Article 37 1.a and 1.b are extremely vauge. Hiring a DPO becomes necessary once your service "requires regular and systematic monitoring of data subjects on a large scale", or processing personal info specified in article 9 "on a large scale".
However, nowhere does it actually specify what sort of scale constitutes "large". I don't see any user count threshholds or anything like that.
Also, it's possible that someone's list of authored memes is personal data. If somebody creates a lot of political memes then this could easily be covered by article 9, since political affiliation is explicitly covered there.
Additionally just saying "have a checkbox" isn't going to cut it. GDPR forbids blanket opt in or opt out schemes. You would have to build a system to track what the user has consented to and refactor all features to abide by each user's consent configuration.
I'm not saying every these tasks are hugely onerous - just that I can see the use case for blocking EU traffic to avoid having to abide by their regulations.
They only apply if it's your core activity though. If dank memes are your core activity, you're not "processing personal data" on a large scale, regardless of how many memes you store.
Again, only if you assume that these memes aren't covered by article 9. You might be able to infer a lot about someone from their authored or favorites memes. Article 9 doesn't just cover the personal data itself, it covers personal data revealing ethnicity, political opinion, etc. If I look at a user's list of authored memes, and it's full of pro gay rights memes have these memes revealed their political opinion? Many would argue yes, and processing memes is definitely the core activity of our hypothetical site.
However, nowhere does it actually specify what sort of scale constitutes "large". I don't see any user count threshholds or anything like that.
Also, it's possible that someone's list of authored memes is personal data. If somebody creates a lot of political memes then this could easily be covered by article 9, since political affiliation is explicitly covered there.
Additionally just saying "have a checkbox" isn't going to cut it. GDPR forbids blanket opt in or opt out schemes. You would have to build a system to track what the user has consented to and refactor all features to abide by each user's consent configuration.
I'm not saying every these tasks are hugely onerous - just that I can see the use case for blocking EU traffic to avoid having to abide by their regulations.