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Apple and Meta fined millions for breaching EU law
61–70 of 635 posts
Re: Apple and Meta fined millions for breaching EU law
#62Earlier quoted context omitted.
Except the smartphone market isn't a monopoly. 20 years ago Europe had a thriving phone industry. Now it's just gone, and they want to blame everyone else for this, and fail to reflect on why it happened.
Except this has nothing to do with some monopoly on the smartphone market, but with Apple not allowing application developers to enable their users to vote with their wallets on payment methods. From the press release: > Under the DMA, app developers distributing their apps via Apple's App Store should be able to inform customers, free of charge, of alternative offers outside the App Store, steer them to those offers…
This is like arguing McDonalds has a monopoly over food sold in McDonalds outlets, when you have a choice to not go into McDonalds.
Re: Apple and Meta fined millions for breaching EU law
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
Most Canadian small businesses rely on Meta to get customers. If you think these companies don't add value, you are totally oblivious to the millions of small businesses that rely on these platforms to reach customers and niche audiences around the world.
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I've worked at most FAANG companies, including Google, Apple, and Meta in the past (not currently).
In my experience working at these companies and diving into the reported incidents/issues (e.g. Batterygate, Myanmar, Cambridge Analytica), I have found that comments like yours present an overly reductive worldview. You are likely entirely informed by ragebait news articles that grossly misrepresent the issues as opposed to a nuanced understanding of (1) the widely reported incidents, and (2) the services these companies provide and those that rely on them to make a living.
No, it would not be replaced "in an instant" with other options, and any other options would quickly evolve into the same state as FB/IG today unless you make targeted ads illegal (which - again - would collapse millions of small businesses and centralize power for wealthy large businesses).
Re: Apple and Meta fined millions for breaching EU law
#64The EU Comission press release: https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_25_...
It’s funny to see a “share this page on Facebook” option at the bottom of the press release.
At least they seem to have their own system in place for displaying those share buttons, as there are no requests to 3rd party domains on page load, everything loads from *europa.eu. Could have been worse :)
Re: Apple and Meta fined millions for breaching EU law
#65[flagged]
I'll be generous and assume you're being disingenuous by accident: This isn't about the ads, it's about the tracking. Meta is free to put ads wherever it wants, but it's not free to track people who don't want to be tracked. In the end, a population has the right to govern itself how it wants. There's absolutely NOTHING wrong with that - Meta is free to simply not operate in the EU.
Why shouldn't you allowed to track people across your own services if users consent? If they don't consent, they are free to simply not use your services. Problem solved.
There is no actual need for this law. No rights are being infringed on. Just don't use the website.
Re: Apple and Meta fined millions for breaching EU law
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
Except this has nothing to do with some monopoly on the smartphone market, but with Apple not allowing application developers to enable their users to vote with their wallets on payment methods. From the press release: > Under the DMA, app developers distributing their apps via Apple's App Store should be able to inform customers, free of charge, of alternative offers outside the App Store, steer them to those offers…
This is like arguing McDonalds has a monopoly over food sold in McDonalds outlets, when you have a choice to not go into McDonalds.
Except that there are hundreds of other food options while there are only two realistic options for smartphones, neither of which is cooking at home. The tight control has benefits - Apple’s App Store is much safer than letting your parents install stuff they find on the internet - but there’s a real downside which needs regulation to balance.
Re: Apple and Meta fined millions for breaching EU law
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
What if your app needs to send notifications and/or use bluetooth, for instance ?
From what I hear, most users disable notifications. You can do like Airbnb and send text messages. You can do Bluetooth in JavaScript through the Web Bluetooth API.
> From what I hear, most users disable notifications.
Where’d you hear that? Surely most users don’t change defaults.
Re: Apple and Meta fined millions for breaching EU law
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
The measures apply by size, not by country of origin. It happens that the companies over the threshold are American. So their statement is basically untrue, but that's politics these days.
Spotify conveniently falls outside of the scope of this law when any artist would tell you it should absolutely be covered. The DMA is gerrymandered to exclude domestic businesses. Whenever the EU faces budget shortfalls, they know they can just make up some bullshit law and fine US tech. > EU are basically enforcing market capitalism by disallowing monopolistic practices. Users are free to just not buy iOS devices.…
I'm curious, what is your preferred financial regime? EU are basically enforcing market capitalism by disallowing monopolistic practices. Do you find that wrong in general?
Perhaps you prefer an industro-fascist regime where businesses are not bound by any tailored laws? Pretty sure there would already be alternative iOS app stores under such a regime - government controls (IPR system, computer security laws) seem necessary to enable these sorts of tech monopolies.
Re: Apple and Meta fined millions for breaching EU law
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'll be generous and assume you're being disingenuous by accident: This isn't about the ads, it's about the tracking. Meta is free to put ads wherever it wants, but it's not free to track people who don't want to be tracked. In the end, a population has the right to govern itself how it wants. There's absolutely NOTHING wrong with that - Meta is free to simply not operate in the EU.
Why shouldn't you allowed to track people across your own services if users consent? If they don't consent, they are free to simply not use your services. Problem solved. There is no actual need for this law. No rights are being infringed on. Just don't use the website.
Because that's how we like it, and that's the end of it. The people of the EU have said that these are the rules for doing business there, and saying "I should be able to murder people in my own house, if you don't want to be murdered, just don't come here, there's no need for anti-murdering laws" is rather irrelevant.
Re: Apple and Meta fined millions for breaching EU law
#70Would looove to distribute an app without it having to be in the App Store, and not paying the App Store fee (direct download of signed binary). Happy to pay a yearly fee or fee per update to cover code review if it’s crucial. But 30% of revenue for doing bugger all… cmon, they’re squeezing the lemon a bit too hard.
Personally I wouldn’t install software unless it were from a really trusted person doing something extremely unique and useful that doesn’t have an alternative on the Apple Store (think UTM with JIT for iPad). Please don’t take that as a negative comment but I suspect most people source their software from conveniently centralized repos whether it be App Store, Steam or even the main package manager on a Linux distri…
Most and mostly.
But I'd still like to be able to install whatever the fuck I want on my iPhone, should I decide to based on my own criteria, without going through Apple or even a fucking "alternative app store" that is still Apple censored.