While the European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) has received significant attention in the information systems literature, concerns that it would adversely affect websites’ ability to provide quality content to their visitors have not been thoroughly investigated. We construct a longitudinal dataset of news and media websites to study how online content providers adapted their responses to the GDPR over time, and whether restrictions on online tracking enforced by the regulation affected downstream outcomes such as the quantity of content those websites offer to their visitors and visitors’ engagement with such content. We find robust evidence of websites’ reactions to the GDPR in both the US and the EU, including an initial reduction in the number of 3rd party cookies and intensity of visitor tracking. However, reactions differ between US and EU websites and evolve over time among EU websites. We perform several analyses and use different outcome variables to assess the downstream effects of the regulation. We find a reduction in average page views per user on EU websites relative to US websites, but no statistically significant impact of the regulation on EU websites’ provision of new content, social media engagement with new content, ranking in both the short-term and the long-term, or other text analytics. We also find no evidence of differences in survival rates across EU and US content providers, and no evidence that monetization strategies change at a higher rate for EU websites relative to US websites. Although industry predictions forebode dire consequences arising from the GDPR for content providers, the results suggest that EU websites did implement changes in response to GDPR but were able to use data minimization and consent mechanism strategies that allowed them to continue to produce content and engage audiences.
See below for working paper, and video of presentation at the FTC PrivacyCon’22.