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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

#451

Post by npc_anon »

The "EU over-regulation" argument is pathetic. The exact opposite is true, 2-3 decades of zero regulation has led to Big Tech empires that can get away with anything.

It harms the free market, harms the freedom to compute, creates an asymmetrical extractive relation between mega-corp and average internet user, and omnipresent surveillance. It's anti-American if "American" still means a love of freedom, personal privacy and fair competition.

But I do understand the "new" American perspective. These companies are money printers some of which produce as much as $30B of pure profit in a single quarter. If such companies are to exist, they best be American I guess.

Re: Apple and Meta fined millions for breaching EU law

#452

Post by Aloisius »

lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote: post #441
Aloisius wrote: post #436

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who does Facebook sell data to?

"Harvested and processed to add cohort tags to include in advertisement real-time bidding contests so advertisers can know how much to bid", while more precise, isn't as punchy as "harvested and sold".

So it's not literally sold?

I've been confused about this for a while. Given data is what allows them a unique advantage for their advertising product, it seemed odd that Facebook would sell that data to others.

But to hear people talk, a company could literally buy personal information from Facebook.

Re: Apple and Meta fined millions for breaching EU law

#453

Post by kube-system »

freedomben wrote: post #443
kube-system wrote: post #431

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> To go back to the Lab Leak Theory example when Youtube was taking down any videos that even mentioned it (even if the mentioner was a well-respected Evolutionary Biologist) wasn't illegal, but it was a total abandonment of free speech principles. Not really, this is a case where two cooperating parties, who both have speech rights, have a dispute about which speech they collectively want to espouse. Unless you're s…

> Unless you're saying that people should lose their speech rights when they form a business? I tried to make clear I wasn't making a legal argument, but since you mentioned it I will address it, but first I'll just say that no I'm not saying that people should lose their free speech rights when they form a business. I'm not sure how you got that from what I wrote, but no, legally they don't and shouldn't (with maybe…

> I tried to make clear I wasn't making a legal argument

I know which is why I used the word "should" to indicate moral hypothetical and not existing law.

>I'm not sure how you got that from what I wrote

Because you said that a situation in which YouTube exercised the right to moderate their own platform was a "total abandonment of free speech principles".

But as you recognize, compelled speech is also a violation of free speech principles, and that is, whether either of us agree with it (I also don't entirely), it is also factually a free speech principle that is in balance here.

> For example, imagine a world where the telephone system operators got to decide which speech was permitted on their phone lines.

And we're back to the common carrier argument, which I think is more relevant to this conversation than a vague appeal to "free speech". Ultimately when the government grants monopolies to businesses, they start to become an effective arm of the government and should be regulated more in line with the rules that apply to government. I think we need to start classifying more of these platforms as common carriers and require them to carry all speech equally -- or break them up until the point they don't hold effective monopolies and/or wrongfully crush competitors.

Re: Apple and Meta fined millions for breaching EU law

#454

Post by Draiken »

fragmede wrote: post #406
throwaway2037 wrote: post #325

Earlier 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).

it's not difficult to prove. In the wake of the tarrifs, everyone in the US got Chinese manufacturing videos pushed to their feed so customers can buy direct from factories and avoid huge markups by a middleman.

Or, you know, Chinese businesses acted like businesses and capitalized on the orange man's stupidity and naturally went viral.

The tinfoil hats come out pretty quickly when China is mentioned but Occam's razor still applies here.

Re: Apple and Meta fined millions for breaching EU law

#455

Post by alxlaz »

fidotron wrote: post #445
alxlaz wrote: post #427

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The root of yours is that you keep trying to make this about McDonalds, Amazon, Ebay, Costco or some other contraption instead of the App Store, which is what this is actually is about. Not that the argument matters, because the exact moment when you leave Costco has no bearing on the fact that Costco doesn't restrict what payment processor are used in the digital goods that it sells. But even if it did, Apple's ToS…

You're the Ivan the Terrible of bad metaphors and similies. They clearly anger you to an almost amusing degree. As I pointed out: > You can buy any number of in game items on iOS and then go and use those same items in the Play Store version of the games, and vice versa. To be precise you can: 1. Install a game on an iPhone 2. Sign into the game with account for that developer, or even using Facebook 3. Buy in game c…

All the metaphors I've used are yours, Ivan. Why would they anger me? I'm not the one who came up with them :-).

What you've pointed out has no bearing whatsoever on what's being discussed here. This isn't about some stretched out definition of "payment system" that applies to those services that happen to have both iOS and Android client applications. It's strictly about what works in applications available on Apple's App Store. For many of them your point 4 doesn't even apply because they don't have an Android variant in the first place.

Let me know when you'd like to go back to discussing the actual issue from the linked article. Bye!

Re: Apple and Meta fined millions for breaching EU law

#456

Post by lcnPylGDnU4H9OF »

Aloisius wrote: post #452
lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote: post #441

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Harvested and processed to add cohort tags to include in advertisement real-time bidding contests so advertisers can know how much to bid", while more precise, isn't as punchy as "harvested and sold".

So it's not literally sold? I've been confused about this for a while. Given data is what allows them a unique advantage for their advertising product, it seemed odd that Facebook would sell that data to others. But to hear people talk, a company could literally buy personal information from Facebook.

Yeah, that makes sense. Facebook wants the data so they can provide more accurate advertising "cohorts". The accuracy is the value that other people see, hence "selling" the data even though they're really selling an ad view.

Re: Apple and Meta fined millions for breaching EU law

#457

Post by avar »

rzwitserloot wrote: post #403
bloppe wrote: post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Technically, the first amendment applies only to state actors, not private entities. See Manhattan Community Access Corp. v. Halleck, Hudgens v. NLRB, and many other cases that upheld this interpretation. Private companies like Apple can restrict free speech on their platforms legally (at least as far as the first amendment is concerned). That said, I believe in the principle of free speech, especially as envisioned…

> Technically, the first amendment applies only to state actors, not private entities. That's probably not what the person you're responding to is talking about. Americans have this unfortunate tendency to harp on and on about 'free speech' in contexts where the first amendment obviously does not apply, or, even more intriguingly/ironically, where the first amendment pretty clearly states the exact opposite. For exam…

    > Whereas what the 1A actually 
    > states is the exact opposite:
    > That platform has the right to
    > ban that user, and the
    > government is constitutionally
    > restrained: If the government
    > were to make a law that forces
    > this social network to unban
    > this user, that'd be the 1A
    > violation.
If I build a bridge and offer it for public use for a toll, and I overhear you saying something I don't like as you travel across in your car, you think the government stepping in if I ban you from traversing the bridge solely for that reason is a 1A violation?

This principle is obvious if I was running a newspaper and printing user-submitted comments. I can have whatever inclusion policy I deem fit, or my own speech would be curtailed.

But this is now being applied by private companies in cases wildly removed from that. Meta er whoever can ban two users having a private conversation on their platform.

It seems to me that the private bridge builder in the example above has a stronger case than these companies in such cases.

Perhaps I overhear that you dislike fast-food, and I only sell billboard space to fast-food companies.

Or perhaps you think that would be just fine, and we just need to close the technological gap of being able to embed hypersensitive microphones into asphalt.

Re: Apple and Meta fined millions for breaching EU law

#459

Post by johnnyanmac »

Yeul wrote: post #161
madeofpalk wrote: post #11

> 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 and allow them to make purchases. To me, this is the most easily agreeable part of what the EU has been after. It is unfair that Apple restricts Netflix from telling it's users that they can sign up and pay for Netlifx…

Aren't Americans always going on about free speech?

Sorry, Fox News changed its mind in January. Come back in 2 years and they'll be back to "pro free speech" (to mock minorities).

Re: Apple and Meta fined millions for breaching EU law

#460

Post by ffsm8 »

surgical_fire wrote: post #271
bboygravity wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Please, enlighten me how exactly is the EU not democratic. I am very sure you have excellent arguments to support this claim.

It's a very often repeated criticism of the EU. While it's member states are democratic, the EU Parlament is kinda it's own thing.

I personally still consider it somewhat democratic, as we so have votes (even though they have horrendous voter participate) - but it's not a niche opinion.

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