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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

#121

Post by adamauckland »

personomas wrote: post #97
itishappy wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why can we not put the burden on the parents? You'd like the EU to regulate... parenting?

I would like the EU to focus on making laws that actually help us and move us forward. The EU can by the way introduce all sorts of ways to encourage parents to not buy their kids smartphones if they're too young to go on TikTok!

Why should the parent's deny the child a smartphone because Tik Tok has terrible data use policies?

You can also use Tik Tok on a laptop, but schoolwork is all online, what's the plan there?

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

#122

Post by pferde »

personomas wrote: post #74
mschild wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GDPR doesn't go far enough and I think courts need to hand out significantly more fines. Yes, that fine is a lot. It's supposed to be high. That's the only way that fines work. If it doesn't hurt a company's bottom line, they don't learn.

[flagged]

You're trying to peddle a common logical fallacy, reductio ad absurdum. And you've been called out on it.

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

#123

Post by malermeister »

personomas wrote: post #118
valenterry wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 v…

It's a social media platform, of course they need PII. We need to relax all laws. Our laws are unbelievable cruel. Business are expected to follow so so so many bureaucratic laws. To fine them 2.6% every time they break one is insane. Imagine how many countries there are out there, how many business laws there are, how much they have to comply with. A lot of these companies already operate on extremely thin margins.…

A business doesn't have an inherent right to exist. If the only way it can exist is to break the law, then maybe it deserves to be destroyed?

Why should we put up with an abusive business model so some randos can make money?

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

#124

Post by rsynnott »

kmlx wrote: post #75
jdietrich wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These are serious, proportionate fines that meaningfully affect the bottom line. These companies are demonstrably making big changes in order to comply. They have been testing out the boundaries and seeing how close to the wind they can sail, but I think that's coming to an end now that they're seeing the impact of the new approach to enforcement. The clearest sign for me was Meta's decision to delay the launch of Th…

> Of course that creates the possibility of a two-tier internet where EU customers simply don't get access to products this has already happened. google’s bard took it’s time to launch in europe. the young kid in me that always thought we finally have a piece of tech that is beyond what politicians can control, that transcend borders and nationalities is saddened. but it is what it is, and without some breakthroughs…

Oh, huh, I actually didn't realise Bard _had_ launched here.

> without some breakthroughs (a system that cannot be controlled, censored etc by design)

This isn't really a technical issue; some small criminal entity could run an AI bot on Tor (or even, realistically, on the open internet) which forwarded all your personal data directly to the North Korean government and the Mafia or whatever, and realistically they'd get away with that. But if there's a large company behind the service, then that company is going to have to _obey the law_, and no amount of technology will change that.

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

#125

Post by _puk »

personomas wrote: post #87
FirmwareBurner wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

https://www.enforcementtracker.com/

Ironically, currently 2023 entries.

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

#126

Post by esarbe »

kmlx wrote: post #86
kibwen wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Sure I'd prefer that. I don't need those companies.

I wouldn't phrase it as "losing out" though. I would put it as "not being in the crosshairs of endless streams of manipulative content whose only purpose it to induce a demand for low-quality consumerism products whose entire existence is a burden for our planet."

Those with FOMO can still use VPNs and pretend to be US citizens.

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

#127

Post by rsynnott »

personomas wrote: post #56
joe__f wrote: 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.

It's pretty normal for these things to take a while; most fines (and for that matter most prosecutions) would related to historic offences, not ongoing ones.

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

#129

Post by rsynnott »

personomas wrote: post #57
riffraff wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GDPR already has a provision for this (it accounts for repeated violations and collaboration), and a ceiling of 4% of global revenue is quite high.

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

And yet apparently not enough of a deterrent, because it keeps happening.

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

#130

Post by [deleted] »

mchanson wrote: post #10

This is pretty interesting time with the social media / data companies. Will this be the new normal? Where, like clock work, another fine gets announced? Or will we transition through this period into one where they know how to, and also do, comply and the regulations don't change a ton?

[deleted]
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