As an American, do I need to be worried about GDPR? I've only recently been made aware of it, and am a bit lost on what steps I should take (if any). What are your thoughts?
This seemed like a pretty good article on it, highlighting what would make it apply to your site: https://www.gtlaw.com/en/insights/2018/2/the-gdpr-deadline-looms-is-your-us-website-ready Targeted ads from google, etc, would make the law apply to you. One option I was considering for my site is geo blocking EU. It's a small enough % of my traffic. Looking for a good solution for that.
If you deal with customer data in the EU then yes you will need to comply. I'm a UK citizen and work for a UK bank as a Digital Manager, GDPR is an absolute minefield and a huge challenge for any business. It covers literally everything and will wipe out some old school practices. In its most simplistic understanding - GDPR aims to put the control of data back into the hands of the customer. The fines that can be handed out are also huge. If you do operate in an EU market, make sure you get the Privacy Statement (policy) up to scratch. Following that, you need permission and full opt in by communication channel.
I develop casting platform in EU and I'm currently dealing with GDPR, it is absolute mess. Requires much attention and also there are many unclear things so far, as example the marketing emails and the services such as mailchimp and so on... This is a good reference you can check. https://www.eugdpr.org/gdpr-faqs.html
If such a solution is released, then it's really a boon to bloggers and marketers.Already I don't have optin forms on my blog, so i don't collect their data. So is my blog safe from GDPR rules?
blueink02 ....no, because your blog will be using cookies (yes?) ....in which case you definitely DO need to address that. We need to tell people what cookies we use, etc. and if they are for the website to work, for analytics, marketing, etc. . Yes, as stated in comments above, it is a bit of a nightmare!