GDPR is making the Internet insane

I'm an active contributor to WordPress Polyglots, where I translate as many WP core and add-ons in the official site as I can.

The recent update was pretty crazy, no thanks to a few annoyingly ignorant Internet users who do not understand how Facebook and the Internet works and don't read disclaimers and agreements before clicking "I Agree" and allowing cookies to be stored in their computers.

Yes, I am annoyed at those select few users.

Starting with WordPress 4.9.6, WordPress is GDPR-compliant. What does this mean? For me, not only does it mean that I should be careful with any legal jargon that I need to translate, but this also means that, as a WordPress plugin developer, I'll need to ensure I have the proper privacy settings and statements in place; this allows website owners who use my plugins to modify their privacy policies if any of my plugins collect personal data of their website visitors.

Fortunately, none of my plugins do.

There are concerns from other WordPress users and developers about how the built-in GDPR compliance and privacy policy function will create more confusion than it suppose to. While this concern is warranted, it's also high-time for website owners to fully comprehend the extent to which they use their visitors' data and analytics. Many WordPress website owners are more business-focused, and are not fully aware of just how far the bells and whistles in their website go in terms of processing usage patterns. Most just go with whatever's trending in the online marketing world, and would rather focus on the ROI of their website instead of implications of collecting such data to measure their ROI.

For web developers specifically, it's difficult enough that we have to own a broad spectrum of skillsets -- SEO, coding, database management, UI/UX, server management and security, marketing, content development and whatnot; now we have to add in some legal knowledge specifically on personal data and privacy concerns. The poor fella who developed one of the most used WP contact forms even admitted it's difficult for him to tell what kind of privacy concerns his plugin would address.

GDPR is something I'll have to consider for my future Steemit project; as long as I use some form of oAuth functionality, the data that's shared between the oAuth token authority and my app is already a privacy concern in itself.

LIKE WHAT YOU READ? Then check out my previous post: https://steemit.com/blogging/@webgrrrl/mulling-over-my-blog-decentralising-strategies