US news sites block EU readers due to GDPR

This article is terrible, and clearly chooses sides with advertisers and data harvesters over users – not surprising, coming from Bloomberg.

For some of America’s biggest newspapers and online services, it’s easier to block half a billion people from accessing your product than comply with Europe’s new General Data Protection Regulation.

The Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune, and The New York Daily News are just some telling visitors that, “Unfortunately, our website is currently unavailable in most European countries.”

With about 500 million people living in the European Union, that’s a hard ban on one-and-a-half times the population of the U.S.

Blanket blocking EU internet connections – which will include any U.S. citizens visiting Europe – isn’t limited to newspapers. Popular read-it-later service Instapaper says on its website that it’s “temporarily unavailable for residents in Europe as we continue to make changes in light of the General Data Protection Regulation.”

Whenever a site blocks EU users, you can safely assume they got caught with their hands in the user data cookie jar. Some of these sites have dozens and dozens of trackers from dozens of different advertisement companies, so the real issue here is even these sites themselves simply have no clue to whom they’re shipping off your data – hence making it impossible to comply with the GDPR in the first place.

The GDPR is not only already forcing companies to give insight into the data they collect on you – it’s also highlighting those that simply don’t care about your privacy. It’s amazing how well GDPR is working, and it’s only been in effect for one day.

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