I think GDPR is more good than bad, but the author's example of surveillance capitalism is easily repeated on most EU news sites. Visit bild.de and watch the network inspector light up like a christmas tree. Do you really feel your privacy is being respected?

The 996 partners banner is just the piss take that supposedly makes this legal.

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bko a day ago | parent | next [-]

So why is it good if it does nothing?

This is where you should apply eng principles. If something adds complexity without solving a problem, start by removing the complexity rather than tweaking

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veeti a day ago | parent [-]

It did nothing for ad tech crap yet, but it gives you many easily exercised rights to access and erase your data. An American company "OpenAI" has released a very useful human-EU bureaucrat-translation tool for drafting such requests.

	▲	Timon3 a day ago \| parent [-]
		I'd argue that it actually did one good thing regarding ad tech: I've seen many people - who generally aren't interested in privacy, or politics in general - being very surprised by the number of companies their data is being sold to. For someone who isn't aware of the scale, seeing "we sell your data to >1000 companies" can be enough to build interest in advocating for privacy laws.

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dgellow a day ago | parent | prev [-]

Bild doesn’t have one bit of respect for their readers, it’s no too surprising.

What people are missing is that before GDPR the threat of sharing data with 3rd party wasn’t seen as serious by most of the population. GDPR establishes clear rights people have, and a framework for companies to work in this new space, which changed the assumptions people have regarding their own data and privacy, in a positive way. People now in the EU have an explicit concept of consent for the use of personal data. That’s a really big deal

	▲	veeti 20 hours ago \| parent [-]
		There is nothing specific to Bild about it, these practices are codified by pretty much the entire media industry through IAB TCF.