There I was, enjoying the entirely justifiable mockery being handed out to sites in the GDPR Hall of Shame, when I came across the entry on Instapaper:
TL;DR: Instapaper is shutting down 'temporarily' in Europe with less than 24 hours notice.
In the middle of the European night, Instapaper announced that it would shut down and block EU customers "temporarily" until their GDPR compliance is sorted out, whatever that means.
I have so many questions that they refuse (or are unable) to answer, presumably because they are required to stay quiet by lawyer-type folks. [...]
Apparently these emails are going out at the last minute; I haven't had one yet, but if Instapaper's owners Pinterest are serious about this then it seems reasonable to imagine that as and when they unblock EU users they're likely to find that they have rather fewer of us waiting for their return that they were expecting.
Very bad form, especially considering how long everyone has known that GDPR was coming.
Altogether now: "It wouldn't have gone like this in Marco's day!"
In due course it'll presumably become clear to what extent this is down to incompetence[note]Be that in doing what needs doing to get GDPR-compliant, or in choosing to take legal advice from clowns who don't quite understand what GDPR demands.[/note] rather than, say, evil[note]Perhaps it'll turn out that Instapaper have been selling details of our data usage to any willing customer without ever mentioning that little detail to their customer base.[/note] like some of the other entries in the Hall of Shame.
[Via Pixel Envy]