I was about to bash them for mocking an important document, but they might be right. I would love to see efforts on simplifying the law, "refactoring it" with the ultimate rule that it's something that everyone should be able to read and understand, measured by some "literacy score" as a core human competence. It's only fair given that everyone is expected to know it.

The problem is that the article doesn't explain why this law got long, reasons for its complexities... and this is why I believe it's poor writing. They're calling out GDPR specifically while there's a lot of similarly important documents that are not shorter. Think of taxes for example - VAT in EU is a nightmare that makes GDPR look tiny. And it affects everyone - ultimately you need to hire an accountant to run a company. It's not fair not to underline that.

It seems especially unfair given that it's my understanding that the EU went to great lengths to make this one particularly readable and free of "legalese".

Yes, and I've got to say that they've done a pretty good job. Compared to most other similar texts, it's remarkably easy to read, and it's not even that long either.

The GDPR is already incredibly readable for something that is used in the legal system. I'd say that if you're not capable of following it, no amount of rewriting is going to make it accessible to you while still containing the required words to keep the original meaning.

Why would you “bash” someone for that?

This is a PR article disguised as an anti-GDPR article.

An no, the EU will never get it right and create a short & simple law as long as they have to contend with massive corporate lobbying against the said law and bad corporate actors which try to work around it.

It isn't anti-GDPR at all. "but we also that hope that in the process it will bring still greater awareness to the important topic of data privacy."