Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Apple and Meta fined millions for breaching EU law

ca.finance.yahoo.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 635 posts

Re: Apple and Meta fined millions for breaching EU law

#101

Post by phatfish »

xvector wrote: post #63
llm_nerd wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

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 oppo…

A tech bro true believer comes to the rescue to set us all straight. Of course the world would fall apart if Thanos snapped his fingers and disappeared Meta.

Thinking about I might watch that movie, a Thanos redemption arc maybe...

Re: Apple and Meta fined millions for breaching EU law

#102

Post by devuo »

xvector wrote: post #36

[flagged]

US companies are free to not operate in Europe.

There's nothing special about US software engineering vs. software engineering made elsewhere from a purely technical and know-how point of view.

The key difference is availability of capital and appetite for risk that make US exceptional by enabling a speed of scaling and execution not possible anywhere else (well, other than China).

If US companies that can't be bothered to follow EU laws leave the +500M people market that is the EU, I'm positive some other equally competent alternative (local or otherwise) would appear sooner or later to fill in the gap.

Re: Apple and Meta fined millions for breaching EU law

#103

Post by boxed »

zpeti wrote: post #95
tiborsaas wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because the fine is exactly about giving people a more fair chance to vote with their wallets. This is from the Yahoo article: "The EU competition watchdog said Apple must remove technical and commercial restrictions that prevent app developers from steering users to cheaper deals outside the App Store."

You can buy an android or huawei phone. Just because the ecosystem you like to use doesn't have certain features doesn't make it a monopoly.

Switching from one duopoly to another isn't choice.

Re: Apple and Meta fined millions for breaching EU law

#104

Post by stavros »

madeofpalk wrote: post #99
stavros wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The two companies have two months to comply, or there will be daily fines.

I don't think so - they’ve only been fined for the in-app anti-steering provisions. For the second App Marketplace issue, I think that’s just a preliminary finding and is going to take longer to work out > Apple now has the possibility to exercise its rights of defence by examining the documents in the Commission's investigation file and by responding to the preliminary findings

Hm, maybe, I'm just going by what the article says:

> The companies have two months to comply with the orders or risk daily fines.

Maybe they got it wrong, though.

Re: Apple and Meta fined millions for breaching EU law

#105

Post by guappa »

fidotron wrote: post #35
avtolik wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because in a case of monopoly, the people can not vote with their wallet.

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.

I mean microsoft paid off the CEO of nokia to sink it.

Re: Apple and Meta fined millions for breaching EU law

#106

Post by ThatMedicIsASpy »

zpeti wrote: post #95
tiborsaas wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because the fine is exactly about giving people a more fair chance to vote with their wallets. This is from the Yahoo article: "The EU competition watchdog said Apple must remove technical and commercial restrictions that prevent app developers from steering users to cheaper deals outside the App Store."

You can buy an android or huawei phone. Just because the ecosystem you like to use doesn't have certain features doesn't make it a monopoly.

You can leave the market if you dont like the rules of the market.

Re: Apple and Meta fined millions for breaching EU law

#107

Post by riffraff »

1oooqooq wrote: post #57
mentalgear wrote: post #12

A good start, but far from enough regarding the societal damage (anti-competitive, anti-user, psychological harm especially of minors, proliferation of radicalisation) they did.

*insert Mike Myers One Million Dollars meme they made more than the fine, so it's just reduced profit a little. mere higher cost of business and continue as usual.

The DMA fines are not supposed to be punitive damages, they're a tool to correct behavior, like the GDPR.

If Apple & co don't comply there are higher amounts that can be imposed, but the idea is that the companies will comply before that.

Re: Apple and Meta fined millions for breaching EU law

#108

Post by falcor84 »

fidotron wrote: post #62
alxlaz wrote: post #56

Earlier 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.

This metaphor doesn't quite work because McDonalds aren't a marketplace. But the closest I can think of is if McDonalds sold the best hamburger boxes that people want to use at home, but then added a mechanism that only lets you put a burger in that box if whoever made that burger bribed MacDonalds, regardless of what's good for you as the burger consumer.

Re: Apple and Meta fined millions for breaching EU law

#109

Post by boxed »

antirez wrote: post #52
JSR_FDED wrote: post #14

[flagged]

Do you realize that the smartphone revolution started here with Nokia?

Well.. ish. But really it started with iPhone. I've used those Nokia "smartphones". They were less the start of the smartphone revolution than PalmPilot or the IBM PC.

Re: Apple and Meta fined millions for breaching EU law

#110

Post by tossandthrow »

onli wrote: post #32
drooopy wrote: post #3

I don't understand meta's statement that this handicaps american businesses while allows European and Chinese companies to operate under different standards.

It's not completely unwarranted. According to the article, Facebook was fined for their model of asking for pay or accept tracking. Which is exactly what almost all publishers do, e.g. all big German newspapers. It's absolutely clear that this is against the law - they could show ads, but can't invade the users privacy for that, so no tracking ads - but they do it anyway and got away with it in various decisions. And…

Big German newspapers do not need to comply under DMA.

The EU focusses, rightfully, on EU macro dynamics with these laws, not how smaller outlets work.

This is very much reasonable. When a platform is big, it has bigger impact, but also bigger budgets to hire legal help and bigger budgets to stay compliant.

This is well established in accounting where there exists different rules depending on size (in many jurisdictions)

Post reply on HN