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Comment by phatfish | Hacker News Reader

I though this was supposed to happen after the GDPR was made law... still waiting.

I didn't. I expected to be greeted with "We care about your privacy" and then have to opt in or not being able to access the content.

I was right.

Fair enough.

Although I remember plenty of comments on HN about how Facebook et al. would be blocking EU users because it would be too expensive for them to comply with GDPR.

One or two US based newspaper websites were all I noticed blocking access because of compliance reasons. I expect a similar impact due to Article 13.

The big ones will be fine. They are already using filters. It's all the forums and such that have no way to implement the technology that the upcoming directive calls for, and they will have no choice but to block EU. Regarding news sites - usually it's the comments section that's the user created content, so I guess they could simply remove that for EU visitors, or, if that feels like a hassle, just block EU.

Almost all US regional newspaper websites are blocking access from EU. Many other US sites as well but luckily most of them they just don't care to comply or enable geo fencing.

I still see far too many sites which want me to opt out of 100+ trackers individually. I usually just leave. Thanks for hindering my procrastination habits I guess.

It happened for few sites - mostly smaller American news sites, and strangely enough - cooking sites.

There are an absolute mountain of US sites which block European IP addresses to avoid GDPR. Mostly news outlets. I've never seen so many 451 Unavailable For Legal Reasons errors in my life!

Still others present a "subscription required" page if you connect from Europe, but display the content if you access them from the US (or through archive.is).

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