Apple and Meta fined millions for breaching EU law

Sure. Do you think I haven't experienced every aspect of Meta properties? Instagram reels, for instance, is a racist hellhole full of the most vile content and snuff videos. It seems to have zero moderation, profiting off of the worst of humanity[1]. Facebook actively runs obvious scam ads for scam businesses and does absolutely nothing if you report it.

Meta at this point is basically a criminal operation.

And it's hilarious how much fear mongering there was about Tiktok (which is a positively benign platform compared to Meta's garbage platforms). I recently uninstalled Instagram after it fed me an endless stream of 51st state propaganda, despite the fact that I Not Interested/Blocked every single occurrence (this was around the time that Instagram turned up the "snuff" dial so millions were getting feeds full of violent deaths[2], which is a mechanism that immediately should subject Meta to government inquiries). Meta properties should be banned everywhere outside the US purely based upon the fact that they're enemy propaganda at this point.

>and any other options would quickly evolve into the same state as FB/IG today

No, they wouldn't. Like literally somehow loads of other sites manage to not be the cesspools of garbage that Meta properties are. This is by design. Here in Canada, engagement on Facebook has dropped to negligible levels outside of the 51st state/conspiratorial sorts. Reddit is an enlightened intellectual promised land compared to the shithole that Meta properties all are.

>which - again - would collapse your small businesses

This is such nonsense. The only businesses that are reliant upon Meta are largely scammy new-age bullshit. And your rhetoric is like saying that if McDonalds closed millions would go hungry because surely there is no way for people to eat otherwise.

And again you've tried to pull other companies in. Google offers enormous value to the world. They are largely a responsible company. Apple offers value. Netflix offers value. Microsoft offers value.

META...blinked out of existence and the world would be much better. Meta is the world's digital Purdue Pharma.

[1] And to be clear, I'm a free speech person. That fringe sites exist where people ply this content is fine. That a major corporation seems to build a business around it, however, monetizing nuts and mental illness and racism and conspiracies and violence, is absolutely disgusting, and I cannot comprehend how someone could work at Meta without feel shame every moment of every day.

[2] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/feb/27/instagram...

Except a functional society does not need companies "the scale of Apple" to work.

In fact it's probably the opposite : nobody can beat Apple or Google because they already have too much power worldwide.

Even in the US, where is the free market ? Nobody can create a company that will compete with Apple or Google. Sure, there was an open window for new competitors in the capitalism game in the 90-2010 era with the rise of the home computing but now everything is locked up again.

A functionnal society doesn't need huge actors, it only needs an environment where companies that win the capitalism game don't become trusts and where small companies can shine.

I don't want an european alternative to Apple, I want an ecosystem of companies that specializes in what they are good at and that are forced to work together to be interoperable.