INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
news websites has gone dark for readers in Europe as the EU new privacy laws went into effect on Friday
The ruleset, known as General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), outlines a robust set of requirements that internet companies collecting
any personal data on consumers must follow
The consequences are considerable enough that the American media company Tronc decided to block all European readers from its sites rather
than risk the ramifications of its apparent noncompliance.
Tronc -owned sites affected by the EU blackout include the Los Angeles Times, The
Chicago Tribune, The New York Daily News, The Orlando Sentinel and The Baltimore Sun
Some newspapers owned by Lee Enterprises also blocked European readers, including The St
Louis Post Dispatch and The Arizona Daily Star.
It looks like all Tronc newspapers like the LA Times and Chicago Tribune are GDPR
non-compliant, so all traffic from Europe is hitting this wall pic.twitter.com/vTuy902DZv
— Jon Passantino (@passantino) May 25,
2018
While Tronc deemed its European readership disposable, at least in the short-term, most major national U.S
outlets took a different approach, serving a cleaned-up version of their website or asking users for opt-in consent to use their data
NPR even pointed delighted users toward a plaintext version of their site.
The GDPR-compliant version of the USA Today website is so much
better than the normal version it's unreal
Ad free, no autoplaying video, crisp clean design
pic.twitter.com/Cs4vRjgfJC
— alex hern (@alexhern) May 25, 2018
While many of the regional papers that blinked offline for EU users
markets, some are prominent enough to attract an international readership, prompting European users left out in the cold to openly criticize
the approach.
Those criticisms are well-deserved
The privacy regulations that GDPR sets in place were first adopted in April 2016,meaning thatcompanies had two years to form a compliance
plan before the regulations actually went live today.
WTF is GDPR
