GDPR is not a money making exercise.

My company has a wiki page called "Risks and Opportunities". GDPR is definitively under Opp. these days - for us and our customers. I also quite like it as a person - a private individual.

Let's first be totally clear: GAFA isn't suspending their EU operations, nor is any other company that 1) has already an established EU base and 2) can afford the cost of compliance. What I think will happen is that new players will stay out of the EU, because of the perceived risk (accurate or not) and the cost of compliance. So I do agree with the parent that the GDPR will eventually lead to a slow pauperization of the internet in the EU, the only difference with China being that it is self-inflicted rather than self-imposed.

Note that there are very few regulations out there (EU or US) that have actually helped the internet. Most of the regulation that was drafted in good faith turned out to bring more harm than good to the internet, the recent FOSTA bill being a prime example. At this time, I have no indication to believe that the GDPR will succeed where most other bills have failed. But if it turns out otherwise, I'll be the first to admit that I was wrong.

The most interesting thing to me about this whole ordeal is which companies only comply in Europe, where they're legally required, and those who have gone ahead and made sure they are compliant globally: It defines the difference between people ensuring your privacy rights because they have to, where they have to, and those ensuring your privacy rights globally because it's the right thing to do.

Google's AMP project just introduced a whole set of new features not just to mark whether or not an EU user has consented to tracking, but also a new feature to geolocate users, specifically for the purpose of determining if they're legally required to get that consent. Which is sad to me; they should be getting user consent everywhere.