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Comment by riantogo | Hacker News Reader

So what exactly is the overall outcome that people (in the support camp) are expecting from GDPR? Obviously targeted content and advertising is not going to stop. But maybe the 0.01% of the population that wants to opt-out of targeting or download their data can (BTW most of this was already possible with most big players)? And they want this at the cost of much higher cost of compliance for hobbyists and startups? And what does all this mean in terms of net gain to society?

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GDPR would have been a sensible regulation if it only applied to large companies. With respect to complaints against Facebook and Google, I have no qualms.

As a small business owner, I disagree - all businesses should be mindful of their user's privacy.

Regulatory interactions are inherently costly. It doesn’t matter if you do everything correctly. People will mis-understand and file complaints; you’ll need lawyers earlier than otherwise. This inhibits business formation. For large companies, whose data represents the greatest systemic threat, I think the trade-off is worth it. For smaller companies, having an EU lawyer on staff is not.

> you’ll need lawyers earlier than otherwise

The EU is not the USA - the majority of small businesses will never need a lawyer at all!

I have a client who is a freelance writer. She has basically ZERO technical knowledge. It was a struggle for her to get Wordpress set up. She is absolutely terrified of GDPR, to the point that she's scared to log in to her website.

To her, what does being "mindful of their user's privacy" even mean?

She probably has analytics installed. Maybe she collects some emails.

There is zero chance she is going to be abusing her user's privacy. All GDPR has done for her is cause stress -- and caused her to spend more money on basically useless "GDPR plugins" for Wordpress.

There are countless people like her, who are spending money effectively on nothing. Because of GDPR. It's horrible. In my opinion.

> There is zero chance she is going to be abusing her user's privacy. All GDPR has done for her is cause stress -- and caused her to spend more money on basically useless "GDPR plugins" for Wordpress.

If her admin password is 'password123' and her database and analytics get dumped by someone, it doesn't matter if she wouldn't abuse users privacy, because others will.

That's a common sentiment, unfortunately, the Google and Facebook tracking scripts on your little private blog are doing just the same damage as the same scripts on a big newspaper's web site. Both track in exactly the same way.

It makes no difference where the script is if the regulation only applied to the large companies behind them.

A few extra billions in fines

That is correct. They should have just gone the route of taxing more for that revenue.

No, because the fines encourage good behavior to avoid them.

I hope that your „obviously“ isn‘t quite so obvious and it does stop.

I concede that chances are low, but I contend they are non-zero.

I politely disagree. The law is clear that it can go on with user consent as long as there is provision for deletion and download. Which means it is going to be business as usual (with a lot of inconvenience to comply).

But why would most users consent?

Because they want access to the services and content.

From the article: "The GDPR prohibits such forced consent and any form of bundling a service with the requirement to consent (see Article 7(4) GDPR). Consequently access to services can no longer depend on whether a user gives consent to the use of data."

Laws can't demand a service be offered without consideration unless the government intends to socialize or pay for it. This is unlikely to hold up beyond allowing complaints by people feeling entitled enough to do so, although I'm sure FB and the rest will happily roll out subscription plans if necessary.

Lawmakers have no obligation to preserve flawed business models.

Ok, but that has nothing to do with what I said.

You can't legislate that online services be provided any more than you can legislate that Apple provide iPhones for everyone. The government can offer subsidies or refunds or some other consideration, but there must be something in return.

Facebook is perfectly allowed to stop providing services, but they cannot make use of their service contingent on tracking and personalized ads.

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