Today The General Data Protection Regulation or GDPR goes into effect, a new set of rules intended to give European Union residents more control over their personal data. Companies face enormous fines if they’re not in compliance with the data protection rules that have been laid out, which include providing more information to consumers on how data is being collected on them, and forcing companies to delete old data that’s no longer being used. The consequences are considerable enough that the American media company Tronc decided to block all European readers from its sites rather than risk the ramifications of its apparent noncompliance. Internet users who visit sites like the L.A. Times receive a notification like the one below, explaining:

Attempting to reach a site like the Arizona Daily Sun from Europe gives you this notice:

The reaction to the blocks in Europe has been mixed, with some people blaming the European Union for enacting a law that they see as too burdensome on companies, while others wondered what these newspapers were doing with everyone’s data that would put them in violation of the GDPR in the first place. The threat of fines of up to €20m (or 4pc of a company’s global turnover, whichever is higher) means many firms will need to rethink large elements of their business model in order to continue to do business with the bloc.
GDPR rules come into effect in the European Union. Several U.S. news sites are subsequently taken offline in the United Kingdom and Europe, including the Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune and Lee Enterprises newspapers.