Apple hit with $162 million French antitrust fine over privacy tool
Apple hit with $162 million French antitrust fine over privacy tool
www.reuters.com
reuters.com
29 comments
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I call bullshit on this one. France takes issue with Apple implementing App Tracking Transparency because it hurts advertisers? What exactly does France think following the law looks like? Allowing advertisers to track you by default? What Apple has done with ATT isn't all that different from what the EU has required every damn website on the internet to do... ask permission to track.
More damning, in the ruling the court did not outline any specific way the software should change. This honestly just seems like a money grab on the part of France.
What principles is France and the EU after? Because this ruling makes it seem like it has no principles aside from "find any reason to issue a fine because the defendant is a big American company."
I tend to agree with tightening regulations on tech, but there should at least be clear rules that can be followed, not arbitrary rules defined after the fact, if they're defined at all.
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Its not the EUs fault that US companies keep breaking the law. Don't break the law, don't get fined. It really is simple. EU companies aren't getting these fines.
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To be clear: you agree with France that advertisers should have free reign to track you because some app developers are small businesses?
If you didn't read the article and are just being a little jingo right now, that's what you're defending. A fine that says you can't protect users privacy if it interferes with small businesses, but also we have no specific requests for how you should change the tool.
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What law was broken? The court didn't seem able to even articulate it. You can't either.
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Not even a slap on the wrist
Apple made $33B in revenue in Europe for the last quarter of 2024. That is about $2B a week or $360M a day.
The fine of $160M by the French gov is not even half a day of European revenue.
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That's roughly the equivalent of a $100 fine for someone who makes 75k
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They went so far as to say that they regret it but the decision didn’t impose any change of behavior. That’s as much of a shrug as you can officially get.
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And it was the advertisers who complained and won this case. This might still be a win for data privacy, if Apple leaves control over ads in the users' hands.
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You want to brag about civil rights? Here in America some guy filibustered for a long time. Well it wasn't a filibuster, more of a really long speech. But he really showed the fascists he could talk for a really long time. Take that France.
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That’s just one of the dumbest reasons to sue Apple…
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It added that the privacy tool "particularly penalized smaller publishers," as they depend to a large extent on the collection of third-party data to fund their businesses.
If your business depends on collecting the private data of users to sell to other companies, then you don’t deserve to exist as a business. I don’t care if these are the “little guys”, the entire ad business is a parasitical industry.
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I find it pathetic. If politicians wanted to stop these violation they could. If I have a restaurant in town and the antitrust penalties is, by law, a maximum of 10% of my profits... considering a court ruling takes some 5-7 years that is an actual some 2% fine. What incentive is that from me to get rid of all my competition in town!? I would not stop my illegal practices even if fines where 10 times that!!
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What about shutting down their bussiness if they fail to comply.
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29 comments