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by Kelbit 2990 days ago
The EU has a population of over half a billion people and a GDP per capita of $41k PPP (although those numbers will shrink a little bit post-Brexit). Ignoring Europe as a potential market ignores half the western world - and it is westerners, for the most part, who have disposable income to spend money on goods and services.

Ignore Europe if you like. Just be aware that you are allowing your competitors to gain an uncontested foothold without having to fight for it. Once they are the incumbent in the European market, they will be hard to unseat, even if you change your mind later.

2 comments

There are thousands of types of sites, such as geographically focused message boards, local professionals, smaller ecommerce sites, etc. who are exposed under the GDPR but for whom EU traffic is incidental and worth nothing. A US plumber doesn’t need or want appointments in London, but is technically exposed under the GDPR. So for businesses like this, blocking EU traffic should be an easy decision - there is no downside.
IANAL but I believe the GDPR is tolerant of incidental traffic. So if an European accesses a local job board in South Korea, the EU will not go after the Korean company and demand compliance. Now if said Korean company is running a job board for Berlin, in German, charging in Euros, etc. it's a different story.
That, along with many other parts of the GDPR, is both open for interpretation and may vary from country to country within the EU. See https://aristilabs.com/how-the-gdpr-apply-to-your-us-based-c...
That shouldn't be an issue. If you offer your services only within the US then you're out of scope. It doesn't matter if EU citizens visit your site, as long as you don't try to get any customers from the EU or target your content towards visitors from the EU you don't have to comply with GDPR.
For most American pubs - and hence producing English language content -- there's very little risk. Most of the EU won't read it anyway, and if the uk privacy regulator wants to complain, let them.