European GDPR Compliance for Video Aggregation Sites

Introduction If you serve users in Europe — and if your platform explicitly targets European regions like ViralVidVault does with Poland, Netherlands, Sweden, Norway, and Austria — GDPR compliance isn't optional. Here's a practical, developer-focused guide to making a video aggregation site GDPR-compliant. What Data Do You Actually Collect? Before panicking about GDPR, audit what you actually collect. For a video aggregation site like viralvidvault.com , the typical data points are: Data Source Personal? IP addresses Server logs Yes (GDPR) YouTube video metadata YouTube API No Search queries User input Maybe Analytics (page views) Cloudflare/GA Yes (cookies) User preferences Cookies Maybe The Cookie Consent Banner European law requires informed consent before setting non-essential cookies: <?php class CookieConsent { private const CONSENT_COOKIE = 'vvv_consent' ; private const CONSENT_TTL = 365 * 86400 ; // 1 year public function hasConsent (): bool { return isset ( $_COOKIE [ self ::