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

At this point, I am convinced EU fines American tech companies for fun.

And you're wrong.

That being said in that specific case this is odd because in general:

- EU (albeit not France) gives plenty of time to OS developers to adapt and often talks to them directly when they are as big as Apple

- The timing makes it look like with a different less disruptive administration it would've went differently

In any case US companies abusing any possible loophole for paying pennies for decades in Europe don't get any sympathy by me.

I would ordinarily say something along the lines of “don’t blatantly break laws and you won’t be fined”, but this is a minor implementation detail. There are so many bigger fish to fry in consumer rights space that it just looks petty. And it’s questionable whether a law is even broken.

It still surprises me how far the US has declined in pretty much all qualities of life. But Hacker News still has this sect of a community that despite EU regulations. Ones they crave from American governments.

Like, do we want protections from corporations or to continue to let them stomp on using hopes they become the corporation one day?