Comments by "Mikko Rantalainen" (@MikkoRantalainen) on "I got rejected 😢" video.

@Bri-bn5kt The problem with blocking EU visitors is that you cannot geoblock but you have to ask each visitor if they are an EU citizen (maybe just living in the USA!) and if they are an EU citizen and you don't want to follow GPDR, you have boot them from your your server. The GDPR legislation affects you if an EU citizen uses your service no matter where on Earth that said citizen is using your service. Most business think it's better strategy to be compliant with GDPR – it doesn't ask for a lot, honestly. Basically you cannot collect any personally identifiable information without a proper legal reason. Collecting personally identifiable information to increase your analytics and marketing is not a legal reason. It would be easier for you to behave that way but that's not a strict requirement. And GDPR is about if that's not strictly required, you shall not collect personally identifiable information. It's okay to collect truly anonymous statistics but it's not okay to start building user profiles unless they have created an user account and given the consent for collecting data. And the user account is a practical requirement, not a specific requirement because all users must be given option to withdraw their consent on any given moment and to do that you must have some kind of user accounts so that you know which user account has withdrawn their consent. The user account may or may not have user visible login and password. The UK legislation about blindly banning cookies is another story. The EU GDPR doesn't prevent using cookies. You can use cookies just fine if they are needed for e.g. keeping track of user sessions (e.g. to avoid CSRF attack) or user set preferences (e.g. content language). However, the very same cookies (literally the same data on the cookie and the same cookie name) is illegal if you track users to extract information about what they seem to like most.
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@Bri-bn5kt As an EU citizen I agree that we should allow adults to do stupid things if they wish to do. However, the problem with internet is that you (as a site owner) cannot know if the visitor is a minor in reality. And starting to blindly collect a profile and trying to push ads according to that profile when the visitor is actually a minor would be a totally different thing. And I do think that the society and government should not allow minor/children to do any stupid things they can think of. Plus it seems that having to disclose your identity to provide a proof that you're an adult to have full internet experience would have been even worse idea. So GDPR is the least bad option currently available.
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