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

(arstechnica.com)
249 points sebastian_z | 10 comments | 31 Mar 25 17:38 UTC | HN request time: 1.018s | source | bottom
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gruez ◴[31 Mar 25 18:36 UTC] No.43538202[source]▶
No good deed goes unpunished. Don't protect users' privacy, and you get flak from regulators for "not doing enough". Protect users' privacy, and you get flak from regulators because it's "too complex and hurts small companies that rely on advertising revenue". You see similar levels of cynicism directed at Google. When firefox banned third party cookies, it was almost universally welcomed, but when Chrome does it the cynics come out and say how it's actually some sort dastardly ploy to cement their position in the ad market because third party adtech firms are disproportionately harmed.
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1. ohgr ◴[31 Mar 25 19:37 UTC] No.43538936[source]▶
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/

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2. ginko ◴[31 Mar 25 19:49 UTC] No.43539067[source]▶
You seriously underestimate the size of EU countries' budgets if you think $150M would even register.
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3. briandear ◴[31 Mar 25 22:15 UTC] No.43540554[source]▶
As an Apple user, I don’t want third party apps to be able to have access to that data. Apple has earned my trust, but most third party apps have not.

I buy Apple specifically because I want the level of privacy that their platform provides. If third party devs don’t like it, they can ship for Android.

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4. izacus ◴[31 Mar 25 22:25 UTC] No.43540619[source]▶
They literally did that too via DMA. Why are you bullshitting? :)
replies(1): >>43543503 #
5. ◴[31 Mar 25 23:30 UTC] No.43541167[source]▶
6. epolanski ◴[01 Apr 25 00:41 UTC] No.43541637[source]▶
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 make them (few hundred $ at best) and thanks to Irish corporate taxes being close to non existent (0.5%) Apple has paid virtually nothing for decades.

If you believe that us European voters love our countries to be subsidized by rich American countries you're out of your mind, but what we dislike is being taken advantage over and over.

replies(1): >>43542594 #
7. epolanski ◴[01 Apr 25 00:43 UTC] No.43541651{3}[source]▶
You know you're free to just not use a feature, application, or deny consent?

Privacy is about making access transparent, not by having customers in tiers.

I swear there's a parallel world with lunatics saying they are glad that only XCode can access their file system and processes and they don't want that Vim, VSC, Emacs or IntelliJ crap.

8. shuckles ◴[01 Apr 25 03:38 UTC] No.43542594[source]▶
The Double Irish arrangement is 45 years old and used by basically every multinational in Europe.
9. ohgr ◴[01 Apr 25 06:35 UTC] No.43543503{3}[source]▶
Where’s the documentation and API contracts? How can I get my notes data out?
10. johnnyanmac ◴[01 Apr 25 11:23 UTC] No.43545449{3}[source]▶
Funny, they burned that trust for many by being so opaque on every level of their pipeline, from consumers to developers, from hardware to software.