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Irish privacy watchdog hits TikTok with €530M fine over data transfers to China

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Re: Irish privacy watchdog hits TikTok with €530M fine over data transfers to China

#111

Post by rsynnott »

dmix wrote: post #90
prof-dr-ir wrote: post #7

'massive' -- by which standards? It is high time we got used to companies being fined a reasonable fraction of their revenue. And TikTok's global revenue last year alone was estimated at $20 billion to $26 billion [1]. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/17/technology/tiktok-ban-byt...

How is $600M not massive?

Arguably it's still at a level where it could be considered a cost of doing business. One school of thought is that for corporate punishment to be an effective deterrent it has to be _existential_; if you tell a company "if you do an illegal thing that makes you an extra billion dollars a year, we might eventually get around to fining you a few hundred million", then the rational company will say "sure, send us the bill whenever", and get on with doing the illegal thing.

Re: Irish privacy watchdog hits TikTok with €530M fine over data transfers to China

#112

Post by ziddoap »

dmix wrote: post #90
prof-dr-ir wrote: post #7

'massive' -- by which standards? It is high time we got used to companies being fined a reasonable fraction of their revenue. And TikTok's global revenue last year alone was estimated at $20 billion to $26 billion [1]. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/17/technology/tiktok-ban-byt...

How is $600M not massive?

When viewed as a percent of their annual revenue, rather than an absolute number, it's not really all that massive. It's like 3% or so.

And you can't really just look at the 3%, you have to factor in what benefits (money, political sway, whatever) they received in exchange for the data. For simplicity, if they got paid, I don't know, $150M/yr from China for the data and they've been sending data for (at least) 4 years... They would have made a profit despite the fine!

($150M is obviously pulled out of my ass, just as a demonstration of how when you look at the fines from a bigger context, it might just be a line item on the expense report that's worth taking the risk on)

Re: Irish privacy watchdog hits TikTok with €530M fine over data transfers to China

#113

Post by _Algernon_ »

lukan wrote: post #107
_Algernon_ wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US is already unlawfully sending people to foreign prisons. The US has over decades worked with dictatorships where it benefited them. The US has repeatedly and systematically overthrown legitimate democratic governments in favor of dictatorships where it benefited them. The US is founded on genocide of native Americans. The US has time and time again invaded countries for their resources. The US is the only coun…

"So far I see very little action from China" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_involving_the_Peo... I would argue with them getting stronger, they might get more active. Their fish trawlers behave pretty agressive worldwide. And they are part of their military.

Fair point but US still comes out on top:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_involving_the_Uni...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_involving_the_Uni...

Re: Irish privacy watchdog hits TikTok with €530M fine over data transfers to China

#114

Post by rsynnott »

AlchemistCamp wrote: post #11
prof-dr-ir wrote: post #7

'massive' -- by which standards? It is high time we got used to companies being fined a reasonable fraction of their revenue. And TikTok's global revenue last year alone was estimated at $20 billion to $26 billion [1]. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/17/technology/tiktok-ban-byt...

What bearing does their global revenue have on what Ireland has any jurisdiction to fine them? I'm not a fan or user of TikTok, but what they earn on other continents is none of Ireland's business.

These secrets are contained deep within the article, which of course it is highly improper to read on this here orange website:

> The Irish national watchdog serves as TikTok’s lead data privacy regulator in the 27-nation EU because the company’s European headquarters is based in Dublin.

This is likely under the GDPR, whose penalties are based on global revenue. If TikTok doesn't like it, it is of course free to cease activity in Europe (strictly speaking the GDPR also protects European citizens outside of Europe, but in practice if a company doesn't operate in Europe there is little that the EU can do).

Re: Irish privacy watchdog hits TikTok with €530M fine over data transfers to China

#115

Post by tailspin2019 »

pjc50 wrote: post #55
SilverBirch wrote: post #40

Two things I wonder about: first are these fines actually going to happen or is the sort of thing where it gets appealed indefinitely. And second, where do the fines go? It sounds a lot like since Ireland is where Tiktok is getting fined the fines go to the Irish government which would seem crazy. The fines are assessed in the context of the full EU, but only Ireland gets the revenue? This is broken.

UK: the regulator which issues the fine pays almost all of it (minus some expense recovery) into the consolidated fund, i.e. the same pot as taxes. This is roughly what I'd expect. The EU does very little law enforcement directly , most is done through national regulators. This is the reverse of the Apple situation, where the EU fined the Irish government for not collecting enough taxes from Apple.

For clarity, I don’t think the UK is involved in this at all.

This seems to be a fine issued in the Republic of Ireland which is not part of the UK (but, unlike the UK, is still part of the EU).

Re: Irish privacy watchdog hits TikTok with €530M fine over data transfers to China

#116

Post by rsynnott »

noirscape wrote: post #23
AlchemistCamp wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What bearing does their global revenue have on what Ireland has any jurisdiction to fine them? I'm not a fan or user of TikTok, but what they earn on other continents is none of Ireland's business.

It's a case involving their European customers. If you do business in Europe, there's a bunch of (good!) privacy regulations you have to comply with. One of these is that you're not allowed to transfer the data to a jurisdiction that doesn't follow equivalent protections to the GDPR[0]. TikTok transferred European user data to their Chinese servers, which is a pretty obvious no-go, since the Chinese government is an…

> Every major tech company is therefore in Ireland because the country is small enough to essentially steamroll local politicians with lobby money

It's more about taxes and an efficient well-understood legal system (similar to the Delaware advantage on the latter). While the DPC used to be kinda useless, it has somewhat gotten its act together, and today issues most of the big GDPR fines. If you were trying to specifically avoid GDPR scrutiny, you'd locate elsewhere.

Re: Irish privacy watchdog hits TikTok with €530M fine over data transfers to China

#117

Post by pjc50 »

s_dev wrote: post #99

There’s a lot of frustration and cynicism in this thread, but I suspect some misunderstandings might be fuelling it. First off, Ireland is part of the EU, and under GDPR’s 'one-stop-shop' system, the country where a company has its EU headquarters in Ireland, in the case of many tech giants it takes the lead on enforcement for the entire EU. So when Ireland’s regulator fines a company under GDPR, they’re essentially…

It would really help to have some references on the details of the fine routing, because this comes up a lot. Dozens of posts here, and it always gets argued over when GDPR is mentioned.

Re: Irish privacy watchdog hits TikTok with €530M fine over data transfers to China

#118

Post by rsynnott »

noirscape wrote: post #84
docdeek wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you know if there is a reason they would not domicile in Malta? It's an EU Member State, English speaking, and if buying off politicians in Ireland is easy, it must be easier in Malta with a population of only 550,000 people.

My guess is just physical/lazy reasons. Before this, they were homed in the UK, whose special arrangements meant that they could avoid a lot of EU regulations that way. Then Brexit happened and they just moved to the nearest available option.

Yeah, this is pretty ahistorical; most multinational tech companies already had their EU headquarters in Ireland before Brexit. A lot of companies _did_ move operations from the UK to Ireland (or sometimes the Netherlands) as a result of Brexit, but it was mostly financial and insurance companies (plus some pharma, medical devices etc), and those didn't generally move their headquarters if they weren't already in Ireland.

Re: Irish privacy watchdog hits TikTok with €530M fine over data transfers to China

#119

Post by rsynnott »

skeeter2020 wrote: post #81
diggan wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And second, where do the fines go? Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but the income from the money eventually flows into the overall EU budget, so it's like we (EU residents) get a tiny rebate on our taxes. But seems to also depend on each country, Spain is somewhat unique in that the DPA seems to keep it themselves.

>> so it's like we (EU residents) get a tiny rebate on our taxes. Don't know specifically about this scenario, but I've never seen a government's general revenues account treated like this. Governments rarely pay "dividends" - unless you're a targeted voting block they decide to go after.

The EU, specifically, essentially runs a balanced budget, so increased revenue from stuff other than member state contributions will reduce the required member state contributions. Of course how each member state funds those and what it does with them if they get cheaper is up to that member state.
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