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Comment by kadenshep | Hacker News Reader

This is the exact opposite experience we've had.

We're all over Europe and the U.S. It was pretty painless. Our business does not rely on the ignorance of users or the abuse of their privacy. What "army of lawyers" did you have and why was the spirit of the law not enough? We had several different business units get through compliance without any problems.

This isn't a hard thing to address at the end of the day (so long as your entire business doesn't depend on it). I just can't help but feel a few ways A) You didn't understand what the law says B) what your lawyers were actually worried about or C) this story is just made up.

What specifically were the discrepancies in the interpretation of the law between various countries that caused two "top" tier law firms to be unable to come to a clean consensus?

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why was this downvoted? as far as I can see the claims of excessive burden have been equally vage, I don't see how this comment will lead into trolling

Maybe because some subset of the audience on HN seems to have a habit of downvoting facts they don't like, or data points that counter their narratives.

I can't count the number of times I've posted factual, verifiable information — with sources — and been downvoted (or, often enough, downvoted, then voted back up, then down again, and so on) for my troubles, or the number of times I've seen such comments from others treated the same.

The most plausible explanation I can come up with is, "Your facts dispute my narrative, and we can't have that!"

EDIT: I'm not saying that's what's happening here, and I'm certainly not saying there's brigading or shilling going on (indeed, I think it's purely individual action), but this is a clear pattern, which I've reliably observed happening for years.

It doesn't even have to be on a controversial topic; I once linked to an explanation of a nuance of copyright law, of which the other participants in the thread were demonstrably ignorant. The extent of the response? Downvotes.

Oh lord speaking of copyright law, trying to rationally discuss Copyright law during the Oracle vs Google case on this site was basically an exercise in how much mental pain you were wiling to take. Comments that only contained direct quotes from the case to negate what the OP was stating were downvoted. The Google fanaticism was insane.

I'm going to guess what's happening here is a good amount of developers work for companies where GDPR would directly impact their revenue directly or indirectly (and most likely jobs as a whole). This is especially true for smaller "middle man" analytic firms and general web agencies. It pays to be anti-GDPR.

I imagine

> C) this story is just made up.

Was interpreted as being too hostile and uncivil.

There isn't anything in GDPR to cause the problems he is describing. It's realistically the most probable scenario.

If I'm not allowed to call out dishonesty then there's basically no point in discussing any subject.

I agree, but it has to be done with delicacy to get past the hive mind here.

I'm pro GDPR, but I get tired of the immense amounts of shade some pro GDPR people throw the way of some who complain about it.

These arguments tend to be very circular. It goes something like this: GDPR is reasonable and easy to understand; if you're having trouble with it you are probably user hostile/don't understand it; you're having trouble with it which means you are user hostile/don't understand it; therefore your complaints are not legitimate; therefore GDPR is reasonable and easy to understand.

Let me just respond to this in short: No. They're not circular.

The same vague claims keep getting repeated, with absolutely nothing to back them up. Not even a "here's the problem with the law in our case" super fuzzy high level overview. It's always about the effort of adhering to the law without any discussion about why these companies are facing difficulties in the first place. Not the actual difficulty with implementing the law, just the vague effort they've put up with.

Hundreds of thousands of businesses have not had issue with the law. Suddenly some guy on HN with two "top tier" law firms at his back faces this unimaginably heavy burden and extreme obstacles when trying to adhere to the law. Sounds like a nightmare, in the sense that it never happened.

OP's post and the many others like it are just typical American business favoritism against any kind of regulation masquerading as a personal True Story (TM). I still remember when cookie warnings were "hard" to do and businesses actively implemented them in obviously shit ways, in bad faith with the regulations. It's so obviously contrived for a particular audience it's kind of absurd it immediately doesn't get flagged.

Are you basically asking "Why does no one want to share specific details of their company's difficulty complying with a giant new regulatory framework?"?

Surely the issue is harmless, and has nothing to do with the stuff GDPR is legislating against, right? Why not just share a general, fuzzy overview?

I am pretty sure that's what they're asking for. I didn't see a request for specific details. Just some high level details, rather than "we've had to spend so much money/time => clearly bad".

We’re told not to talk about any details (even high level) of this sort by legal because anything we put on the internet could be used against the company in court even if it seems harmless to us. If you want to find out about the difficulties just find an engineer working at a major company and ask them about it in person.

What part of "super fuzzy high level overview" was confusing?

Oh, sorry. My bad.

Heavens knows no one has ever been legally compelled to elaborate on a "super fuzzy high level overview" they previously volunteered.

You are being silly. You completely misread what I said and bnw you're attempting to reference insanely improbable scenarios.

Just point out the exact part of the law you guys are having a problem with. If you can't do that, it's because you're just making shit up.

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