If your product can't follow the GDPR legislation then I'm glad you don't allow EU residents to use it. Since you are most likely abusing the privacy of your customers.
While I'm a bit annoyed at the amount of paperwork and side systems that need to be constructed to ensure proper handling of personal data that I have had to implement, I can only see GDPR as something positive for the people.
I removed all my apps from the EU, and I will no longer publish any future apps there unless they become wildly successful in another country first.
My apps are tiny, free, and just not worth the hassle of figuring out what GDPR compliance is (even though they are likely GDPR compliant already since I don't store any info).
I think we're going to see a lot of small indie developers just not publish to the EU until it makes financial sense (which might be never). And that's exactly what happened here: Instapaper is a two-person team and they didn't have the time or resources to ensure compliance, so they just kept letting it slide.
I suspect we'll see much more of this to come for the EU.
I would certainly recommend reading up on the GDPR legislation. There are plenty of summaries that are good and covers the important aspects. Because once you understand GDPR, complience can follow naturally while you develop your application. Even if you dont serve customers in EU, GDPR complience will benefit non EU residents as well, since you have then implemented tooling for proper management of private information.
And if your application doesn't store data, then it's a one time cost essentially. Which is the time spent reading up on the legislation.
In addition, just noticed that Bonobos withdrew from the EEC due to GDPR
"Due to the new General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), we're currently unable to offer products and services to customers in the European Economic Community. We apologize for the inconvenience."
Why should EU residents not be allowed to decide what they want to use and not use? I'm not sure I understand why the EU makes laws that effectively decide what websites "free" people are allowed to visit.
For similar reasons that “free” people aren’t allowed to visit restaurants with health code violations.
People have to be able to make informed decisions. It’s hard to tell from the outside if a restaurant is safe, so we have inspections. It’s impossible to tell if a website is trustworthy with your personal data, so we have laws to try and ensure they will be.
Sorry, but that’s a preposterous analogy. Seeing targeted ads won’t harm me in any way. I don’t give a damn about this sort of tracking. You may feel differently, but I don’t, and am perfectly capable of evaluating the risks and benefits for myself.
What I do give a damn about is not being able to read some quality publications that rationally decided GDPR is not worth the risk.
Not a week passes without such a reminder that I’m now living behind the Great EU Firewall. I now live in a place where I need to use a VPN to access all of the Internet, for crying out loud.
And that’s not to mention the click through acceptances of terms an every fucking site, that’s “only” annoying as hell (which nobody reads anymore and thus GDPR changed exactly nothing in it’s supposed goal).
EU’s bureaucratic zeal made, via GDPR, my life worse, with no benefit, even theoretical, for me. So please spare us the lecture on how GDPR is good for us. It’s terrible even for consumers.
If you don't respect your users' privacy you don't deserve to do business in the EU. And make no mistake: whether you like it or not, that legislation - or something very like it - is going to jump the Atlantic sooner or later, so why not position yourself ahead of the curve instead of stropping off and taking your ball home?
There are side-effects I don't like about GDPR, like the endless bombardment of overwrought cookie consents on every site I visit (definitely something that degrades the experience of the web), but I do like the fact that my privacy has to be respected by corporations.
The cookie foolishness started as an a EU Directive that was adopted in May 2011.
It doesn't have anything to do with GDPR, but it's a fantastic example of (likely) well-intended European privacy regulation both is utterly useless and also stands zero chance of jumping the Atlantic.
There is a difference between respecting your customers’ privacy, and obeying the letter of the law regarding a set of artificial rituals surrounding your customers’ privacy. You can be completely compliant with the spirit of GDPR (e.g. by not storing any data in the first place), while also not wanting to spend the energy ensuring you are compliant with the letter of GDPR.
Tell that to all the companies implementing them. Now, if you click on the option to configure your cookie options you're presented with an often bewildering list of different cookie types that companies use for a variety of purposes. By either clicking "yes to all" (or similar) or selecting individual items from the list (or deselecting all) you're supposedly providing the informed consent that GDPR requires. Frankly I think often this is so confusing as to make a mockery of the whole process.
But they do: they are textbook example of unintended consequences of well-meant legislation.
GDPR is becoming that on steroids: the only thing that changed was for the worse: some sites outright banned EU visitors, the rest started using obnoxious terms screens that are even worse than cookie bars. Nothing really changed.
Anybody with half a brain could have seen this coming. But no, let’s double down on the same thing with GDPR. This time it will surely go down differently...
The issue is not whether you agree with having your privacy protected. The issue is deciding what constitutes "respecting privacy" for every single person in the EU, and threatening people with violence if they disagree.
While I'm a bit annoyed at the amount of paperwork and side systems that need to be constructed to ensure proper handling of personal data that I have had to implement, I can only see GDPR as something positive for the people.