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Comment by qmmmur | Hacker News Reader

And that you are legally culpable for violating it's terms.

I am talking from consumer perspective - nothing improved.

This is true. GDPR has proved to be completely toothless. Flagrant offenders flaunt it brazenly. The much-vaunted 4%-of-turnover fines have never once been enforced.

I think this is mostly the difference between American and EU regulation and enforcement.

It seems like US institutions like to take a big player, make a huge case and then hope everyone else is scared enough to follow. In EU on the other hand the first inquiry would be validate the practices, allow corrections and if they aren't timely start stepping up the fines.

In the end you end up with the huge cases like for example the browsers or Apple tax payment and by that time you have a law with regulations and previous judgements to stand on creating a system that's hopefully understandable and easy enough to follow for the regular user with good intentions.

Talking from the consumer perspective, I completely disagree - things have very much improved. Google and Facebook now make available everything they have on you, easily accessible. Companies now have to tell me why they are asking for information and what they are going to do with it. I can ask companies for all information they hold on me, and they have to comply.

This is a big improvement - there is a sense of companies going from hoovering up every PI data point they could, to treating PI as a liability. That's a big deal.

We ask for your information to improve our service. We know that you opted out by selecting the "opt out" button in your web browser, but we're going to ignore that and try to trick you into opting in, since we're so special that your generic opt out probably doesn't apply to us. We will make it hard to identify which links are really buttons that you need to click to disagree to increase the probability that you will accidentally agree or agree out of frustration. If you don't agree, we'll make you sit through a two minute spinner while we during which time we do nothing since it takes no time at all to save a cookie on your computer that says "don't save any cookies".

I mean seriously. If the GDPR had any teeth, the companies that do this shit would be made to suffer. But since all they do is make us suffer and the EU dgaf I wonder what the point is. It's just so much privacy theatre.

Maybe there's a shift somewhere. But I can't feel it as a user.

Privacy is the point but enforcement is very much lacking. The GDPR is supposed to be enforced by the member states so the EU is not to blame – at least if by "EU" you mean the EU bodies. The EU as a whole, including its members and citizens may be but imo it's more accurate to say that it isn't coherent enough to actually have opinions.

I don't agree; there have been a number of enforcements which very much improved things.

See e.g. [1] and [2].

Is it perfect? No. But these kind of things don't change overnight.

[1]: https://www.zdnet.com/article/guess-what-gdpr-enforcement-is...

[2]: https://www.enforcementtracker.com/

Honestly, I think GDPR was way better than I feared. They fined literally no one and we all got access to our data. It created a great interoperability situation. I am quite happy with it because they essentially do not enforce but everyone abides by it.

Nice! I was entirely wrong about what I thought would happen. If I were starting up I'd probably ignore building the entire framework to start with and deal with it when I have to.

Enforcement level varies from country to country, however a ton of fines/penalties are constantly issued.

https://www.enforcementtracker.com/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GDPR_fines_and_notices

Well, here's one obvious and useful benefit for the average user: you can now remove content that identifies you (especially photos/video) rather easily, like you would under DMCA. Just a polite reminder of GDPR is enough for websites/hosting providers to comply.

If not, you can go to the data agency of the hosting provider's country and lodge in a formal complaint that can lead to an actual investigation and fine. It really works!

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