Privacy Is a Good Thing, But the Unintended Consequences of GDPR Could Be Ruinous

New privacy laws like GDPR and the California Consumer Rights Privacy Act have good intentions, but in practice, they dramatically limit user choice and consolidate more power into the hands of tech giants. The consequence of these regulatory actions could create a broad cross-section of losers that run the gamut from brand marketers to consumers, to startups.

With any legislation, the devil is in the details, but broadly speaking GDPR does three things. First, the law dramatically restricts access and the use of first-party data in a way that preemptively blinds an advertiser to consumer preferences. It also establishes strict guidelines for securing a user’s consent before advertisers are allowed to target anyone. The proposed California legislation does something very similar but also gives consumers the right to sue without standing (meaning they don’t actually have to be harmed in order to sue for damages). As you might imagine, GDPR and whatever California’s voters do in November is already creating a compliance nightmare and a field day for lobbyists.

Read the full article, written by Semcasting's CEO, Ray Kingman, on MarTech Advisor.