GDPR compliance is good IT practice. It's easy to do, good for users, and states are rolling out similar laws.

But now, instead of their story being read by people all over the world, having gone viral, it's just going to pirated. Not only losing them out on revenue, but recognition as well.

This is part of the long death of online local news. They can't be bothered to do the simplest things for their site (make personal data collection optional). But they have tons of time to fill them with online cancer and make them unusable without ad blocking.

I get resistsnce. GDPR is good in theory but implementation has been shocking. Dark patterns in banners, banners when not required (ie no relevant cookies) etc. the gdpr banners as a whole make the internet a shitter experience. I categorically refuse work on anything requiring gdpr specific compliance and recommend against any practices which would require it on work I accept, and walk if demanded anyway.

I'm lucky in that I mostly work in areas where it really has no value add, and so far always get my way, but fuck I wish GDPR banners had some form of standard that didn't wreck internet experience in general.

Was it too hard to require the already opt-in nature of the cookies to no fuck with average user experience? no one in their right mind clicks accept all.

Was it too hard to enforce some default stance one can set?

Was it too hard to not fuck everything up without fixing the issue?

apprently. so now i have to constantly read and interpret information I have zero interest in to consistently hit the exact same button, to access information I _might_ be interested in. all of which is an excercise in dark pattern gymanastics so draining im near ready to swear off the open web entierly.

Going viral doesn’t really matter to them.

A small local news agency prioritizes serving small local news needs. I used to work at a small local newspaper. Spending four or five figures of limited money on IT overhauls means that something else has to be sacrificed. It isn’t that they can’t be bothered, it’s that it costs money and doesn’t serve their community or customers. Being GDPR compliant hinders their ability to do local news since it literally takes resources to accomplish.

Local news is dying, but it is not because of GDPR. That trend started well before then, and is very well understood. The amount of news content is a direct function of advertising revenue not actual news to be reported. Craigslist and google undercut them and that’s really the only relevant part of the story. GDPR noncompliance has nothing to do with the success or failure of a news outlet in middle America.

Do you make sure that your work is fully compliant with all Chinese laws? Why not? They are the world’s largest market, after all. Do you even know if your work is possible to access in China? Or is it the case that compliance with Chinese laws is irrelevant to your business models so it’s easier to just do nothing. Same logic…

"We might, maybe, have some article go viral some day. With unknown revenue implications." is a weak argument for trying to figure out and maintain GDPR compliance, which costs real money right now, today. And you have to be sure to maintain that compliance as the web site evolves.

It's such a low-probability event that I don't blame them for just saying, "Nah. Not gonna hassle with that."

The recognition argument is also quite weak--it's not like recognition pays the bills.