 2,820 per project. For 10: 1,380. At one request per day, that's under 4 years. TL; DR, even with optimistic figures, a significant toll is extracted purely for administration.
[1] https://blog.thelinguist.com/how-long-should-it-take-to-lear...
[2] 2 * Projects + (1 / 30) * Projects * Requests = 480
There's just a huge gap between people who viscerally understand making high-level business decisions and people who don't, and the vast majority of the writers and supporters of this law appear to be in the "don't" group.
There is where our expectations diverge. Do you really expect one request per day for a small side-project? Or even for a moderate start-up?
I find that astonishing. I admit I only have a few thousand users, but I've had a total of three requests.