It's not "bitter HN users". It's bitter European citizens. No wonder that it's mostly American companies who have the most trouble complying with it.
Having grown up in Europe I'm much more sensitive to privacy concerns than most Americans, but it's not proper to assume that anyone who just blocks European visitors is up to something nefarious. It just doesn't make business sense for everyone to comply.
What I do know is that massive numbers of services like yours are missusing, mishandling, or lossing my data every year. I'm not OK with that.
But I won't jump through hoops to reassure you. The cost is too high for too little benefit.
Two things could swing this in another direction:
1. The EU figures out how to levy fines or force compliance against small businesses in other countries.
2. The revenue loss from EU users and possibly others is so large that the benefits once again outweigh the costs.
Very skeptical on both counts.
Until then, the GDPR goes on a large pile of perhaps well-meaning laws passed by foreign governments that don't apply to me and that I can safely ignore.
That was exactly the position of too many companies: pass whatever law, I don't care.
Well. It has gone on for too long, so, hopefully, now companies will start to care.
> If you don’t want to do business with me because I’m not compliant, don’t send me server requests, data, or money.
The EU is 500 million people. It looks to me that it's you who doesn't want to do business just because you think that other countries' laws and other countries' rights are bullshit and you don't care about them.
I say, good riddance.
I’m hoping that over the coming weeks and months the enforcement of GDPR and various court cases will add clarity and allow the development of improved guidelines for becoming compliant. If a random SaaS company that users emails for logins and communication with active customers could look at a simple 5 point check list which they could check though in a day then things would be better for everyone.
Less burden for customers, wider services for users, and those firms that can see they could make a few small changes to become compliant would be more incentivised to do so.