[nemothekid]

>Nasty social media that makes their money on outrage and exposing people to scam ads?

Last I checked Facebook and friends still exist.

>what did we actually lose?

* Many europeans lost access to various publishing sites (another win for the big guys)

* Collectively who knows how many millions went to lawyers to reverse engineer the vague GDPR standards

[Nextgrid]

> Last I checked Facebook and friends still exist.

Last I checked there are studies that suggest the current social-media solutions have a negative effect on mental health, and those effects are likely because of the platforms' efforts to drive up "engagement" levels. Regarding the ads, I have first-hand experience of my non-technical friends falling for outright scams (requiring a chargeback), dubious snake-oil being advertised or malware on major online ad networks (not an issue anymore thanks to an ad blocker).

> Many europeans lost access to various publishing sites (another win for the big guys)

This doesn't seem to significantly impact me or anyone in my network. If this was a big problem we'd notice it and/or a EU-based, compliant competitor will step in to fill the void.

> Collectively who knows how many millions went to lawyers to reverse engineer the vague GDPR standards

Somewhat agreed but this seems to be a side-effect of companies trying to lawyer their way out of the law, and the reason this works is because of the lack of enforcement. If it was enforced it would be a clear message that these efforts don't work and should be stopped.

[Silhouette]

Somewhat agreed but this seems to be a side-effect of companies trying to lawyer their way out of the law

Not necessarily. One of the main criticisms of the GDPR was that it was vague and ambiguous on several very important points, and in theory deferred to more concrete guidance from the national regulators, which in turn was then either inconsistent or absent in some of the most important areas anyway.

The GDPR penalty regime was also heavily stacked against smaller businesses: for a large business, the costs are capped at the 4% level, but for any business earning less than half a billion each year, the absolute cap takes precedence and means that a regulator can literally threaten the very existence of any business earning less than probably 100M.

In that environment, you need proper legal advice on interpretation and possibly, as absurd as it seems, just to show that you have made a serious, good faith attempt at compliance, as a preemptive defence if a regulator does subsequently take a different view to yours.

[nemothekid]

My entire point of my facebook comment is that GDPR gave us nothing, and people paid by losing news site and lawyer salaries.

I don't care if you aren't personally affected by this. That isn't the argument you should be trying to make. How did GDPR improve your life? AFAICT Facebook may still have your shadow profile

[Nextgrid]

> How did GDPR improve your life?

People are more aware of privacy violations and even though companies don't fully comply with the regulation, many are at least trying.

I've personally had success in getting multiple EU-based businesses to delete my data and/or fix issues with their marketing infrastructure sending me spam despite not opting into it.

Facebook still has a shadow profile for me but between Facebook having it or Facebook plus a hundred more bad actors having it too I'd still prefer if it was only Facebook.

[Mirioron]

>This doesn't seem to significantly impact me or anyone in my network. If this was a big problem we'd notice it and/or a EU-based, compliant competitor will step in to fill the void.

Access to fewer news sites is access to fewer news. The new site isn't going to replace the old. Also, we're not getting replacements for them in the EU because the business model for these sites doesn't work with GDPR. Making their life financially more difficult just pushes them more into clickbait and yellow journalism.

[Nextgrid]

> Making their life financially more difficult just pushes them more into clickbait and yellow journalism.

Clickbait is explicitly caused by advertising - it's right there in the name, it's there to drive clicks, the content itself is secondary.

If advertising becomes unsustainable then other business models will take over. At the moment subscribing to news websites is too expensive because 1) we don't have an easy to use micropayment system and 2) they are greedy and charge way more than what they would get in ad revenue.

[mrep]

I've also seen a ton of people complain about it on this website alone [0, 1].

[0]: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateEnd=1590782149&dateRange=custom&...

[1]: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateEnd=1590782149&dateRange=custom&...