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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

#171

Post by vaindil »

sitkack wrote: post #155
TheJoeMan wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or snapchat repeatedly asking for my contacts access knowing it’s denied.

Or WhatsApp not allowing you name contacts unless you gave it access to your entire address book so FB can have your entire FOAF graph.

I'm traveling to Europe right now and had to install WhatsApp, and this absolutely infuriated me. You cannot start new chats with anyone (on Android at least) unless you grant it the contacts permission. I'm sure other things are limited too, like you say.

Workarounds include having the other person message you first, or manually typing wa.me/+number into your browser.

Slightly more info: https://android.stackexchange.com/questions/229390

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

#172

Post by pertymcpert »

epolanski wrote: post #149
pertymcpert wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you actually agree with the fine? Don't give users a choice in tracking: complaints Give users a choice in tracking: now it's too many pop ups

The issue here is that Apple only needs one click to sell your data (and yes they do it, they made 11B $ on ads last year) and others need two. In fact Apple is making more and more money on ads because they limit data access to third parties, but still sell yours in search and store.

No, the issue in the article is that 3rd parties feel they need additional consent. That's on them if they choose to do it.

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

#173

Post by iamkonstantin »

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…

Regulation around competition is quite clear. It’s unfortunate that Apple is the kind of company that only reacts after getting sued or fined instead of doing the right thing in the first place.

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

#174

Post by overfeed »

abduhl wrote: post #168
overfeed wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> What mechanism can the regulators use to prevent potential dumpers from entering a market?

The legal system, including the discovery process, and basic accounting to calculate when the selling price is lower than BoM cost.

Now it's your turn to answer my earlier question.

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

#175

Post by nottorp »

zdragnar wrote: post #151
ajross wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Microsoft basically invented AJAX and spurred the entire web 2.0 revolution. Other browsers weren't prevented from being installed. Compare what Apple does on iDevices. Safari comes pre-installed, and every competing browser can only skin the OS engine; competing browsers can't actually port their own offerings. On top of that, if you actually want to sell a browser, Apple will get a cut of your sales. And yet, Apple…

> And yet, Apple's app store and ecosystem doesn't seem to be treated as a monopoly in this regard.

... except in the EU where it's now legal to deliver a non safari browser engine through alternative app stores.

It's just that no one will do it for just the EU...

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

#176

Post by simion314 »

maccard wrote: post #113
simion314 wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Why do we have regulations? Who do they benefit? Weird you still have no idea why. So let me tell you, there was a tribe in a village and they had many rules, some young boys hated the rules so they left and made their own village with no rules. One day one of them made a fire and let it unsupervised and many of their shacks burned so the boys decided that there should be one rule about not letting fires unsupervise…

I like this. Imagine if people from the old village came to the new village and said that they wanted to set up the rules they had in the old village but they want to live in the new village. Some people are perfectly happy in the new village, but the people who came from the old village say that the rules are unfair. As someone who actively wants Apple provide a tighter experience, this is how I feel. I have a nice…

>As someone who actively wants Apple provide a tighter experience, this is how I feel. I have a nice garden that I'm playing in, and others have a sandbox. They like my garden because it's sunny, but they want the rules of their sandbox to apply to my garden. The grown ups let them in, and now there's nowhere to play that doesn't have sand anymore.

The laws are created for all, all people, all companies. We do not give Apple exceptions because reasons like this guy likes it as it is. When Apple decides to do business in a country it accepts the laws there, if they do not like the laws then they can just refuse to do business there.

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

#177

Post by simion314 »

BeFlatXIII wrote: post #91
simion314 wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Why do we have regulations? Who do they benefit? Weird you still have no idea why. So let me tell you, there was a tribe in a village and they had many rules, some young boys hated the rules so they left and made their own village with no rules. One day one of them made a fire and let it unsupervised and many of their shacks burned so the boys decided that there should be one rule about not letting fires unsupervise…

That's some nice story, not relevant facts.

>That's some nice story, not relevant facts.

My response is on topic for the comment it responds. But in case someone else fails to understand the message, the rules are added because someone made something bad intentionally or now,

so can you guess why the companies were forced to add "Unsubscribe" in their emails? do you think someone imagined this rule for no reason ?

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

#178

Post by lodovic »

GuB-42 wrote: post #111
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.

It is not the right question. The goal is not to destroy Apple, it is to force them into compliance. In order to force them into compliance, you only need the fine to be higher than what it costs to comply. And €150M is a lot of money, you can have on the order of a thousand people working on the problem for a year to get even. I am sure they can figure out a way. Same idea with, say, a parking ticket for nonpayment.…

> Same idea with, say, a parking ticket for nonpayment. It may be nothing to a millionaire

It's telling that the former CEO of Apple was famous for driving a car without plates, and parking in handicapped parking spaces, just because he could.

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

#179

Post by ohgr »

izacus wrote: post #124
ohgr wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed. If they really gave a shit they'd be getting Apple to open up their APIs so we can get data out of Reminders and Notes etc without having to resort to necromancy and hacking... Apple need one of these https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/openspecs/

They literally did that too via DMA. Why are you bullshitting? :)

Where’s the documentation and API contracts? How can I get my notes data out?

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

#180

Post by Timon3 »

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?

Does Apple list all the advantages they give themselves over the competition on the iPhone boxes in stores & on their websites? Otherwise the customer can't "knowingly" buy into the ecosystem, they only discover the extent of this once they've bought the device.
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