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Comment by MrBuddyCasino | Hacker News Reader

So they decided to clamp down one of the last fields of business where there still is some dynamism left. This will probably turn out to be the same well-intended but ultimately stupid thing they did with the GDPR, giving more power to big corporations and adding yet another bureaucratic hoop to jump through for small companies. Tired of clicking those cookie consent banners yet? The UK was right to exit the EU.

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You are mostly right, but the UK was extremely stupid to exit EU. They lost free access to their biggest market. And they made it harder and more expensive for their biggest suppliers to sell to them.

I used to think that too, I don't believe it anymore. It will become increasingly painful to exit the EU, but there are long-term gains to be had.

All EU states, including the UK, agreed with the GDPR, with the exception of Austria who didn't think it went far enough. The democratically elected EU Parliament also agreed to it.

Oh yeah, it caused a million problems for people and businesses, but in the far far future the NHS will get 300 trilion pounds a week...

Used to work in the Department for International Trade - not a single one of their international trade experts tought Brexit is even remotely a good idea, long, medium of short term.

The UK still sells lots of stuff to the EU, and they especially did not lose "free" access because the EU charged on the order of £300 million per WEEK in fees in order to get that "free" access.

> giving more power to big corporations and adding yet another bureaucratic hoop to jump through for small companies

Exactly. Customers need to be safe, but there also need to be paths for the mom-and-pop shops, the equivalents of your local farmer's market or grocery store.

Indiscriminate regulation can crush smaller players. Think of the indive dev accepting donations or the bootstrapped startup founder. Not everyone can get VC funding and hire a team of lawyers to keep up with it.

We need to protect small businesses AND consumers. Revenue thresholds are a good start.

The UK did not object to the GDPR. The cookie banners are not a consequence of the GDPR, they are a consequence of companies using personal information without the users knowledge. The banners are not required at all, as long as you don't keep or used personal data other than for limited allowed technical/security reasons and you have a page somewhere on your site explaining that. There's certainly no need to ask permission from users to do things.

In fact, many of the banners are just illegal, much like shrink wrap agreements. You are not allowed to process data without affirmative agreement. There's no implied agreement possible.

The only problem with the GDPR is the (limited) enforcement of it

The UK wants to diverge from the GDPR:

https://www.euractiv.com/section/digital/news/new-uk-governm...

It's one of the things that came up relatively early.

> The banners are not required at all

Yet every site disagrees with you.

> The UK wants to diverge from the GDPR

Having voted just a few years ago to create it.

> Yet every site disagrees with you.

There's no banner on this site. You don't need a banner if you aren't trying to use take peoples private data.

This site is purely American and doesn't have to care what the EU thinks. It's also subsidized by a VC firm and doesn't have to directly make money. Not a good example.

The EUs biggest export is bureaucratic idiocy.

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