Because they have identifiable owners who might wish to travel to Europe and not risk someone deciding to make an example of them.

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boc 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

You're making the point even stronger for US companies to just block EU traffic entirely. If you have no EU customers, the mere act of letting EU visitors on your site might cause an EU country to "make an example" of you for incorrect data handling, but the alternative of just blocking all traffic would let you travel to the EU without issues.

	▲	jazzyjackson 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		Well, my point was that a site owner shouldn’t even bother with geofencing, but I guess I’ll accept “may want to travel to europe someday” as a reason to fear legal repercussions

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ipsento606 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

the idea of the owners of a small, regional US news website being arrested while traveling in Europe because that site does not have a GDPR compliant cookie policy seems utterly detached from reality

I would be more worried about being struck by a meteorite than such a thing

	▲	devilbunny 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		It is vanishingly unlikely, or would have been, but given that the US has started examining people’s social media, it is not unreasonable to think tit-for-tat might happen. Again, I agree it is very, very unlikely. But it’s possible, and in an age of mass outrage it isn’t incomprehensible that some activist, somewhere, might latch onto something they don’t like and just doggedly pursue someone. It does happen.