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France fines Apple €150M for “excessive” pop-ups that let users reject tracking

arstechnica.com

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Re: France fines Apple €150M for “excessive” pop-ups that let users reject tracking

#111

Post by GuB-42 »

MonkeyClub wrote: post #96

150M is ridiculously low for a company with a 3.34T market cap. It's the equivalent of fining a millionaire 150 EUR, or a regular person fifteen cents. That's not a fine, it's a show put on for people who can't do division.

It is not the right question. The goal is not to destroy Apple, it is to force them into compliance. In order to force them into compliance, you only need the fine to be higher than what it costs to comply.

And €150M is a lot of money, you can have on the order of a thousand people working on the problem for a year to get even. I am sure they can figure out a way.

Same idea with, say, a parking ticket for nonpayment. It may be nothing to a millionaire, but the important part is that in the long run, it is more cost effective to simply pay for parking.

Re: France fines Apple €150M for “excessive” pop-ups that let users reject tracking

#112

Post by johnnyanmac »

tedunangst wrote: post #56
nottorp wrote: post #2

Actually Apple were fined because they don't apply the same standard to their own pop-ups that allow users to reject tracking. On Apple popups you seem to need one click, while on 3rd party popups you need to confirm twice. So the fine seems to be for treating 3rd parties differently from their own stuff. They could make their own popups require double confirmation instead...

I'm actually okay with the Apple Camera app asking me once and the Domino's Pizza app having to ask me twice. Who are the consumers being harmed here?

it's not the consumers, it's the competitors. Instead of comparing apples to pizas, compare something like the Notes app compared to a 3rd party notes app. Any web/app dev knows each extra click adds friction and reduces retention, so that extra pop up can be a subtle advantadge to the one who manages the platform.

Re: France fines Apple €150M for “excessive” pop-ups that let users reject tracking

#113

Post by maccard »

simion314 wrote: post #83
tedunangst wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do we have regulations? Who do they benefit?

>Why do we have regulations? Who do they benefit? Weird you still have no idea why. So let me tell you, there was a tribe in a village and they had many rules, some young boys hated the rules so they left and made their own village with no rules. One day one of them made a fire and let it unsupervised and many of their shacks burned so the boys decided that there should be one rule about not letting fires unsupervise…

I like this.

Imagine if people from the old village came to the new village and said that they wanted to set up the rules they had in the old village but they want to live in the new village. Some people are perfectly happy in the new village, but the people who came from the old village say that the rules are unfair.

As someone who actively wants Apple provide a tighter experience, this is how I feel. I have a nice garden that I'm playing in, and others have a sandbox. They like my garden because it's sunny, but they want the rules of their sandbox to apply to my garden. The grown ups let them in, and now there's nowhere to play that doesn't have sand anymore.

Re: France fines Apple €150M for “excessive” pop-ups that let users reject tracking

#114

Post by JadeNB »

dkga wrote: post #109
arrosenberg wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems like it’s roughly what it is about. Apple has a mandatory consent, but won’t adapt it so that third party apps can integrate their own tracking consent into it. As a result third party apps are treated differently than first party because they have one fewer consent screen. That advantages entrenched incumbents with big, locked-in user bases and disadvantages new entrants. Since Apple owns the platform, it’s an…

Yes, but are consumers that knowingly bought into the Apple ecosystem harmed?

> Yes, but are consumers that knowingly bought into the Apple ecosystem harmed?

It seems that this logic would prevent any regulation of what happens on macOS or iOS, since anyone who is using either has knowingly bought into the Apple ecosystem. (And analogously for Windows, since anyone who is using it has knowingly bought into the Microsoft ecosystem.)

Re: France fines Apple €150M for “excessive” pop-ups that let users reject tracking

#115

Post by briandear »

burnte wrote: post #72
tedunangst wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm actually okay with the Apple Camera app asking me once and the Domino's Pizza app having to ask me twice. Who are the consumers being harmed here?

You might be ok with it, but the regulators want Apple to treat third parties the same way they treat their own apps, and that's a good thing. Either everyone would generate two prompts, or no one, but excluding yourself is just favoritism.

Apple doesn’t have a track record of abusing user privacy, unlike the plethora of third party apps that want to aggressively track you and sell that data.

Re: France fines Apple €150M for “excessive” pop-ups that let users reject tracking

#116

Post by maccard »

st3fan wrote: post #99
tedunangst wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm actually okay with the Apple Camera app asking me once and the Domino's Pizza app having to ask me twice. Who are the consumers being harmed here?

I don't think the Camera app asks for permission to use the Camera. You could argue that choice is questionable because Apple needs to follow its own rules, but also .. it is the Camera app. I think if you don't want the Camera app to use the Camera you probably should not have opened the app at all. ATT (App Tracking Transparency) is the dialog that says something like "Facebook would like permission to track you ac…

> The SECOND consent this case is about is the in-app consent that needs to happen according to French law. I can't give an example of that because I do not live in France but I assume this is probably some horribly designed page inside a French app that asks you to share your data with the ad surveilance industry.

I don't live in france but I'm familiar with the popups. many apps on first install will give you an in-app prompt asking if they can send you push notifications. If you accept, you get the system prompt. if you decline, you don't. I'm not a regulator, but it seems they've misread this one IMO - they only need to provide the conseent at the platform level and can opt out at the platform level if they so wish.

Re: France fines Apple €150M for “excessive” pop-ups that let users reject tracking

#117

Post by maccard »

ezfe wrote: post #22
nottorp wrote: post #2

Actually Apple were fined because they don't apply the same standard to their own pop-ups that allow users to reject tracking. On Apple popups you seem to need one click, while on 3rd party popups you need to confirm twice. So the fine seems to be for treating 3rd parties differently from their own stuff. They could make their own popups require double confirmation instead...

Right, but that second click isn't coming from Apple and they can't control it. The article specifically says that many apps feel like they need additional consent which means they have to request it through two channels. If Apple doesn't feel like they need additional consent and/or doesn't use ATT-blocked systems then they don't need that. This is stupid.

> The article specifically says that many apps feel like they need additional consent which means they have to request it through two channels.

Surely the same argument can be applied to the cookie law - many sites feel like they need consent therefore it's unfair over people who think they only need one prompt.

Re: France fines Apple €150M for “excessive” pop-ups that let users reject tracking

#118

Post by overfeed »

dkga wrote: post #109
arrosenberg wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems like it’s roughly what it is about. Apple has a mandatory consent, but won’t adapt it so that third party apps can integrate their own tracking consent into it. As a result third party apps are treated differently than first party because they have one fewer consent screen. That advantages entrenched incumbents with big, locked-in user bases and disadvantages new entrants. Since Apple owns the platform, it’s an…

Yes, but are consumers that knowingly bought into the Apple ecosystem harmed?

Consumers are only part of the competition equation. I bet consumers also love the initial phases of dumping, but regulators have to look beyond short-term consumer preferences.

Re: France fines Apple €150M for “excessive” pop-ups that let users reject tracking

#119

Post by briandear »

ohgr wrote: post #55
dinkblam wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Indeed. If they really gave a shit they'd be getting Apple to open up their APIs so we can get data out of Reminders and Notes etc without having to resort to necromancy and hacking... Apple need one of these https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/openspecs/

As an Apple user, I don’t want third party apps to be able to have access to that data. Apple has earned my trust, but most third party apps have not.

I buy Apple specifically because I want the level of privacy that their platform provides. If third party devs don’t like it, they can ship for Android.

Re: France fines Apple €150M for “excessive” pop-ups that let users reject tracking

#120

Post by ergocoder »

dkga wrote: post #109
arrosenberg wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems like it’s roughly what it is about. Apple has a mandatory consent, but won’t adapt it so that third party apps can integrate their own tracking consent into it. As a result third party apps are treated differently than first party because they have one fewer consent screen. That advantages entrenched incumbents with big, locked-in user bases and disadvantages new entrants. Since Apple owns the platform, it’s an…

Yes, but are consumers that knowingly bought into the Apple ecosystem harmed?

Yes. Apple's competitors are suppressed by Apple. Competition would reduce. Thus, consumers would be considered harmed.
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