Hacker News Reader

Comment by throwaway13337 | Hacker News Reader

Oddly this argument feels familiar - like we've sparred in the past over GDPR on another hacker news article.

I won't continue this as it seems like it's more a flame war where no side can convince the other.

I'll say this, though: please imagine who I am who feels so passionately about this. Likely, I am a small business that has been affected personally by the GDPR though I am not in advertising or tracking. Maybe I'm just a small business owner trying to navigate the uncertain waters created by these rules. That's what brings out the passion.

I imagine you are someone who is passionate about privacy and against adtech. As am I. We're probably ideologically similar. So please try to square why someone who is ideologically similar has such a strange idea. It might be that I am misinformed but it might be that you don't have the same experience as me.

View on HN

> Likely, I am a small business that has been affected personally by the GDPR though I am not in advertising or tracking. Maybe I'm just a small business owner trying to navigate the uncertain waters created by these rules.

Hey, I was a small business owner and the GDPR was a complete non-issue. The website was hosted by a small service provider in my country. No CDN required (static files, not that much traffic).

If you're a small business owner you're either not affected by GDPR, or you're doing something shady.

> No CDN required (static files, not that much traffic).

Shops with actual traffic might need a CDN.

> If you're a small business owner you're either not affected by GDPR, or you're doing something shady.

Well, apparently I can't use Shopify despite having no interest in tracking, ads or any kind of analytics.

> Oddly this argument feels familiar - like we've sparred in the past over GDPR on another hacker news article.

It's possible. Because every GDPR discussion is this: emotionally charged "gdpr is the devil" sold to gullible devs by advertisement industry vs. attempt to disprove at least the obvious lies.

> please imagine who I am who feels so passionately about this.

The less we imagine and the more we deal with facts, the better we, and the world we build, will be.

So let's reiterate facts vs imagination in my original reply:

- "GDPR is ugly."

It's an emotionally charged subjective statement. However, GDPR is no uglyt. As far as laws surrounding complex topics go, it's absolutely definitely emphatically not ugly.

- "The only thing it allows you to do before you get confirmation to process PII is to show static page requesting for permissions. That's basically it. You can't do any "cloudy" stuff prior."

This is 100% unadulterated lie.

The problem though, people keep mixing emotionally charged statements with lies and half-truths, and you get "GDPR is the devil" in the majority of HN comments.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com