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Comment by Meekro | Hacker News Reader

Back when the GDPR was still pending, the consensus on HN was that there was nothing to fear because European regulators emphasize the spirit of the law, rather than beating people over the head with the letter of the law like American regulators do.

Anyway, the law went into effect and some guy got fined just over $2000 for using CC instead of BCC on his personal mailing list of 150 people. There are a bunch more examples just like that [1].

I miss the tech community that used to be much more skeptical of government regulation -- remember SOPA/PIPA?

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20278819

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HN has an overly optimistic view of the EU and doesn't see it as another government body with limited oversight.

> Anyway, the law went into effect and some guy got fined just over $2000 for using CC instead of BCC on his personal mailing list of 150 people. There are a bunch more examples just like that [1].

> Details on the 2k€ fine; the guy used his mailing list for harassment, the 2k€ fine would likely have also been issued prior to the GDPR as german privacy law is fairly strict.

I'm not sure this is directly related to GDPR as the regulations in Germany are more strict

"using CC instead of BCC... newsletter of 150 people in Germany... between July and September 2018"

But spirit of the law or not, if you're CCing me in your newsletter several times, I'd be pretty annoyed

Edit: people might want to check the actual link provided to get the details 1) he was a repeated offender 2) this mailing list was being used for harassment

GDPR "hurt" tech companies, but hurt the big ones less than the small ones.

The big tech companies have increased market dominance so it seems like spirit of the law was actually to crush competition so that there fewer players for the EU to regulate

I'm not convinced that was some ulterior goal, but even if, I don't mind as long as it is followed by actually regulating the remaining players.

As I keep saying: we don't need innovation in adtech. We don't need more companies in this space. We need this industry burned down to the ground, encased in a concrete tomb, with warnings for future generations plastered all over it.

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