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Apple and Meta fined millions for breaching EU law

ca.finance.yahoo.com

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Re: Apple and Meta fined millions for breaching EU law

#191

Post by libertine »

bboygravity wrote: post #156
nuthje wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Fines imposed on undertakings found in breach of EU antitrust rules are paid into the general EU budget. This money is not earmarked for particular expenses, but Member States' contributions to the EU budget for the following year are reduced accordingly. The fines therefore help to finance the EU and reduce the burden for taxpayers. This quote is re: anti-trust, but likely generalizes. https://competition-policy.e…

[flagged]

This is a recurring Russian propaganda point, now amplified by the new US Administration. I am curious about the basis for this.

Could you explain further from your perspective how you came up with this conclusion?

Re: Apple and Meta fined millions for breaching EU law

#192

Post by fidotron »

alxlaz wrote: post #177
fidotron wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They did the equivalent of saying to Coca Cola if you discover a customer via the App Store then we get a cut of it, which is a very normal and common arrangement, even if disagreeable.

No, they did the equivalent of saying to Coca-Cola if you discover a customer via the App Store then you cannot tell them they can buy Coca-Cola from outside the App Store, too, a decidedly anti-competitive practice that also happens to be illegal in just about every European country, even without EU intervention.

You cannot tell them _within the app_.

You absolutely can tell the customer via your website or any other means you use to communicate with them.

Do you expect Amazon marketplace sellers to be able to link to their items being on ebay or shopify from the actual Amazon website?

Re: Apple and Meta fined millions for breaching EU law

#193

Post by pyrale »

pjc50 wrote: post #2

Ah, they said the T-word, presumably to invoke some political fire support from across the Atlantic. I wonder how that will go. Of course, this is not a tariff, for two reasons: firstly, it does not involve money (the UK's digital services tax does, but that's not this), and secondly, the same rules would apply to EU native competitors .. if there were any. It's what's knows as a "non tariff trade barrier". Of course…

> the same rules would apply to EU native competitors .. if there were any.

By this same logic, I guess we can say that the EU isn't trying to build a trade barrier favoring local competitors. So, while, as you say,

> It's what's knows as a "non tariff trade barrier".

...It's also not that, since the goal isn't prevent them from competing equally in the market, where they have no competition.

Re: Apple and Meta fined millions for breaching EU law

#194

Post by tremon »

judge2020 wrote: post #162
phtrivier wrote: post #98

> Apple faces a €500 million fine for breaching the regulation’s rules for app stores, while Meta drew a penalty of €200 million for its "pay or consent" advertising model, > The procedural fines fall short of the two giant penalties issued by the EU executive under its antitrust laws last year: €1.8 billion to Apple for abusing its dominant position while distributing music streaming apps, and €797 million to Meta f…

> "pay or consent" advertising model, Wait, so the EU has made it illegal to sell a paid service while also offering an alternative where the user pays via seeing ads?

No, the EU has made it illegal to extort payment before allowing people to opt-out of data collection or profiling.

Re: Apple and Meta fined millions for breaching EU law

#195

Post by solenoid0937 »

ben_w wrote: post #143
xvector wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

My experience using Facebook is that every third post is an advertisement, often for something I can't even buy (common one: a tax adviser specialising in US citizens living in the UK, when I'm British and live in Germany), or are not gender appropriate (they've shown me ads both for boob surgery and for dick pills). Another third are "recommendations" for groups that are often not merely of zero interest, but geogra…

> We managed OK before the internet enabled targeted ads. Back then, local newspapers were a thing (I still get them around here), and you could put an ad for your barber shop or dance hall in that

To be fair, we are in a wholly different world today. The small business landscape has changed dramatically - most of them are online. I get instagram ads for my really niche hobbies, and I don't mind.

Example: Let's say you're into "titanium miniature puzzles" (https://www.lazels.com/)

There is no chance of that business surviving based off of local newspaper ads alone - the likelihood of finding a viable customer base in your town is low. Generalized ads would be totally unaffordable to reach widely enough to cover your viable target customer base, which is sparse and global. Search based ads don't work because people don't even know this exists until they see it.

But good ad targeting enables instant global reach to the specific people that are likely to be interested in what you're selling. There may only be 1k-10k people globally interested in buying $500 titanium miniature puzzles, but if you can reach them, that's enough for your small business to survive.

Lots of small businesses rely on this. I'm not sure about "millions" but on the order of 100k seems likely, if you assume there's one interesting niche business for every 80k people.

Re: Apple and Meta fined millions for breaching EU law

#196

Post by LunaSea »

fidotron wrote: post #165
LunaSea wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The problem is European users are too cheap, and European regulators too short sighted. This seems to be a common issue for all countries, the US included. (See the Chrome spin-off talks currently taking place.) > What you are advocating is forcing a market option to change what it is, when a critical mass of their customers have chosen it precisely because of what it is. Incorrect, users have chosen it for what it…

> This seems to be a common issue for all countries, the US included. The US is much more resistant to it, which is a major factor in iOS share being higher and WhatsApp being an almost complete non event. Similarly those same users bought into the iOS option entirely because of the better privacy enabled by not being "free" in the price sense. In a very real sense Apple are the regulators of their platform in that t…

> The US is much more resistant to it, which is a major factor in iOS share being higher and WhatsApp being an almost complete non event.

iOS has a larger market share in the US because iPhones are a status symbol in America whereas Europeans couldn't care less.

Which in turn makes iMessages market share larger in the US than in Europe.

iPhone market share is also pretty stagnant since 2023 in the US and way down worldwide since then.

If anything, I would consider the US WhatsApp user base numbers (~64M users) to be much more impressive than the iMessage user counts (~130 iPhone owners) because WhatsApp is not installed by default.

> People buy into it because they like that aspect of things, and prefer the Apple regulations to those created by their governments.

This very much has yet to be proven since "those (policies) created by their governments" has not been made possible by Apple yet. If Apple is so confident in their software quality, this additional competition should not be an issue for them.

> If you launch a service today and have no native app presence you will not be regarded as credible in the marketplace.

I meant that you'll buy the hardware but will then have the choice to install different operating systems and app market places. The same way computers have worked for the last 30 years.

Re: Apple and Meta fined millions for breaching EU law

#197

Post by libertine »

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.

Apple can also exit the EU market if they don't want to comply with the law.

Just because the regulation doesn't suit its business model doesn't make it mandatory to be present in a given market.

Re: Apple and Meta fined millions for breaching EU law

#198

Post by alex1138 »

llm_nerd wrote: post #48
xvector wrote: post #40

Earlier 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.

[flagged]

I've seen too much from the last few years (covid, mostly, but other things) to take much stock in what people are commonly referring to as misinformation

But yeah, I don't like what they do competition wise (Whatsapp seems like clear antitrust) and their products are badly designed (have more things shoved into your feed that you're not following!)

Re: Apple and Meta fined millions for breaching EU law

#199

Post by alex1138 »

llm_nerd wrote: post #83
xvector wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>You are likely entirely informed by ragebait news articles 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. Me…

Reddit can be astroturfed to hell, I don't trust it. Mods are shared across subreddits, they ban you for unjustified reasons, as does the site in general

Re: Apple and Meta fined millions for breaching EU law

#200

Post by sensanaty »

xvector wrote: post #39
pjc50 wrote: post #4

Earlier 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.…

> The DMA is gerrymandered to exclude domestic businesses.

Except Booking (~EU, based in NL~*) falls under the DMA, and ByteDance (China? I think) does as well. All the same restrictions fall on them too.

> Users are free to just not use Meta services.

True in theory, not so much in practice. I work for a company that deals directly with WhatsApp in NL, and I guarantee you for businesses it's a death knell to not have a WA Business presence. Even the local gemeente (aka city council) and other gov't establishments are on WhatsApp too. Recently more people are moving onto Signal and Telegram, but that remains a minority.

Don't even get me started on Asia, especially India/Indonesia, where even despite the existence of Line and similar apps everything is still* almost exclusively on WA. A bit different in East Asia where Line and other apps are more predominant (hardly relevant for the EU though).

Spotify doesn't fall under the DMA because it's not gatekeeping anything and it does have plenty of competition, many of which pay artists better and have basically equal selections. YT Music, Apple Music, Deezer, Tidal, Bandcamp and I'm sure dozens and dozens of others all exist and are used.

> ... but plenty will be harmed once spyware/piracy sideloading becomes common

Interesting how this evil sideloading boogeyman hasn't happened on Android.

> ... Many small businesses will collapse due to ineffective advertisement

The same small businesses that are forced into paying 30% to Apple/Google for simply existing on their app store?

> (large businesses will love it though - it becomes a winner-take-all market).

So, the gatekeepers as listed under the DMA? Y'know, the giants that literally hold all the keys and can dictate how the entire market should work based on their rules? The very same ones that have opaque ad-bidding systems that they control inside-and-out and can do anything they want to with?

[**] Seems I'm wrong there (See andsoitis' reply to my comment), but didn't want to edit out my original comment.

Regardless, calling it gerrymandering of local businesses is simply incorrect, and I can speak for at least myself that if we even had any tech companies that big (and I hope we never do), we'd expect them be subject to the exact same rules and laws.

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