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Italian Competition Authority Fines Apple $115M for Abusing Dominant Position

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Re: Italian Competition Authority Fines Apple $115M for Abusing Dominant Position

#71

Post by [deleted] »

rpdillon wrote: post #61
embedding-shape wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Show me the [company], I'll show you the crime. Yeah, maybe that floats the people's boat wherever you live, but in other countries where people's health and well-being go above corporate interests, it is not common for companies to break the law. > for example, if you "don't spy on users", you don't need cookie banners, and yet official EU sites have them. Which is true, and you can understand that yourself by not…

> I think even an American would be able to get through it if you apply yourself. This doesn't belong on HN.

[deleted]

Re: Italian Competition Authority Fines Apple $115M for Abusing Dominant Position

#72

Post by wrxd »

earthnail wrote: post #37

Surprised by the negative comments here. Usually HN univocally complains about Apple‘s dominant App Store. Now a government fines them for it and some people are upset?

I don’t think it’s surprising. The ideal setup for many people here is an OS that gives them control over what they run and over their data.

An App Store that restrict us from running the application we want is bad. An App Store that prevents applications from tracking us is good. The former restricts our freedom, the latter restricts the freedom of developers who want to take advantage of our data.

Re: Italian Competition Authority Fines Apple $115M for Abusing Dominant Position

#73

Post by hnbad »

petcat wrote: post #10
concinds wrote: post #9

> The Authority found the App Tracking Transparency (“ATT”) policy to restrict competition. [...] > In particular, third-party app developers are required to obtain specific consent for the collection and linking of data for advertising purposes through Apple’s ATT prompt. However, such prompt does not meet privacy legislation requirements, forcing developers to double the consent request for the same purpose. > The…

EU privacy regulations and the GDPR are a complete farce. You'll notice that the EU's own government websites are littered with cookie banners. They want the data just as bad as everybody else. The goal was not in any way to protect privacy, but rather to extract rent from American tech companies.

> They want the data just as bad as everybody else.

Sure. Let's look at the main site: https://european-union.europa.eu/index_en

Big cookie banner. Wait. What's that. It's not a modal? And a big "Accept only essential cookies" button with the same visual weight as the "Accept all cookies" button? Surely everybody does it this way because it's literally what EU law requires - surely nobody would try to trick people into clicking "accept all" by hiding the alternative behind multiple layers of opaque options and checkboxes.

So let's look at what data they are harvesting: https://european-union.europa.eu/cookies_en

Technical cookies... functional cookies... boring - most of these are just for handling logins and preferences. Ooh, analytics! But what's Europa Analytics? Let's check: https://european-union.europa.eu/europa-analytics_en

Oh, they are not only opt-in, they even respect DNT headers. And they're masking the IP addresses before processing them further. Damn, they must really want that data just as bad as "everybody else".

Re: Italian Competition Authority Fines Apple $115M for Abusing Dominant Position

#74

Post by dns_snek »

petcat wrote: post #44
earthnail wrote: post #37

Surprised by the negative comments here. Usually HN univocally complains about Apple‘s dominant App Store. Now a government fines them for it and some people are upset?

I think people would sympathize more if it was something like "Apple makes choosing a different default browser or email client unnecessarily cumbersome" -- instead of "Apple makes you double-opt-in to sharing your private data with even more advertisers"

But that's not the story here. I hate ads as much as anyone, but this action is a matter of market competition, not privacy. They're completely different fights and intelligent people ought to be able to distinguish between the two. Anti-competitive behavior by Google, Apple, Meta, etc. is what got us into this mess with tracking and privacy violations in the first place.

Re: Italian Competition Authority Fines Apple $115M for Abusing Dominant Position

#75

Post by hnbad »

nradov wrote: post #18
jncfhnb wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the US tech companies stop behaving this way, maybe.

Sure. I'm not here to defend bad behavior by US tech companies. Just pointing out the sad contrast in terms of lack of growth and innovation by EU tech companies.

The US is in the middle of a recession if you exclude the AI bubble. Even if you include the AI bubble it's barely avoiding stagflation. I'm not sure "growth and innovation" accurately serves as a contrast between the US and EU tech companies right now.

Re: Italian Competition Authority Fines Apple $115M for Abusing Dominant Position

#76

Post by pb7 »

HotGarbage wrote: post #69
dinkblam wrote: post #33

no year goes by without Italy imposing random >100m€ fines for 2-3 american tech companies. whenever they need money, they just hit another one without care whether actual laws were violated. the amount they take has no correlation to what has been blamed, only to how much the companies can afford to pay without threatening to leave the country. the 'Guardia di Finanza' has a long standing tradition of trying to exto…

[flagged]

This company has provided immeasurably more for me than Italy has in my lifetime.

Re: Italian Competition Authority Fines Apple $115M for Abusing Dominant Position

#77

Post by franch »

embedding-shape wrote: post #55
dinkblam wrote: post #33

no year goes by without Italy imposing random >100m€ fines for 2-3 american tech companies. whenever they need money, they just hit another one without care whether actual laws were violated. the amount they take has no correlation to what has been blamed, only to how much the companies can afford to pay without threatening to leave the country. the 'Guardia di Finanza' has a long standing tradition of trying to exto…

> no year goes by without Italy imposing random >100m€ fines for 2-3 american tech companies. whenever they need money Since you apparently know, how large would a 100M EUR injection into the Italian budget for 2026 actually be, relatively to the other things? You're saying they're doing this because they need money, but wouldn't changing the tax rates be more effective at this? 100M feels like a piss in the ocean, w…

Italy's unconsolidated budget for 2025 is projected to be around 700 billion euros in revenue and 900 billion in expenditures:

https://www.rgs.mef.gov.it/VERSIONE-I/attivita_istituzionali...

So yeah, whoever talks about these fines as a strategy for fixing the budget knows nothing about the actual budget of a G7 state, these fines are completely immaterial to Italian fiscal policy.

For perspective, that's roughly equivalent to someone with a €50,000 annual income finding €7 on the street and someone claiming they're doing it "to survive."

Re: Italian Competition Authority Fines Apple $115M for Abusing Dominant Position

#78

Post by Obscurity4340 »

wrxd wrote: post #72
earthnail wrote: post #37

Surprised by the negative comments here. Usually HN univocally complains about Apple‘s dominant App Store. Now a government fines them for it and some people are upset?

I don’t think it’s surprising. The ideal setup for many people here is an OS that gives them control over what they run and over their data. An App Store that restrict us from running the application we want is bad. An App Store that prevents applications from tracking us is good. The former restricts our freedom, the latter restricts the freedom of developers who want to take advantage of our data.

It wasnt until recently that we could even have emulators to play old video games we grew up with, instead of having to buy "clones" one by one for $5/piece. The only thing that was protecting was Apple's profits

Re: Italian Competition Authority Fines Apple $115M for Abusing Dominant Position

#79

Post by hnbad »

vnchr wrote: post #25
jncfhnb wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the US tech companies stop behaving this way, maybe.

Or the US tech companies could abandon EU markets

You must believe that US companies are trying to enter and stay in hostile markets out of the sheer kindness of their hearts. Have you considered that not being present in the second biggest market by GDP may actually be a massive liability by creating a massive opportunity for competitors that will be far better adapted to stricter regulatory conditions? You could just as well advise US car manufacturers to stick to building cars like the Cybertruck and ignore markets that consider it unsafe.

Re: Italian Competition Authority Fines Apple $115M for Abusing Dominant Position

#80

Post by Terretta »

f6v wrote: post #7

I don't download any apps anymore, so not very informed on the state of alternative app stores in EU. I decided to Google where I can find those. One of the first links is leading to MacPaw's website. It's a company with questionable ethics and business practices that tries to sell you "antivirus" and "decluttering" app. So I'll pass. But are there any real 3rd-party AppStores for iOS now? Something that's used by mo…

> are there any real 3rd-party AppStores for iOS now

"Always has been": Setapp. Very interesting model.

Readily recommend devs subscribing to this collection, but non-devs as well if you're into "there's an app for that" and fatigued with IAP.

https://setapp.com/

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