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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

#181

Post by gaiagraphia »

crazygringo wrote: post #153
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...

Just a nitpick -- a fraction of their profit (net income), not revenue. Most of revenue already goes out the door as expenses. If you fined as a reasonable fraction of revenue, you'd simply bankrupt a corporation, which is not what you want if your goal is to change behavior. If global revenue is $20B and we assume 20% profitability, that's $4B, and so this fine is 15% of global profit. That's a gigantic fine. You al…

The internal operations of a company shoud be irrelevant to nations.

If a company is taking £billion out of a nation's spending power, and doing so with nefarious practices, that's what should be fined.

If bankruptcy is a worry, then comapnies shouldn't fly so close to the sun when adopting immoral practices.

Income is the only reliable thing you can tax. Trying to calculate profit for international companies is an absolute joke which is massively inefficient. Why an Earth should governments employ entire teams to second guess internal bookkeeping?

If you want to take a billion from a nation's citizens, better be sure you're providing a legal service. I mean, are drug dealers punished on profit?

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

#182

Post by GeoAtreides »

crazygringo wrote: post #153
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...

Just a nitpick -- a fraction of their profit (net income), not revenue. Most of revenue already goes out the door as expenses. If you fined as a reasonable fraction of revenue, you'd simply bankrupt a corporation, which is not what you want if your goal is to change behavior. If global revenue is $20B and we assume 20% profitability, that's $4B, and so this fine is 15% of global profit. That's a gigantic fine. You al…

>You also have to remember that tons of these regulations are vague and unclear and massively open to interpretation, and that companies can genuinely believe they are complying, and their lawyers agree, but then judges still rule otherwise, because it's ultimately just a matter of opinion because of the vagueness.

This is the equivalent of the famous Babbage anecdote, but for the law. That's absolutely not how the law or regulatory compliance works, not in Europe at least.

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

#183

Post by aurareturn »

master-lincoln wrote: post #134
aurareturn wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 s…

  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.
I think it's valid. Fix yourself first. Telling someone else to stop doing something you're doing yourself is meaningless - especially when the EU is trying to position as the morally superior entity.

  I fail to see why that could be the case. Why would different values support peace?
Because we've seen what happens when Europe has more power than the rest of the world. It wasn't pretty for the rest of the world. Let's see what China can do.

  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.
Yes, I'm assuming that. EU wants to be a leader. EU wants to sanction countries they think is doing something wrong. So why doesn't EU sanction itself first?

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

#184

Post by yupyupyups »

lukan wrote: post #10
udev4096 wrote: post #4

Whoever cares about privacy would certainly stay away from TokTok. This is just absurd. Ban the app already

"Ban the app already" And FB, Insta, Google, Youtube, ..? The only difference with TikTok is that it is based in china.

Yes, ban those too.

We need services that respect user privacy and are not a longterm security threat.

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

#185

Post by yupyupyups »

_Algernon_ wrote: post #19
seydor wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The relationship between EU and US is certainly closer than China

Questionable whether that will still be true in 4 years. At least China can still be expected to operate rationally.

>rationally

Predictably, not rationally.

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

#186

Post by hulitu »

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...

> 'massive' -- by which standards?

By "EC" [1] standards. If you not pay for the product "EC", you are the product. Microsoft, Google, Apple, Amazon pay good money to "EC".

[1] European commision.

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

#188

Post by 2OEH8eoCRo0 »

TechDebtDevin wrote: post #169
2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Weird that a "communist propaganda arm" would donate millions upon millions to RIGHT WING American Politicians/Parties who oppose almost all leftist beliefs, and have a board made up partly of Western Capitalists. [0]: https://www.barrons.com/articles/trump-campaign-donations-ti... [1]: https://www.msnbc.com/the-reidout/reidout-blog/tiktok-ceo-tr... [2]: https://mezha.media/en/2025/01/17/tiktok-to-be-the-main-spon...…

What's weird that an expansionist superpower would donate to the isolationists of another superpower?

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

#190

Post by BobaFloutist »

SequoiaHope wrote: post #170
TechDebtDevin wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've still yet to see any evidence that TikTok is anymore of a spying/espionage tool than your average app on any device. But I guess if people just keep repeating that It will make it true. Never mind, I forgot, Western Intelligence orgs are trusted sources of truth and definitely wouldn't spy on me or lie to me. My Bad!

I don’t think anyone credible is taking the position that Meta and Google and Microsoft don’t spy for the US government but TikTok does spy for the Chinese government. This is simply a transparent double standard.

It's only a double standard if you consider the Chinese government to be functionallly identical to the US government, which I don't.
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