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Comment by jmartinpetersen | 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.

Really makes you feel important.

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Perhaps at least some of the blame should be borne by your government and what some (clearly) view as onerous, economically nonviable, misinformed, and poorly executed regulations?

No. I managed to comply with GDPR with 2 hours work on my eCommerce site.

That’s great for you, doesn’t mean companies want or need to comply. They’ve decided that it’s more worthwhile to block the EU instead of invest in complying with the GDPR. The EU knew this would happen.

Many of us don't complain about being blocked, we just poke fun at the ridiculously dishonest way they phrase it.

Please don’t bet the farm on having done that little bit of work. GDPR compliance is not something you can finish but instead you have to continually demonstrate. It involves hiring specialists and 8–14 week consultation delays before launching features.

It definitely doesn't. Nervous corporations may do that, but that's because they are nervous corporations.

I'm more inclined to blame the US government for a lackadaisical approach to privacy over here. I'd love GDPR-style protections for the apps and sites I use; implementing them on our apps was a pain, but made me jealous.

I know people at PC Engines, a Swiss company and they had to deal with GDPR a couple of years ago. The owner just said fuck it and put this up: https://pcengines.ch/privacy.htm

I am pro-privacy, and generally agree with well designed and targetted regulations. There should be provisions for making it easy for GDPR compliance for the little guy. There are none.

"Swiss law requires us to archive business data for 10+ years. This means that we do not have the right to 'forget' you."

This is a complete misunderstanding of GDPR, which carves out common-sense limitations for exactly this sort of scenario.

https://gdpr-info.eu/art-17-gdpr/

> Paragraphs 1 and 2 shall not apply to the extent that processing is necessary... for compliance with a legal obligation which requires processing by Union or Member State law to which the controller is subject...

A criminal in the EU can't go issue a "right to be forgotten" request to the prison system, for example. They have a legitimate reason to decline it.

I am happy for them and can live fine without any sites that have blocked me like this so far.

> economically nonviable,

Please remember: Google was a massive success long before they started tracking people all over the web.

This isn't about being economically viable. This is to spite people because they are not content with not being able to squeeze the last few cents out each of us.

They could check any one of thousands of websites not doing any such stunt to imitate.

I don't think I've ever seen a news website with no cookie warnings. Cookies are necessary for the functionality of the ad networks and analytics tools that news websites need to survive. Not to mention the rest of gdpr requirements.

At least be honest then instead of saying that.

FYI this article is from a random local tv station, so that there’s national traffic is probably rare let alone international.

It was fun for the first 6 months after GDPR enforcement started, but after 3 years they should just replace this with a middle finger emoji.

https://apnews.com/article/lifestyle-business-health-califor...

I saw this though memeorandum.com (still goin', still heavy on the right wing sources)

GDPR has teeth! US companies are used to just paying a token fine and continuing to do whatever they want. They are completely dumbfounded that they are being assessed billions in fines when their creative interpretations of the law get overturned.

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