We've had thousands of companies for years and years using every trick in the book to get people on their mailing lists and collect data about them, but now that users have the right to do something about it, that makes them the assholes?

Why? It's their data and their right to have it deleted.

Isn't that the point of GDPR?

Honestly, laws like this give rise to the phrase "the road to hell is paved with good intentions."

I am not anti-gdpr. I am quite concerned about the side effects on the small guys. Its obvious that this law was targeted at larger companies. But its also obvious that it massively increases risk profiles for innocuous behavior.

This is a problem. And hey, as a person in the US, I have no representation to help address my concerns over the validity/applicability of the law.

I am not a fan of that.

Then again, I also don't like it when we do this to others. FATCA is an example of this, where US citizens seeking banking services were denied services due to the implied risk to the bank from non-compliance. They generally don't have much recourse either.

Extra territorial impacts are the result of bad laws. I like that GDPR gives control back to the users. I dislike that it opens up such a massive legal attack surface as to make things like running a forum dangerous.

You think GDPR is great but you are angry at an EU citizen using the law as intended?

Why are you against fighting spam?

So everyone can spam us without repercussions? Fuck them all. If GDPR makes their life miserable then it achieved its goal.