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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

#131

Post by jdietrich »

docdeek wrote: post #44
noirscape wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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.

Malta is simply too small to accommodate the European headquarters of a major tech company. It's not enough to just put a brass plaque on a door - you need to actually run your EU operations primarily in that country. Meta and Google have thousands of staff in Ireland.

Malta is (along with Gibraltar) a preferred destination for gambling operators.

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

#132

Post by dmix »

ziddoap wrote: post #112
dmix wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 year…

> When viewed as a percent of their annual revenue,

I've always found this viewpoint a bit childish, with little regard for how businesses work IRL (even the ignoring the obvious profits vs revenue part). Reminds me of how every comment section re: some crime story is people calling for death penalty or how a mob should kill them first. Justice is never that simple.

I understand people want businesses they don't like to simply not exist anymore but that doesn't mean it's rational to throw up insane fines because you spent 2min doing back of a napkin math of revenue * (imaginary deterrent %)

> 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!

The Chinese government doesn't need to pay companies to exfiltrate data from companies within their reach.

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

#133

Post by input_sh »

hbarka wrote: post #130
tlb wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

X is rumored to be hit with a billion dollar fine soon(ish), so yes: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/03/technology/eu-penalties-x...

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

#134

Post by master-lincoln »

aurareturn wrote: post #80
master-lincoln wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

EU has issues with human rights violations regularly happening in China. China has even sanctioned European politicians voicing critique. Only recently some of those sanctions were lifted by China so they can negotiate trade agreements with the EU. China might be more reliable than the US right now, but ideologically they are further away from the EU than the US I think.

EU has issues with human rights violations regularly happening in China. China has even sanctioned European politicians voicing critique. Does China sanction France for its role in suppressing parts of Africa?[0] In the video comments, a lot of French citizens never even heard about it. That tells you that the French government is also hiding a ton of atrocities it's committing to its citizens, right? Why is the EU j…

I don't think it's valid to say you can only criticize somebody if you are doing better on that front. We should all watch and criticize other countries so humanity can improve.

> Perhaps China not having the same values of European powers is a good thing in terms of overall peace?

I fail to see why that could be the case. Why would different values support peace?

> I would love to hear from EU citizens on why they should be the judge of all human moral values when their countries have arguably done more collectively to disturb the peace of others in the last 300 years than any country in Asia.

Again you assume one is only able to voice concerns if you are doing better in a certain area. You are also treating different governments of different times in a country as a single entity. FYI: In most countries there is more than one party in government over time and parties have different values.

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

#135

Post by AlchemistCamp »

DrScientist wrote: post #20
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.

The Irish regulator is acting on behalf of the EU as TikTok European head quarters are in Ireland. And in terms of jurisdiction - it's a bit like you visiting Ireland on holiday and committing a crime - and then arguing they have no jurisdiction over you as you are only there for 2 weeks.

Sure, it's fine for Ireland to punish someone for a crime committed in Ireland, but my question was about what bearing revenue earned on other continents was any business of Ireland's.

A more accurate version of your analogy would be Ireland choosing to punish a tourist for littering with a dramatically higher penalty than native Irish would face based on their New York salary.

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

#136

Post by AlchemistCamp »

graemep wrote: post #22
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 was acting on behalf of the EU, so at the very least the fine should be substantial relative to EU revenues. The law does say global revenues, and I think that is a deterrent to treating fines as just a cost of doing business.

Yeah, relative to EU revenues would be fairly reasonable.

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

#137

Post by ziddoap »

dmix wrote: post #132
ziddoap wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 year…

> When viewed as a percent of their annual revenue, I've always found this viewpoint a bit childish, with little regard for how businesses work IRL (even the ignoring the obvious profits vs revenue part). Reminds me of how every comment section re: some crime story is people calling for death penalty or how a mob should kill them first. Justice is never that simple. I understand people want businesses they don't like…

>I've always found this viewpoint a bit childish,

It's childish to view fines as a percent of revenue rather than an absolute number...? That's certainly an odd take.

Fines are meant to be a deterrent. If you fine Microsoft $50,000 they will literally not notice. If you fine my locally owned convenience store $50,000 they will probably be forced to close. It's absurd to ignore that.

>I understand people want businesses they don't like to simply not exist anymore

I did not say this, or anything close to it.

My entire point was that looking at a number in a vacuum and saying "that's massive" or "that's not that big" is silly. What's "massive" to some companies is a tiny blip on the radar of other companies.

I cannot understand anyone who thinks looking at fines in context is "childish".

Not looking at fines in context is something only the largest and richest of companies would be a proponent for, because it would make the fines absolutely meaningless for them while being effective against anyone smaller.

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

#138

Post by AlchemistCamp »

scott_w wrote: post #97
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.

Why not? A country can, for the most part, set whatever level of fines they want within law. You can make an argument about the practicality of any given punishment but that's separate from the morality (which, from the tone of your comment, I assume is where you're coming from).

Sure. A country can set "whatever level of fines they want within law". For example, Russia assessed a $20,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 against Google. https://edition.cnn.com/2024/10/31/tech/google-fines-russia/...

At the base level, I suppose my point was about morality, but my intent was about rationality. A country can write laws that it can take all the money a company earns across the entire globe, but it's not a very reasonable position, IMO.

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

#140

Post by lukeschlather »

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…

The thing is, TikTok is not accused of directly profiting off of this, they are accused of operating as part of the Chinese espionage apparatus. Assuming that this is the case, TikTok is going to be happy to continue paying fines as long as they break even worldwide. And the US is making no serious attempts to rein in this sort of behavior so they've got all that US profit to use.
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