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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

#131

Post by ajross »

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?

Were Windows 98 users "harmed" because IE5 was bundled with the OS? They "knowingly bought into the Microsoft ecosystem", after all.

Clearly the consensus is that YES, they were harmed, and the proof is the Web 2.0 revolution driven by the eventually broken browser monopoly by Firefox and Chrome. But at the time the tech industry trenches were filled with platform fans cheering Gates et. al. and claiming sincerely to want the benefits of the unified Microsoft Experience.

Every time you take an Uber or reserve an AirBnB you're demonstrating the fallacy of that kind of thinking.

Basically: yes, competition is good always, no matter how tempted you are to believe the opposite.

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

#133

Post by crazygringo »

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.

Comparing a fine with market cap doesn't make a lot of sense.

More logical is to compare it to their yearly profit. Net income was $74B last year.

So the fine is ~0.2% of that, which is pretty significant for something as tiny as having two pop-up messages rather than a single combined one.

And for a regular person making $50K/yr, it would equate to a $100 fine. Not fifteen cents.

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

#134

Post by abduhl »

overfeed wrote: post #118
dkga wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Regulators don’t have to look beyond short term consumer preference (or rather, consumer benefit) with respect to dumping actually, because only the long term aspect of dumping (when prices are raised on consumers after driving competitors out of the market) is illegal. A company is free to burn as much capital as it wants while it is trying to enter and take over a market.

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

#135

Post by edelbitter »

>pop-ups that let users reject tracking

No pop-up is needed to reject what is already banned union-wide. Therefore, a banner that is trying to collect my explicit+specific+informed+voluntary consent to partially lift that ban is not a "pop-up that lets users reject". Its a "pop-up that lets users surrender" some of their rights & freedoms.

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

#136

Post by wkat4242 »

frizlab wrote: post #59
Swenrekcah wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a European Apple user I welcome any and all fines that can be levied on Apple for their anticompetitive practices.

As a European Apple user, I don’t. I specifically WANT the walled garden. It’s one of the reasons why I buy Apple.

It's not as if this will remove that. The same with the sideloading. Nobody's forcing you to use it.

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

#137

Post by wkat4242 »

jonplackett wrote: post #57

Can we just frikkin ban tracking completely and just see how that goes? I do not really care if some businesses can no longer make money in the way they like to. I’m sure they’ll figure it out if they have to. Businesses existed for a loooooong time without tracking their customers. I’m sure they can do it again.

Yeah I so wish the EU would simply do this.

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

#138

Post by scarface_74 »

ajross wrote: post #131
dkga wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Were Windows 98 users "harmed" because IE5 was bundled with the OS? They "knowingly bought into the Microsoft ecosystem", after all. Clearly the consensus is that YES , they were harmed, and the proof is the Web 2.0 revolution driven by the eventually broken browser monopoly by Firefox and Chrome. But at the time the tech industry trenches were filled with platform fans cheering Gates et. al. and claiming sincerely t…

The “consensus” was only in the EU. The US never had a browser mandate and never forced Microsoft to ship Windows without IE.

And browser choice in the EU had little long term affect

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/12/windo...

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

#139

Post by epolanski »

tedunangst wrote: post #69
surgical_fire wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't really matter if you are "fine" with their anti-conpetitive behavior. They should comply to regulations properly.

Why do we have regulations? Who do they benefit?

You

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

#140

Post by epolanski »

briandear wrote: post #115
burnte wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Apple makes more than 10B $ on advertising unless you've been leaving under a rock, and it's virtually all targeted ads.

In fact them limiting more and more third party access to data is just a play to boost their own selling of your data.

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