I like the concept of GDPR, but I feel implementing it properly is overly complex especially for small site owners. The wording below comment forms, contact forms, etc about the user “consenting” to share their “data” is scary and off-putting. The way to implement proper GDPR in a WordPress site requires either good technical skills, or ponying up money to a third party service. “Free” plugins are available but they are severely crippled and basic features require the premium version (no, I don’t want my users outside EU to see the cookie notice or users outside California to see the ridiculous “don’t sell my info” footer). All these “solutions” also make my site noticeably slower, and not a single soul on this planet likes cookie notices anyway. Stuff like analytics, adsense, social media widgets are now bad, but there’s no accessible or equivalent privacy friendly alternatives to them. If there’s any such service, likely costs an arm.
All these new privacy friendly policies across the globe have turned into a dick measuring contest. They don’t actually do anything to the big offenders, or we would be seeing revenues of Google and Facebook stalling/going down. The EU is steeped in hypocrisy – it won’t ban Google or Facebook or fully close tax haven loopholes, while also fining them billions every few years. What a nice little revenue stream in the name of privacy. It will even fine small sites for using Google Fonts/Analytics/AdSense. WTF. Pretty sure other countries/unions will start doing this as well if they haven’t already.
The EU, California, Brazil, and whoever should just recommend their users to install uBlock Origin or another ad blocker and get on with their lives. Or use Firefox/Brave with tracking protection enabled. If they believe online privacy is this important for their citizens, they should be recommending them to use these simple solutions. As a bonus their citizens would enjoy a much better web experience without ads and trackers. I as a site owner would lose income, but at least I wouldn’t have this constant headache of “compliance”.
We can only hope that it will evolve into something else. The Cambridge Analytica scandal was just in 2018.
The only thing politicians came up with is a crappy banner/notice.
> The EU, California, Brazil, and whoever should just recommend their users to install uBlock Origin or another ad blocker and get on with their lives. Or use Firefox/Brave with tracking protection enabled. If they believe online privacy is this important for their citizens, they should be recommending them to use these simple solutions.
LOL. No. You as a website owner are responsible to not invade my privacy. If you are uncapable of doing so, you should not own a website.
> I as a site owner would lose income, but at least I wouldn’t have this constant headache of “compliance”.
It’s really not that hard. I maintain ~40 websites. None of them ever had any trouble.
There are plenty of GDPR generators that generate the imprint and the privacy policy. And you only need to know some basic things.
1. under every form, add a mandatory “I accept the privacy policy[link]” checkbox
2. if you use non-functional cookies, add a cooke-banner (with a “reject all” button), and set tracking and all only after the banner is accepted
3. Have imprint and privacy policy links in the footer (need to be 2 separate pages, and must be accessible within one click from every page
4. Embed youtube, maps, tweets etc with privacy option set.
5. Use local google fonts (new German regulation)
Don’t track me, if I don’t consent. Easy as that. Trackers and SM-embeds are a plague. I’m so glad GDPR makes it harder to use them.