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

(arstechnica.com)
250 points sebastian_z | 3 comments | 31 Mar 25 17:38 UTC | HN request time: 0.632s | source
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thebruce87m ◴[31 Mar 25 18:48 UTC] No.43538352[source]▶
> 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 time. And all because the regulator wants users to be advertised to more?

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refulgentis ◴[31 Mar 25 19:23 UTC] No.43538754[source]▶
> "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,"...shakedown

I wonder if this sheds light: if they said exactly what to do, there's a strong argument that they went too far when business regulators became UI designers.

> Wait until they tweak it then fine them again for getting it “wrong”

I don't worry too much about it, I used to work at Google, companies and regulatory authorities are in constant contact. Generally, I haven't yet seen a company claim to have addressed a situation then gotten fined again.

> And all because the regulator wants users to be advertised to more?

I can't find that bit in the article and I haven't heard it before: could you share some more?

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thebruce87m ◴[31 Mar 25 19:36 UTC] No.43538929[source]▶
> I can't find that bit in the article and I haven't heard it before: could you share some more?

> The Autorité also found that the rules governing the interaction between the different pop-up windows displayed undermined the neutrality of the framework, causing definite economic harm to application publishers and advertising service providers.

https://www.autoritedelaconcurrence.fr/en/press-release/targ...

“Economic harm to … advertising service providers” says it implicitly.

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1. refulgentis ◴[31 Mar 25 23:02 UTC] No.43540944[source]▶
I'm sorry, I'm sure I'm still missing something: my simpleton understanding is taking action to ensure neutrality, implies they want consumers to see more ads?
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2. thebruce87m ◴[01 Apr 25 06:58 UTC] No.43543660[source]▶
Which of these options in isolation will result in economic harm to an advertising company?

A) A consumer seeing more of their ads B) A consumer seeing the same number of ads C) A consumer seeing less of their ads

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3. refulgentis ◴[01 Apr 25 18:34 UTC] No.43550045[source]▶
I feel talked down to :) C. It sounds to my simpleton ear like I should assume demand for ad slots will grow due to a supplier having less of a monopoly, but I'm struggling to find a step to add to my little overly(?) rational analysis that leads to that conclusion.