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Comment by pojntfx | Hacker News Reader

"Our European visitors are important to us.

This site is currently unavailable to visitors from the European Economic Area while we work to ensure your data is protected in accordance with applicable EU laws."

nice

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Why do all these prompts use doublespeak so blatantly? It's actually insane.

"Your privacy matters to us." -> Then why are you asking me to give it up? If my privacy mattered to you you wouldn't even ask to install tracking cookies and gather my data.

it has evolved

It's not doublespeak. What would you have the message say?

It's a legacy site and they haven't finished implementing out-out-only / data-deletion / etc... I wouldn't assume malicious intent.

It's been quite awhile now since the GDRP protections have been around. If they haven't finished removing tracking by now, then they're lying when they say "your privacy matters to us".

No, it doesn't. If it mattered, then you would act like it.

This isn't the New York Times. I don't think it's reasonable to expect the local news for a mid-sized American city to prioritize implementation of the EU's data rules.

Sure, but it's plenty of time to just remove tracking cookies altogether. Which would have been easier to implement than what they're doing now (geolocating visitors, serving custom messages depending on jurisdiction, etc.)

I mean, if my privacy matters to them.

I know the online news business is difficult to monetize. Only a handful of major news orgs can put paywalls up and charge subscribers directly. I get that.

So, what they do instead is use 3rd party ad networks and analytics, and traffic in my personal data, while telling me that my privacy matters.

That's why this is doublespeak. They're saying one thing (my privacy matters) while doing another (funding their operations in part on my personal data).

Is it the only viable model for them? Maybe. That's not really relevant, though.

Your privacy matters, only if you pay. I don't click on content site links where I am not a customer.

They seem to have the technical wherewithal and motivation to prioritize all that tracking in the first place, though...

>out-out-only

What is "out-out-only"? My google fu is failing me.

It is true though. It matters to them in the same way virginity matters to someone trying to seduce someone. It is an absolute binary status that maintaining gets in the way of what they want.

[cost of compliance] > [revenue from EU visitors]

And I don't blame the site at all. Another stupid rule from the EU preventing me from reading articles.

https://outline.com/

You may find this site helpful

https://archive.is

another option

The rule is not preventing anything. The website is redirecting your requests on a static page.

https://web.archive.org

A man has a hotdog stand that he never cleans. One day, a health inspector comes by and tells him that unless he cleans his grill every day, he can’t keep selling hotdogs. The man shouts “I’ve never cleaned the grill in my life! It’s impossible, nobody does it! And who’s going to pay for the cleaner and the five minutes every day, me? No, I’ll just go sell my hotdogs somewhere else.” And he leaves. Later a regular comes by, sees the missing hotdog stand, hears it happened as a result of the health inspector’s visit, sees that other people are now eating the man’s hotdogs while he can’t, and thinks “Man I’m hungry. Screw health inspectors.”

Taking care of people can be a thankless job.

Here are a dozen healthier options: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=graham+clark&t=osx&iar=news&ia=new...

See it's all a matter of opinion. I personally don't really care about online privacy and GDPR just gets in my way. I know that's not a very popular opinion on this site but it's the way I feel.

"Those who don’t care much about privacy might say that they have nothing to hide. Those who do worry about it might say that keeping their personal data safe protects them from being harmed by hackers or unscrupulous companies. Both positions assume that caring about and protecting one’s privacy is a personal matter. This is a common misunderstanding."

https://www.newstatesman.com/science-tech/privacy/2019/10/pr...

"We have to put an accept button on every new website you visit or democracy will end"

"Any government regulation is literally fascism/communism and will inevitably lead to the deaths of millions of people."

Do you see why straw man arguments aren't helpful?

Alternative: https://www.theverge.com/2020/7/31/21349920/twitter-hack-arr...

Does this mean the US visitors data is not protected? Or no resources to add a cookie banner?

It means they're tracking US visitors in ways intrusive enough to be illegal in Europe, yes.

Maybe. Maybe not. Regulatory compliance is orthogonal to security and privacy. Just ask PCI folks.

It means they're not complying with European Union laws. Whether you think complying with a law is synonymous with protection, or security or privacy is up to your experience and worldview.

Or that they don’t know if they are complying.

"Our European visitors are important to us."

Yes, quite. I won't repeat the phrase that immediately came to mind when I read that, but I will say it ended with, "you News Channel 8!"

It's a GDPR compliant site.

Europeans should be impressed that American sites were so quick to comply with their well thought out and reasonable regulations.

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