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Comment by gist | Hacker News Reader

Was a big media workup (like y2k) leading up to it and now it has faded from memory. It's like everything else that is the issue of the day and then ceases to matter at least in any way as much as whatever you read seem to make it before hand 'sky is falling comply comply' so typical. After you have been through similar things you know the way this type of thing is overhyped (I mean by what will actually happen and who it will happen to way overblow ie 'shut down my shitty little website for fear' mode.)

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The Y2K issue did actually require a significant amount of patching for some systems, and they absolutely would have failed if not for that patching.

Complying with government regulation is not really in the same class of issues.

It seems that "Y2K was much ado about nothing" is becoming an increasingly popular school of thought. There was certainly lots of hype at the time. But a huge amount of money and time went into mitigating problems. I don't know if there would have been widespread power grid, etc. collapses or not if everyone had taken the attitude of "Eh, we'll fix things if they break" but I'm pretty convinced people would have been missing paychecks, bank account statements would be wrong, and that sort of thing at least.

People keep saying "Look, the sky didn't fall, what was all the hubub about?!".

A job well done!

> The Y2K issue did actually require a significant amount of patching

I am referring mainly to the media hype and how it becomes the issue de jure and then ceases to matter. The media jumps on it and amplifies anyone who chimes or confirms the fear. Why? So they can run a 'if it bleeds it leads' type headline. While there could have been stories after the fact of problems for unpatched systems I don't remember any of those stories. And it is not because everyone patched their systems either.

I mean there were posts online about GDPR where some small insignificant company just folded up for fear of what would happen as if the EU was really going to go after that type of target. Anyone who has been in business for a long time knows that is not what is ever done.

To your point you are right because this isn't even (for US companies) a US regulation and if they have no customers in the EU then it is a stretch to be concerned about it (at least relative which is my point to the attention given to it by the media).

There were definitely publishers who had to block EU traffic while working on compliance. Additionally, people at companies like mine had to rush out features to allow users to view all of their saved data retained by us and optionally save or delete it. Additionally there are lawsuits out already for non-compliance, which cost money to deal with even if you win. So it had a big impact to companies' bottom lines and was worth the press in my opinion. Definitely penalizes startups who couldn't throw a couple engineers at GDPR compliance for a couple months as well like we did.

They would not need to block access. They needed to set up a time-plan on how they would get compliant to show in case they get a complaint. This is not US law, it's EU :)

Seriously, that is my impression of all conversations here, US companies trying to understand a law written in EU. I imagine this to be very hard.

> They would not need to block access. They needed to set up a time-plan

Exactly. And that is part of my point. Everyone acting as if something dreadful would happen if the timeline was not met RIGHT AWAY!!!. It would not. The EU might bring an action after initial outreach to the companies legal department. The legal dept would do a dance and explain why they need more time. The EU would then agree to the time line. Any any case would go to some court and would also involve appeals and some form of due process. During that time lawyers would work back and forth. Any fine would almost certainty not approach the worse case scenario. Not going to happen. And certainly not to a small fish or anything close to that.

Please can you link to the "lawsuits"?

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