They must follow the law of countries they make business in.
The conflicts are a well known trouble. Between EU and US for example there is an ongoing dispute between US PATRIOT Act and GDPR, where (simplified) US say they got access to all data and GDPR forbids that. Different treaties which tried to allow some "safe harbor" between the regulations have been invalidated by courts so all operations crossing the atlantic is in a legally questionable state ...
Now for HN the question is if they target EU customers. There is no need for them to actively block Europeans, but the line is unclear. It'd be clear if they were selling swag with prices listed in € or would show europe-specific ads. In case of doubt it's the decision by a court.
Decision by a court then is the other dimension. A European court probably has a hard time to reach anybody for a fine or some other consequences. Companies like Facebook avoided that for a long while, but since they got stronger in their European ad business they are formally reachable by European courts in their subsidiary in Ireland. If a judge is really desperate they might try going via a European subsidiary to a company they invested in and put out arrest warrants against the managers in case they ever touch European ground ... but most judges will probably try to avoid that amount of work involved.
The conflicts are a well known trouble. Between EU and US for example there is an ongoing dispute between US PATRIOT Act and GDPR, where (simplified) US say they got access to all data and GDPR forbids that. Different treaties which tried to allow some "safe harbor" between the regulations have been invalidated by courts so all operations crossing the atlantic is in a legally questionable state ...
Now for HN the question is if they target EU customers. There is no need for them to actively block Europeans, but the line is unclear. It'd be clear if they were selling swag with prices listed in € or would show europe-specific ads. In case of doubt it's the decision by a court.
Decision by a court then is the other dimension. A European court probably has a hard time to reach anybody for a fine or some other consequences. Companies like Facebook avoided that for a long while, but since they got stronger in their European ad business they are formally reachable by European courts in their subsidiary in Ireland. If a judge is really desperate they might try going via a European subsidiary to a company they invested in and put out arrest warrants against the managers in case they ever touch European ground ... but most judges will probably try to avoid that amount of work involved.