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0 pointselephant0xffff7y ago0 comments

> [...] Now if you run a website in the EU, any user who signs up to it has control over the contents of your servers and you have to ask in extremely specific detail to do anything with some of that content, and that "consent" can be revoked at any time.

You are saying that's a bad thing?

Services that require you to sign up, should provide the possibility for users to look at, modify and delete their user data - that's all. Where's the problem?

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jimmaswell7y ago

Yes, I'm saying that's a bad thing. Someone shouldn't have a right to come into my house and tear up a piece of paper in my drawer if I happened to write something about them on it.

The problem is that there's no justification for having the right to coerce other people just because they have information you gave them. If users enter names into your website, you're not allowed to run a statistical analysis of what names are most common on your website without asking. If people named Jane are more likely to eat ice cream, you can't target ice cream ads at them and help keep your site free, without asking them. Worse than just this kind of coercion of what you're not allowed to do, users can coerce you into taking time out of your day to expunge records about them. It's all entirely backwards.

robin_reala7y ago

The point of GDPR is to switch collecting users’ personal data from being a benefit to being a liability. That will absolutely cause short term pain to some companies that hadn’t expected this, but it ends up as a long term benefit to society, the same as most legislation.

jimmaswell7y ago

Do you have a source for most legislation being a long term benefit to society?

If forcing low-earning EU citizens off the internet because every website requires a subscription is a social good to you, then sure, it's a long term benefit.

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elephant0xffffOP7y ago

> If people named Jane are more likely to eat ice cream, you can't target ice cream ads at them and help keep your site free, without asking them.

Apart from the fact that people named Jane aren't more likely to eat ice cream, you seem to criticize that it gets harder to target ads?

Oh no, that's a real pity. Oh no, poor webmasters.

jimmaswell7y ago

>Oh no, that's a real pity. Oh no, poor webmasters.

Why are the rights of people who own websites less important to you than the rights of other people?

Regardless, you might not still be saying this once half the websites smaller than Google become subscription-based in the EU or just block the EU altogether.

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corobo7y ago

> Someone shouldn't have a right to come into my house and tear up a piece of paper in my drawer if I happened to write something about them on it

They don't have that right. GDPR only applies to business. If you mean you wrote it in your house for some business reason then yeah they have the right to know you've done so and why and the right to ask you to remove it if you don't need to have that information.

In no situation do they have the right to come into your house. That's a touch too far into the absurd.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse

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jimmaswell7y ago

Yes, I'm saying that's a bad thing. Someone shouldn't have a right to come into my house and tear up a piece of paper in my drawer if I happened to write something about them on it.

robin_reala7y ago

jimmaswell7y ago

Do you have a source for most legislation being a long term benefit to society?

If forcing low-earning EU citizens off the internet because every website requires a subscription is a social good to you, then sure, it's a long term benefit.

1 more reply

elephant0xffffOP7y ago

> If people named Jane are more likely to eat ice cream, you can't target ice cream ads at them and help keep your site free, without asking them.

Apart from the fact that people named Jane aren't more likely to eat ice cream, you seem to criticize that it gets harder to target ads?

Oh no, that's a real pity. Oh no, poor webmasters.

jimmaswell7y ago

>Oh no, that's a real pity. Oh no, poor webmasters.

Why are the rights of people who own websites less important to you than the rights of other people?

Regardless, you might not still be saying this once half the websites smaller than Google become subscription-based in the EU or just block the EU altogether.

2 more replies

corobo7y ago

> Someone shouldn't have a right to come into my house and tear up a piece of paper in my drawer if I happened to write something about them on it

In no situation do they have the right to come into your house. That's a touch too far into the absurd.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse