And I kind of blame the tech community for it.

The tech angle was just an excuse. The real reason was to protect old European money scared by the newcomers.

Maybe partly, but I'm pretty sure it's grassroots. The tech community loves privacy and is willing to accept large amounts of cost and inconvenience for it, to the point of many appearing to view tech as a net negative due to the spying.

The great majority of people do not care about "privacy" and gladly give it away for something as frivolous as Facebook or TikTok.

So it wasn't a democratic process that gave birth to GDPR. Now tech is pretty underrepresented in EU, but old money is not.

The great majority of people in general, myself included, seem to not care about privacy all that much, although they say they do, and at least I personally care about right to encrypt and truthful advertising.

The tech community is different though. And public perception of GDPR is heavily influenced by tech bloggers, hardly anyone else thinks or talks about this stuff.

Could be all about old money, but programmers sure seem to love it.

> programmers sure seem to love it

Unless they have to implement it. It sure is a pain! :)))

>It's causing a lot of dont-talk-to-your-neighbor-because-you-might-break-privacy-laws issues

Well that's explicitly out of scope of the GDPR, so it shouldn't cause those issues.

Article 2(2):

>This Regulation does not apply to the processing of personal data [...] by a natural person in the course of a purely personal or household activity

and even if that wasn't the case, unless you're performing automated processing or using a filing system, it's out of scope due to Article 2(1) as well.

not literally your neighbor, just general privacy fears, and cultural stigmas that every person deserves the right to unending privacy