> while Meta drew a penalty of €200 million for its "pay or consent" advertising model, which requires that European Union users pay to access ad-free versions of Facebook and Instagram Wait, isn't pretty much all web content is like this nowadays? You have to buy youtube premium to avoid ads, how is it different?
Pay or have your information harvested and sold. Its extortion.
Apple and Meta fined millions for breaching EU law
471–480 of 635 posts
Re: Apple and Meta fined millions for breaching EU law
#472Earlier quoted context omitted.
Technically, the first amendment applies only to state actors, not private entities. See Manhattan Community Access Corp. v. Halleck, Hudgens v. NLRB, and many other cases that upheld this interpretation. Private companies like Apple can restrict free speech on their platforms legally (at least as far as the first amendment is concerned). That said, I believe in the principle of free speech, especially as envisioned…
> Technically, the first amendment applies only to state actors, not private entities. That's probably not what the person you're responding to is talking about. Americans have this unfortunate tendency to harp on and on about 'free speech' in contexts where the first amendment obviously does not apply, or, even more intriguingly/ironically, where the first amendment pretty clearly states the exact opposite. For exam…
I can imagine at least one more:
4. Americans believe companies too frequently do the government's bidding, and by allowing corporations to suppress speech, they're allowing the government to exploit that and indirectly violate their direct 1A rights.
Re: Apple and Meta fined millions for breaching EU law
#473Earlier quoted context omitted.
> would collapse millions of small businesses How? And do they have the right to exist if their only income is targeted ads?
How do you expect small businesses to acquire customers? Spending tens of millions of dollars competing in generalized ad space to reach the same audience they can reach today with $1000? Most small businesses that exist today would become nonviable overnight , and that is a huge chunk of the economy. Sure, you can say "they shouldn't have the right to exist" because they use targeted ads, but I have yet to hear a so…
I discovered most small businesses that I use through word of month, seeing them while traveling or active search through google or google maps. The ones that I may have discovered through ad where through local physical add such as any box fliers or fliers/posters in other local businesses.
Re: Apple and Meta fined millions for breaching EU law
#474Earlier quoted context omitted.
How do you expect small businesses to acquire customers? Spending tens of millions of dollars competing in generalized ad space to reach the same audience they can reach today with $1000? Most small businesses that exist today would become nonviable overnight , and that is a huge chunk of the economy. Sure, you can say "they shouldn't have the right to exist" because they use targeted ads, but I have yet to hear a so…
Do you seriously think that ? My experience is so dissociated that I think it unbelievable. I don't remember ever seeing an ad for a small business on the web, even less discovered one through them. I discovered most small businesses that I use through word of month, seeing them while traveling or active search through google or google maps. The ones that I may have discovered through ad where through local physical…
Re: Apple and Meta fined millions for breaching EU law
#475Earlier quoted context omitted.
That is not so clear. Appstore revenue is ~ $100 billion/y, but Apple makes less than 30% from that. So the question is: Would more convincing compliance have cost Apple more than single digit percentage decreases in Appstore sales? Comparing the F-Droid vs Playstore situation, this seems unlikely to me.
Apple’s take is 30%, but they have expenses that have to be covered by that. The profit if any would be much less than $30bn.
Whether Apple can be cheaper isn't really the point (they should be, digital services are a very high margin business). It's that they're anti-competitive to the point that the market for paid apps and in-app payments became inefficient (in a financial sense).
Re: Apple and Meta fined millions for breaching EU law
#476Earlier quoted context omitted.
How do you expect small businesses to acquire customers? Spending tens of millions of dollars competing in generalized ad space to reach the same audience they can reach today with $1000? Most small businesses that exist today would become nonviable overnight , and that is a huge chunk of the economy. Sure, you can say "they shouldn't have the right to exist" because they use targeted ads, but I have yet to hear a so…
Let me guess, there were no small businesses in the whole world before the advent of digital automated targeted ads?
Re: Apple and Meta fined millions for breaching EU law
#477Earlier quoted context omitted.
Conversely, you can justify any authoritarian unjust law because "that's how we like it." "Deporting brown people without due process? That's how we like it, who are you to complain? You're free to not work with the US, but we know you will!" Obviously a nuanced and meaningful conversation goes much deeper than "that's how we like it." Why is it such an infringement on user rights to not be allowed to use a website i…
Funny choice of example considering that it is the US that is currently deporting people without due process.
Re: Apple and Meta fined millions for breaching EU law
#478Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, the EU has made it illegal to extort payment before allowing people to opt-out of data collection or profiling.
Extortion is a stretch. Nobody is being forced to use these services.
Re: Apple and Meta fined millions for breaching EU law
#479Earlier quoted context omitted.
Apple’s take is 30%, but they have expenses that have to be covered by that. The profit if any would be much less than $30bn.
> The profit if any would be much less than $30bn. It doesn't cost that much to maintain and run the appstore, it is almost all profits.
I guess that kind of thinking that everything is basically free is why alot of startups just fail so easily.
Re: Apple and Meta fined millions for breaching EU law
#480> Under the DMA, app developers distributing their apps via Apple's App Store should be able to inform customers, free of charge, of alternative offers outside the App Store, steer them to those offers and allow them to make purchases. To me, this is the most easily agreeable part of what the EU has been after. It is unfair that Apple restricts Netflix from telling it's users that they can sign up and pay for Netlifx…
>the most easily agreeable part of what the EU has been after It's also probably the most dangerous for Apple. It creates a cash incentive to push people outside of Apple's walled garden and show them what's outside. I really really hope Apple gets its act together, they are the greatest "the user experience comes first" company and they actually have great hard tech but they show signs of rent seeking behavior which…
They've been hard rent-seeking since iTunes and iPod. They aggressively eliminated and made inconvenient other ways for getting music onto iPods. Hardware was great, but hard dependence on iTunes killed it for me.