It was confusing because of the lack of clarity. However the demands are reasonable, and the benefits to consumers are incredible. We just need better guidelines and better enforcement.
ehh... are they? If you're in Europe (or even the UK), the most noticeable change is the proliferation of cookie banners, most of which don't even comply with GPDR (the single "reject all" button almost never works as you'd expect). Another notable change is that a bunch of local US news sites are now inaccessible.
The only obviously visible benefit to consumers is data portability ("Google Takeout," etc.) However, even that is a double-edged sword, because it also makes it easy for someone who hacks your account, or law enforcement, to get a nicely formatted dump of all your data.
Beyond these changes, I'm skeptical that the regulations caused any meaningful change in what companies do with your data behind closed doors.
ehh... are they? If you're in Europe (or even the UK), the most noticeable change is the proliferation of cookie banners, most of which don't even comply with GPDR (the single "reject all" button almost never works as you'd expect). Another notable change is that a bunch of local US news sites are now inaccessible.
The only obviously visible benefit to consumers is data portability ("Google Takeout," etc.) However, even that is a double-edged sword, because it also makes it easy for someone who hacks your account, or law enforcement, to get a nicely formatted dump of all your data.
Beyond these changes, I'm skeptical that the regulations caused any meaningful change in what companies do with your data behind closed doors.