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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

#161

Post by alabastervlog »

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.

If governments would just ban the bad shiat app vendors do that Apple tries to curb, that’d be great, as it’d remove the main reason I have little practical choice but to use Apple devices.

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

#162

Post by ddxv »

briandear wrote: post #110

Perhaps they should fine the companies that want to do such intrusive tracking? Apple’s not sharing data with third parties for their internal stuff, that’s a big difference when Dominos wants to share with someone that isn’t Dominos.

Apple only blocks sharing links from outside the app Dominos app to other apps (bolstering Apple's ad monopoly). Apple does nothing to stop Domino's from sharing the actual important data 3rd parties track in the Domino's app.

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

#164

Post by apt-apt-apt-apt »

eptcyka wrote: post #108
thebruce87m wrote: post #29

> Benoit Coeure, the head of France's competition authority, "told reporters the regulator had not spelled out how Apple should change its app, but that it was up to the company to make sure it now complied with the ruling," Sounds like a good shakedown to me. Wait until they tweak it then fine them again for getting it “wrong”. I wonder if they even got the chance to change anything before they were fined the first…

Funny how this is exactly the process that one has to go through for getting an app through a review for an app store - you're told you've done something wrong, and it is up to you to fix it. The reviewer will never point out the specific issue they have with your submission.

Worse yet, if you fail to identify and fix it after several attempts, your entire account and all your apps get permanently banned with no feasible recourse.

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

#166

Post by mrgoldenbrown »

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. Reducing competition harms consumers in the long term. If Apple's behavior drives out all third party apps, consumers will be harmed.

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

#167

Post by shuckles »

epolanski wrote: post #140
briandear wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There is a big difference between targeting and tracking.

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

#168

Post by abduhl »

overfeed wrote: post #150
abduhl wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What mechanism can the regulators use to prevent competition going out of business while maintaining the artificially low prices? Ban price hikes after the competition is dead? What if the dumper decides to leave the market entirely after destroying the competition? [see Walmart leaving small towns, and the resulting food deserts]. The more proactive approach is tractable since it preserves competition (easy) instead…

What mechanism can the regulators use to prevent potential dumpers from entering a market? Setting price controls on the entire economy? What if the market is currently beholden to a decentralized monopoly with artificially high prices? [see taxis and the arguments people made for Uber’s existence despite it being an obvious dumping operation]

The more proactive approach requires an omniscient regulator that you hope preserves competition but really can only guarantee current prices and incumbent profits.

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

#169

Post by shuckles »

epolanski wrote: post #144
dinkblam wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

You're completely unaware of the financial shenanigans that US tech does in Europe. I'll just leave you with the fact that Apple across two decades paid pennies in taxes in Italy (claiming few millions in revenues) because they would have bullshit like Apple Ireland selling Apple Italy iPhones for 1000€s and selling them for 1000€s plus vat. Meanwhile Apple Ireland was buying those iPhones for the pennies it costs to…

The Double Irish arrangement is 45 years old and used by basically every multinational in Europe.

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

#170

Post by shuckles »

ddxv wrote: post #162
briandear wrote: post #110

Perhaps they should fine the companies that want to do such intrusive tracking? Apple’s not sharing data with third parties for their internal stuff, that’s a big difference when Dominos wants to share with someone that isn’t Dominos.

Apple only blocks sharing links from outside the app Dominos app to other apps (bolstering Apple's ad monopoly). Apple does nothing to stop Domino's from sharing the actual important data 3rd parties track in the Domino's app.

Huh? Basically every sentence in your comment is wrong. Apps can link to other apps. There's an entire framework called Universal Links to support this. And Apple is the only platform maker that requires apps to ask for permission before sharing data for tracking.
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