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TikTok fined €345M for breaking EU data law on children’s accounts

theguardian.com

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Re: TikTok fined €345M for breaking EU data law on children’s accounts

#81

That's quite a fine for a single-country ruling, it's like 2.6% of a year of revenue — or 10 days.

[flagged]

> Why can we not put the burden on the parents?

You'd like the EU to regulate... parenting?

Re: TikTok fined €345M for breaking EU data law on children’s accounts

#82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"quite" high? Are you serious. These fines are unbelievable.

That's the point, and it's the maximum. 4% is there as the nuclear option for repeat offenders.

[flagged]

Re: TikTok fined €345M for breaking EU data law on children’s accounts

#83

This is a good start, but I'm going to be very curious to see if EU data law ever starts getting enforced against european companies at scale, as opposed to international companies.

Is there any reason to do that? European companies are more likely to follow the laws already, and taking less liberty in bending or even ignoring them. Mostly because the people working there have a better understanding and focus of them.

On the other side, European companies are usually smaller, so their get lower fines, which won't make the headlines. Which is, why you might not hear so often about the fines against European companies, which still happen. And if we are honest, we usually only hear about the super-penalties anyway.

Re: TikTok fined €345M for breaking EU data law on children’s accounts

#84
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

€345M is a pretty huge amount of money

Especially when you consider that it was stopped 3 years ago.

Consider that GDPR has been in effect since 2016, with a grace period until 2018 before the EU started to hand out fines.

It's been 7 years that every company operating in the EU knows about these rules, 3 years ago it was already 4 years into effect. There's no excuse, they broke the law, pay the fine.

Re: TikTok fined €345M for breaking EU data law on children’s accounts

#86
post #44
post #12

i'm starting to feel like the EU found a business model to compensate for the fiscal tricks large companies are doing to avoid paying taxes. My only hope is that those laws won't prevent a new major high tech company to appear in the EU.

If respecting privacy prevents tech companies from forming, then we should all be celebrating when those tech companies fail to form.

this is a naive take. companies will still be formed. they will just http 451 all EU users. like threads does right now. this will also mean losing out, but i guess europeans are used to losing out, and actually prefer it?

Re: TikTok fined €345M for breaking EU data law on children’s accounts

#87

This is a good start, but I'm going to be very curious to see if EU data law ever starts getting enforced against european companies at scale, as opposed to international companies.

It does get enforced against European companies, they just don't make HN headlines because they're not big-tech so nobody here would have heard of them. Also EU companies tend to be more mindful and take data protection very seriously, even before GDPR was a thing, so finding gross offenders is a rare occurrence anyway.

Which ones?

Re: TikTok fined €345M for breaking EU data law on children’s accounts

#88

This is a good start, but I'm going to be very curious to see if EU data law ever starts getting enforced against european companies at scale, as opposed to international companies.

It does get enforced against European companies, they just don't make HN headlines because they're not big-tech so nobody here would have heard of them. Also EU companies tend to be more mindful and take data protection very seriously, even before GDPR was a thing, so finding gross offenders is a rare occurrence anyway.

Isn’t SAP absolutely massive? Surely they count as big tech.

Edit: for anyone wondering SAP has ~110,000 employees worldwide, Google has ~180,000, so comparably mega scale tech company.

Re: TikTok fined €345M for breaking EU data law on children’s accounts

#89

Is EU the only significant power on this planet that isn't ... for a lack of better word, evil?

We have our own issues, including voter apathy, political corruption, unsustainable economic policies, extreme inefficiency and the occasional batshit crazy tech laws being pushed by politicians who probably never touched a device with more than two transistors. But I still love it here.

Re: TikTok fined €345M for breaking EU data law on children’s accounts

#90
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> we made changes to well before the investigation even began Tiktok was not compliant before 2021. Being compliant in 2022 doesn't magically end an investigation or sentence.

[flagged]

Look, those apps can work without collecting any PII whatsoever. But if they make collecting PII part of their main revenue, then they should take the laws in their respective markets (countries) serious.

Since TikTok implemented the required changes and also (apparently) did not complain about the policies themselves (e.g. being to complicated/ambiguous to implement) it really looks like it is solely on them. They violated the law so they are to be punished accordingly.

It's like doing tax fraud in a year and then complaining that you were compliant in the following years. Penalties for this can be way beyond 2.6% of someones personal revenue. What would you say if someone complains here? Would you agree with them?

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