Apple and Meta fined millions for breaching EU law • Hacker News Board

Re: Apple and Meta fined millions for breaching EU law

#601

Post by TonyTrapp » Thu, Apr 24, 2025, 3:10 PM UTC

wackget wrote: post #511

Mindwipe wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if eBay's free listings is taking marketshare back?

eBay's listings are no longer free. They are now extorting their pound of flesh via a so-called "Buyer Protection Fee" which forces buyers , rather than sellers, to pay extra when purchasing items from private sellers.

eBay is very different across countries. In Germany, eBay listings are free again for private sellers after they noticed the exodus to other platforms. I know this is not the case in other countries, so talking about eBay as a general platform is very difficult.

Re: Apple and Meta fined millions for breaching EU law

#602

Post by alxlaz » Thu, Apr 24, 2025, 3:14 PM UTC

fidotron wrote: post #592

alxlaz wrote: post #574

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see we're back to Coca Cola, McDonalds and Burger King. Oh, and Meta, somehow? This is about Apple, I think you're in the wrong thread.

Ivan the Terrible of metaphor goes for the deflection!

Having accidentally argued against his own point with inadequate metaphors time and time again, OP returns to namecalling!

Re: Apple and Meta fined millions for breaching EU law

#603

Post by barbazoo » Thu, Apr 24, 2025, 4:33 PM UTC

rsynnott wrote: post #588

barbazoo wrote: post #387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I mean, probably not without being sued by their shareholders. As a public company, you cannot simply abandon 40bn revenue/year because you feel aggrieved. What are the laws that Meta would be violating?

Fiduciary duty. It's a high bar, but "we abandoned 25% of our revenue in a fit of pique over our being required to follow the law on consent" probably gets you there.

That gets thrown around a lot but those folks are masters at corporate messaging. All you need to do is tie a bow and back the decision up with a long term strategy. I don't accept "fiduciary duty" being the pretext for any shitty behavior.

Re: Apple and Meta fined millions for breaching EU law

#604

Post by kmeisthax » Thu, Apr 24, 2025, 4:43 PM UTC

Terretta wrote: post #587

kmeisthax wrote: post #539

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But someone has to pay for the costs of developing the SDKs and the platform. The business model Apple has used since the Macintosh is that the hardware subsidizes the software. I paid for the platform when I bought the device. The only reason why there's even a "free rider problem" is that Apple believes itself entitled to a 30% cut of half of mobile, forever. Furthermore, we've known since the failure of OS/2 (at…

> Apple believes itself entitled to a 30% cut of half of mobile, forever. 1. This isn't the number. Worst case, the after first year number is half that, and even less for most. 2. App store platforms on ostensibly "open" PC such as Steam cost game developers more. Why?

The best case is 15% for subscription apps after the first year of service, or if you're a "small business" developer under a certain sales threshold. The latter goes away after you reach a certain size, after which you pay 30%; the former requires you to adopt a subscription business model.

I still think calling it a "30% cut" is accurate, even though there are discounts now. 30% is the base rate. You mentioned Steam, which also has discounts too, except they're the opposite ones of Apple. The cut starts at 30% and goes down the more sales you make. This "costs game developers more" only in the sense that it would be incredibly difficult to qualify for both Apple and Steam discounts at the same time. But the base rate is the same.

Re: Apple and Meta fined millions for breaching EU law

#605

Post by fidotron » Thu, Apr 24, 2025, 5:08 PM UTC

alxlaz wrote: post #602

fidotron wrote: post #592

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ivan the Terrible of metaphor goes for the deflection!

Having accidentally argued against his own point with inadequate metaphors time and time again, OP returns to namecalling!

And with that miss Ivan has forgotten that it was he himself that brought up his own disastrous Coca Cola metaphor, cause of so much angst and frustration.

In a confused daze he goes to a store, buys a bottle of Coca Cola, and heads to a nearby McDonalds where he opens it and drinks it, wondering why all these suckers in McDonalds do not think to buy their soda elsewhere. If only Coca Cola could label the soda in McDonalds to let people know of their options! As the staff approach him to ask him to leave he wonders why the world does so consistently fail to match his preconceptions, and if only that evil Apple had not insisted on using their payments system then he would have been able to scam thousands of those foolish American idiots and go to live on Cyprus far away from such concerns as a metaphorical demon in the form of "Costco".

Thrown out on to the street he resorts to the tried and tested European strategy of claiming victimhood "Why are you persecuting me? It is the same soda! Why can I not drink it here?" but it is to no avail. Clearly the world, immune to reason, has not finished with his punishment, but OP has; he's done.

Re: Apple and Meta fined millions for breaching EU law

#606

Post by tossandthrow » Thu, Apr 24, 2025, 5:17 PM UTC

tantalor wrote: post #597

tossandthrow wrote: post #551

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of they key points of DNA is exactly that you likely can not avoid these services. Keeo in mind, it is only the largest 7 tech companies in the world that has to comply. It is incredibly few companies.

s/DNA/DMA/

Yes, DMA hasn't gone into autocorrect yet!

Re: Apple and Meta fined millions for breaching EU law

#607

Post by alxlaz » Thu, Apr 24, 2025, 5:35 PM UTC

fidotron wrote: post #605

alxlaz wrote: post #602

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having accidentally argued against his own point with inadequate metaphors time and time again, OP returns to namecalling!

And with that miss Ivan has forgotten that it was he himself that brought up his own disastrous Coca Cola metaphor, cause of so much angst and frustration. In a confused daze he goes to a store, buys a bottle of Coca Cola, and heads to a nearby McDonalds where he opens it and drinks it, wondering why all these suckers in McDonalds do not think to buy their soda elsewhere. If only Coca Cola could label the soda in McD…

Oh, wow, have we come full circle -- from Apple breaking the law in a jurisdiction where they do business to, err, Cyprus, and Europe, and... Ivan the Terrible having somehow become a woman for half a sentence?

Touch some grass, mate, Apple isn't worth your energy. No company their size is, whether on this side of the Atlantic or the other.

Re: Apple and Meta fined millions for breaching EU law

#608

Post by mleonhard » Thu, Apr 24, 2025, 6:50 PM UTC

From the article:

> The EU regulator also dropped Meta's Marketplace's designation as a DMA gatekeeper because the number of users fell below the required threshold.

The EU government explains this in their press release: https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_25_...

> Today, the Commission also found that Meta's online intermediation service Facebook Marketplace should no longer be designated under the DMA. The decision follows a request submitted by Meta on 5 March 2024 to reconsider the designation of Marketplace. Following a careful assessment of Meta's arguments and as a result of Meta's additional enforcement and continued monitoring measures to counteract the business-to-consumer use of Marketplace, the Commission found that Marketplace had less than 10,000 business users in 2024. Meta therefore no longer meets the relevant threshold giving rise to a presumption that Marketplace is an important gateway for business users to reach end users.

Re: Apple and Meta fined millions for breaching EU law

#609

Post by npc_anon » Thu, Apr 24, 2025, 7:38 PM UTC

xvector wrote: post #484

npc_anon wrote: post #451

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 priva…

> The "EU over-regulation" argument is pathetic ... It's anti-American ... I do understand the "new" American perspective. "American" means being able to make your own decisions without government overreach in every aspect of your life. "American" means being able to decide if you want to engage with a business or not, without getting the government involved. "American" means being able to reach the highest highs or…

The context is is Big Tech regulation. Of which there is barely any, allowing these monopolies to exist in the first place.

Everything you claim to be American, responsibility and choice, is harmed by having monopolies. You're so anti-government that you miss that monopolies remove even more choice.

As for dependencies, the US is the biggest importer in the world.

Re: Apple and Meta fined millions for breaching EU law

#610

Post by fragmede » Thu, Apr 24, 2025, 9:47 PM UTC

Draiken wrote: post #454

fragmede wrote: post #406

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don't think Occam's razor applies here. Before the tarrifs, Donghua Jinlong glycine going viral was a silly Internet thing, but the tarrifs are big business and it might come off as a tin foil hat theory that the CCP exerted control over TikTok to push videos that undercut American companies in the face of American tarrifs, but geopolitics is very big business. Believing that those videos came up organically seems naive because this shit is a big deal with far reaching global ramifications.