This just hit my inbox and while some of you may have received it as well, others may not. I loved it so much I thought it should be shared far and wide 
We donât know if we comply or not - thatâs because we donât care about GDPR. We love you, but we donât love paranoid idiots. If you think we are using your personal data to make profit, then you really need to switch to another site (or simply die). You can always delete your user account (and nobody will cry).
Iâm shocked at the amount of companies who acknowledged the GDPR.
Our company policy was to 100% disregard itâs existence.
So Iâm guessing your company geo-blocks users or visitors from the EU. Because it only takes a single EU user to file a complaint and you could be on the hook for up to a $26.6 million fine. And if you think that because you arenât in the EU you canât be fined, think again. The US and the EU have reciprocal legal agreements that will let them come after you. Better to at least make a stab at being compliant; document what PII data you collect, what you use it for, and allow the user to download as a JSON or XML file. Just my $0.02, proceed at your own risk.
See here or search for gdpr fines for us companies for more details.
Yeah, I think Iâll take the first, thank you. Wow, I didnât think valuing the individualâs right to privacy made you a paranoid idiot. In the deluge of data breaches from Facebook and thousands of other sites, youâd think that there was some grounds for worrying a little bit about how safe your personal data is kept and how it is shared with third parties without your consent or knowledge, but no, apparently this makes you an idiot.
I donât get this juvinile (âgo die / idiotâ) reaction to something intended to protect the consumer. Is it that they keep all their customer data in plaintext on a hidden part of their site? Itâs as if they take the regulation as a personal attack on their âhonorâ as a web service.
I wish I could disregard it as well. The most annoying part for me was the paperwork that had to be generated around it. Building the features was something that was already on our roadmap, so we just expedited it. As @rcurrier mentioned you only need one complaint to get into the circus. Facebook & Google were hit the first day with GDPR complains. And are going to be hit again. Just take a look at this (when you are not logged into your Google account):
https://adssettings.google.com
Unless you have changed the settings these options are on by default, which goes against GDPR.
I think what you will see in the coming months will be GDPR complains on companies of all sizes either by NGOs taking on big corporations like Google or competitors. It will take until there are some legal precedents for the situation to stabilize.
Iâll reiterate the theme and say: Good riddance to the sites which simply shut down due to this.
Whenever I hear of a site geoblocking EU users or just shutting down, I always think: âAnd nothing of value was lost.â
All the FUD to the contrary, this was two(2) years in the making and the people who have problems with this, probably also have problems with Christmas which always jumps on them very suddenly and completely unexpectedly.
Iâm going to reply to this once and them Iâm done as I donât want to see this devolve into the madness I know that is possible.
GDPR is not about any kind of protection. Its about the flexing of Bureaucratic muscle and strong-arming companies. People like to think that its helping them and they really like it when they can point the guns of government at people and make them do what they think they should be doing. You can be fooled if you like, but, almost all freedom is taken under the guise of âFor Your Protectionâ, but only ever serves to enrich pockets of those pretended they were protecting you.
I realize that most people are thinking that this is no big deal, theyâre just cleaning up these giant corporations, making them behave and giving me a legal ramification if they donât. Thatâs so far from the truth. Why do you need legal ramification? Why is it necessary to point guns at people and steal their money if they donât do what you think they should? If you are unhappy with the way these platforms are using your data then STOP USING THEM! If everybody does that then their profits will suffer and they will learn that people donât want their information misused. Its a completely non violent solution. Just donât give your business to them. This also has the added benefit of fostering competition and innovation in the web services space, which directly benefits all of us directly.
GDPR doesnât hurt the big guys, they are going to keep going and they have the resources to comply with the 800 pages or regulation, and to fight and/or pay for any infractions. This hurts the lean startup, the person with the WordPress blog, and web developers. It takes a rung out of the ladder and makes it harder for you to get a leg up. This means stifled innovation and less competition for the big guys⌠Truly the big corporations probably love GDPR just for this fact.
This law also hurts the very people its claiming to protect. If you think that the cost of the fines and regulatory compliance wonât be passed on, then you are foolish. They wonât just eat the cost. Theyâll pass it on to the consumer, or even better theyâll lower their pay for their top paying jobs like us developers.
You can choose to be blind and ignorant to these truths if you like but it doesnât change them and it wonât change the fact that this will likely affect you at some point in a negative way.
This topic is not really anything to do with Meteor as such.