Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

apnews.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 248 posts

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

#121

Post by rsynnott »

aurareturn wrote: post #45
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.

If it's truly Ireland only, then Tiktok might just exit the country and not pay the fine. Perhaps this is what Ireland wants? Ireland is a small market. It'll take forever to make 530m in profit in Ireland for Tiktok.

It would have to leave Europe. This is being done under the auspices of the EU GDPR.

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

#122

Post by Mistletoe »

2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #100
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...

You think TikTok cares about money? They're a propaganda arm. They don't give a shit about profitability.

Will they really pay it though? I don’t know the rules, etc.

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

#123

Post by PeterStuer »

Rygian wrote: post #82
PurpleRamen wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 'massive' -- by which standards? Other fines? Going by amount, it seems somewhere in the top 20 of highest single case fines of all time. Top 3 if we just look at privacy fines in Europe. > It is high time we got used to companies being fined a reasonable fraction of their revenue How does "getting used to it" changes the classification? It's still a massive amount, even it such numbers are becoming more common. An…

The point being that the actual absolute amount should not get as much attention as the percentage of revenue it represents.

If I have 100M€ in revenue with a 60% margin, a 6% revenue fine while not negliable can be brushed off as the price of doing business. If I have 100M€ revenue with a 2% margin, a 6% fine might mean bankruptcy.

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

#124

Post by rpozarickij »

Aperocky wrote: post #106
nickdothutton wrote: post #103

Reminder: Meta was fined 1.2 billion euro by the Irish data protection authority. May 22, 2023 was the enforcement date. Question: How many euro do you think have been paid as of today, 2nd May 2025?

Don't leave us hanging, none of us know.

I had to look this one up as well as the sibling comment, but the question reminded me of the Betteridge's law of headlines [0] and it looks like this law is indeed applicable here (meaning that nothing has been paid yet).

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headline...

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

#125

Post by curiousObject »

trollbridge wrote: post #86
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.

Ireland's business is whatever Ireland wants it to be, if TikTok wants the pleasure of being allowed to operate in Ireland jurisdictions. And yes, everything a multi-billion dollar company does is indeed the government's business - and the people's business. We have a right to regulate them as we see fit.

>Ireland's business is whatever Ireland wants it to be

Ireland offers a favorable tax and regulatory environment, within the EU, so this punishment is not only Ireland’s business. It represents the EU.

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

#126

Post by graemep »

echoangle wrote: post #30
graemep wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? A nice rational genocide or two? China is an expansionist dictatorship. It would be ridiculous to suggest it is more trustworthy than the US. The US is actually acting rationally IMO. People just look at headlines and do not dig into the reasons. You might not agree with the reasoning, but it is not irrational. For example the tariffs clearly follow from arguments made by Trump's appointees (such as Bessent a…

By that viewpoint, everything is rational. If someone hears voices in their head that tell them to shoot up a school, there’s also some reasoning that may lead them to actually do it. That doesn’t mean it’s rational. Can you give an example of behavior you consider to be irrational?

No, saying a particular thing is rational is very different from claiming everything is rational.

People will make the wildest claims about Trumps' polices, even people who should know better. A good example is Jeffrey Sachs saying Trump's policies should would fail an economics class - but one of the people devising Trump's economic polices got a PhD from Harvard while Sachs was a professor there!

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

#127

Post by Marsymars »

secondcoming wrote: post #74
faraggi wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, the € symbol is a suffix to amounts, not a prefix like $.

Only in some countries. The position of the currency symbol is a locale thing

It very much is a locale thing, not even a country thing - e.g. en-ca and fr-ca have '$' as a prefix/suffix, respectively.

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

#128

Post by [deleted] »

lolinder wrote: post #57
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...

To hurt enough to be worth changing the fines don't have to be a fraction of their global revenue, they have to be significantly more than the benefit gained from the illegal behavior. According to that article TikTok made $10B of that $20B in the US alone, which puts a cap on their European revenue of $10B (likely significantly less because this ignores Brazil and Indonesia, which according to the linked article are…

[deleted]

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

#129

Post by nickdothutton »

Aperocky wrote: post #106
nickdothutton wrote: post #103

Reminder: Meta was fined 1.2 billion euro by the Irish data protection authority. May 22, 2023 was the enforcement date. Question: How many euro do you think have been paid as of today, 2nd May 2025?

Don't leave us hanging, none of us know.

Sorry, I thought HN would naturally assume the right answer immediately. I could have commented "clue: it's a round number". They haven't paid any of it. Probably never will, perhaps in exchange for some job creation. Never take these kinds of announcement of fines at face value when you read them.

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

#130

Post by hbarka »

tlb wrote: post #101
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...

Worse than the small amount is the length of time it took. If you accept the accusations at face value, China has been spying on a large fraction of EU citizens for 4 years and can keep doing it for another 6 months (after which they probably won't actually stop) for the eventual fine of a few dollars per victim. The US isn't moving any faster, and most other countries aren't moving at all. So the end result is that…

Does Meta or X get the same scrutiny or is this the China bogeyman?
Post reply on HN