they blocked a continent without seeking any advice?
It probably wasn't worth the effort to block foreign countries just from random unnecessary compute cost to serve a site to them, but when those countries start being serious about penalties you could face for serving their residents? Now it's justifiable to block non-US countries.
After all, using a VPN doesn't absolve companies of the GDPR.
Every site that gdpr-blocks itself is saying that they intend to extract value from your data and they don't want to tell you how.
Sometimes if you're just one person and the EU isn't a core market and you are a small business or non-profit, it's easier to just say, ok you know what, no thanks to all this for now.
"Will you sell my data?"
"This interview is over. (I'm very busy.)"
No! Of course not! It's because you don't care about Turkmenistan, to the extent you've never even bothered to look up what is and is not legal there, let alone get legal advice about it. That's a perfectly fine answer. This random Michigan newspaper doesn't care about the EU. That's a perfectly fine answer too.
Me: "No."
Use of AWS availability zones as it applies to Article 5?