Millions is nothing for these companies. Just a cost of doing business.
Starting somewhere. The US ain't even doing that.
Apple and Meta fined millions for breaching EU law
351–360 of 635 posts
Re: Apple and Meta fined millions for breaching EU law
#352Breach. Get sued. Pay Fine. Rinse. Repeat. At this point it looks like governments want the money and companies are gleefully willing to pay.
Damned if you do, damned if you don't.
I get it that millions isn't much but it's something, and at least it sends a signal.
Re: Apple and Meta fined millions for breaching EU law
#353Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
It didn't start with the iPhone. What the iPhone brought was a different interface and user experience. For the rest, Nokia's "dumb phones" already had MP3 players and all sorts of media (games, videos), downloadable apps, access to the internet, photos, and video recording. They only lacked touch interfaces. Of course, this was done along with other manufacturers like Sony Ericson, Motorola, Samsung etc. The behavio…
> It didn't start with the iPhone.
Disagree, but continue...
> What the iPhone brought was a different interface and user experience
Lol. Yea, that's 99% of the entire thing! It's why Android was building a Nokia clone the day before the keynote, and the day after the keynote they changed direction HARD in panic.
> They only lacked touch interfaces.
Well that's not true. They did in fact have touch interfaces too. Just that it wasn't capacitive. And the entire interaction model sucked, the APIs sucked, the graphics sucked, the screen sucked, etc.
> The behavior of people walking around with media in their phones and using their phones to consume media, capture media and access the internet on-the-go was built by those brands, not by the iPhone.
I think you're also forgetting what "the internet" on these devices was. It wasn't the real internet. You couldn't go to normal full websites and have it worked. It was enormously far from it in fact.
> but the demand and consumer behavior weren't built by Apple, not even close. They just surfed the wave with a better product.
There was no wave before BECAUSE the products before were so inferior.
It's maddening that people don't get this. The difference between utter crap and a great product isn't checkboxes on a feature list. It's a thousand tiny details that seem insignificant, and CARING about those things.
If it was just a few UX fixes, Nokia could have turned around and cloned iPhone fast. But they couldn't. Because:
1. They didn't care or understand tiny details.
2. Many many details is something you build up over a long time. You can slap a clone UX over your existing product, but that's not why the iPhone was great.
Re: Apple and Meta fined millions for breaching EU law
#354Earlier quoted context omitted.
> If not, they will have blunders and they will lose Europe since people are willing to look for alternatives as USA gets increasingly unpopular among the Europeans due to politics. But what alternative? There is no European smartphone OS. Windows and Steam OS and XBox are US-american, too. I suppose Linux, Playstation, and Nintendo, then?
The alternatives are Samsung, Xiaomi, Oppo and others. Already the dominant brands in Europe. It doesn't have to be European, it has to be good and those are pretty good at much cheaper prices. They also offer premium models that Apple doesn't have a match. People pay a lot extra for the feelings the brand invokes in them. Tesla was like that when it was about the values it used to represent, right after Musk dropped…
American brands should tread carefully: while America is willing to ban their (cheaper, sometimes better) competitors, Europe is much less willing to — especially now as America itself has taken a much more bullying tone towards its allies.
Re: Apple and Meta fined millions for breaching EU law
#355Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think you make many good points. Slight tangent: Why isn't EU more concerned about TikTok? While it is very difficult to prove, various studies have demonstrated that TikTok pushes more content favoring the Chinese Government (CCP).
> TikTok pushes more content favoring the Chinese Government (CCP). Does that violate EU law? (Serious question, I really don't know)
no, and as far I know it doesn't violate any US law either. the thing against tiktok is not based on law, but based on suspicions.
Re: Apple and Meta fined millions for breaching EU law
#356Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 jurisdicti…
What’s another example of different rules depending on size? “Content Moderation” I think? Anything outside the DMA? I think small companies get some exceptions for documentation requirements?
G-SIB banks for example
Re: Apple and Meta fined millions for breaching EU law
#357Earlier quoted context omitted.
Someone here hazarded the hypothesis that Trump's tariffs are a stick aimed not towards other countries, but towards American corporations, who have to pledge fealty (and resources) to Trump in exchange for relief. I think it makes a lot of sense, if any of this is rational, which I'm not entirely sold on.
It's always funny when shit happens and everyone jumps over themselves to figure out what "5D chess" the people in charge are playing. There's never any chess. They are just incompetent.
That's not 5D chess at all. Very straightforward, in fact, and backed up by the documented strong-arming of law firms.
Re: Apple and Meta fined millions for breaching EU law
#358Earlier quoted context omitted.
Stop using them. What do you do if every car manufacturer does something that's a "deal breaker"? Don't make a deal with them by not buying a car.
> What do you do if every car manufacturer does something that's a "deal breaker" Sane societies recognize the problem and regulate it out of existence.
I think it's more likely that insane societies do - elevate one person's consumer choices to national scale.
Re: Apple and Meta fined millions for breaching EU law
#359Re: Apple and Meta fined millions for breaching EU law
#360Ah, 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 maybe competitors... if there were any."
That can actually be an example of a tariff, though. Basically every country specializes in something, and imports things they're not good at making. For example: cheese, or luxury watches, or GPUs. If you have a special law that charges companies money only for the categories you import and you carve out exceptions for "small" (aka domestic) markets, a la the DMA, you have effectively created a tariff.