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Many US news sites have yet to comply with the EU's General Data Protection Regulation after more than two months, leaving European visitors blocked.
Digital outlets run by Tronc, Lee Enterprises and GateHouse Media are among the hundreds of US news websites that remain unavailable within the EU, according to NiemanLab.
The General Data Protection Regulation, also known as GDPR, is designed to give the EU's 500 million citizens greater control over how their information is used online. Adopted in April 2016, its provisions became directly applicable in EU member states after a two-year transitional period.
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Hundreds of US News Sites Unavailable in Europe Two Months After GDPR
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Operator, please trace this call and tell me where I am.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 10 2018, @11:11AM (4 children)
So here are changes I found on the European sites after GDPR:
- Large sites still operate and violate privacy. Their opt-out is hidden in a link with password derived from 120-page agreement, in which you have to manually untick >100 checkboxes and fill captcha for each. No, this is not exaggerated!
- USA "data sucking" sites like social networks seem not to be much harmed. They introduced a few contradictory statements in their ToS, which can be summed up like "go f.. yourself". Generally everything needed is there, but it's just practically impossible to use it.
- Small sites, usually led by hobbyists for hobbyists, went down or static so much that they even turned comments off.
- One of the largest hosting provider in EU country decided to increase costs of e-shop hosting and wants more money for some unknown "auditing" which cannot be precised because intellectual property. People are migrating, more sites are down.
- My friend who has a small website (what's more interesting - a purely static one written in one of these open source generators) shown me his domain-related mailbox with 50-100 messages with blackmail in the first month after GDPR. Typical blackmail from law offices, like "your terms of service does not comply GDPR, let us write it or someone will sue you!". Generally it's a spam, but has some effect on non-technical people.
So the results are:
- Large information/disinformation sites went through it with no effect,
- More large sites felt legit to collect even more data, using even more conditions hidden in ToS,
- Smaller websites disappeared even more,
- Most people became convinced that to maintain a hobby website you need not only a tech and editor, but also a lawyer.
And it looks like this is the main goal of these regulations.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 10 2018, @02:31PM (2 children)
That was always the safe bet in Germany, with its armies of freebooting consent decree lawyers. Because of that, and the strong free speech protections in the US, I would only choose US based hosting for a hobbyist web site.
(Score: 2) by dry on Saturday August 11 2018, @04:22AM (1 child)
Better not be a hobby that involves anyones IP.
(Score: 2) by canopic jug on Saturday August 11 2018, @05:42AM
Better not be a hobby that involves anyones IP.
IPv4 or IPv6?
Money is not free speech. Elections should not be auctions.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by theluggage on Friday August 10 2018, @02:56PM
Google and Facebook accused of breaking GDPR laws [bbc.co.uk] - the complaints are in, the wheels are grinding slowly and the EU isn't above holding large multinationals to account in other fields.
The GDPR trolls will need to form an orderly queue behind the copyright/DMCA trolls, patent trolls and hate-speech censorship trolls then. GDPR is way, way down the list of possible reasons why you might not want to run a n hobby website in the modern world. If its collecting users' personal data beyond the minimum needed for (say) accepting comments then its not a hobby website. Frankly, I wouldn't want to run any site with a public forum as a private individual, GDPR or none.
AFAIK you can't privately sue people for GDPR breaches, anyway - its enforced by the EU agencies and the first recourse for anybody finding a breach is to report it to the appropriate ICO. If your national laws allow legal extortion via meritless claims by people who have no standing then that's not the EU's problem (...and, ultimately, if a US site wants to geoblock Europe then that's their prerogative).
The main problem with the way GDPR was introduced is that the official information is very, very corporate-centric and doesn't really offer any helpful advice to small fry (but that's typical of government). From their point of view you're either an individual complaining about a GDPR breach or an organisation needing to comply. Meanwhile there was an awful lot of FUD by consultancy firms who want people to pay them for compliance products/services.