[olliej]

But deletion hasn’t been available (and most “deletion” request functions have been in response to legal and governmental pressure already) and I recall seeing multiple stories about “deleted” material not being deleted.

Gdpr is a response to the prior attempts to let the industry “self regulate” not actually doing anything.

Does it over regulate? Personally I don’t think so - people talk about the complexity but that’s mostly due to the need to be absolutely explicit everywhere, and need to ensure that there aren’t loophole that can be abused by some company with enough lawyers.

[zerostar07]

The industry did do some things, for one internet giants are in a certain competition to appear privacy-conscious. For another, adtech did introduced some options (e.g. adchoices) but they were arguably too little. The thing is however people don't care about their privacy as much as their governments would like them to care, hence the regulation. But it's opinionated , extreme regulation meant to disrupt everything rather than fix the things that need fixing, and that never works.