Tech bros are just the loudest, most financially successful branch of US geeks. Most of the geeks I know think GDPR is largely a good thing.
The biggest issue is that when launched, GDPR was taken up by a bunch of consulting companies who told you x, y, and z changes were necessary. Maybe half their advice was correct, but they made a whole lot of money telling you about it.
Repeat this story for SOX and PCI compliance. Both good things (although PCI compliance could mostly go away with some architectural changes to US payment processing), but some very undeserving contractors made bank off them.