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

(arstechnica.com)
249 points sebastian_z | 2 comments | 31 Mar 25 17:38 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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nottorp ◴[31 Mar 25 17:45 UTC] No.43537683[source]▶
Actually Apple were fined because they don't apply the same standard to their own pop-ups that allow users to reject tracking. On Apple popups you seem to need one click, while on 3rd party popups you need to confirm twice.

So the fine seems to be for treating 3rd parties differently from their own stuff.

They could make their own popups require double confirmation instead...

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tedunangst ◴[31 Mar 25 19:38 UTC] No.43538944[source]▶
I'm actually okay with the Apple Camera app asking me once and the Domino's Pizza app having to ask me twice. Who are the consumers being harmed here?
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arrosenberg ◴[31 Mar 25 19:51 UTC] No.43539089[source]▶
It's anti-competitive. Apple owns the platform and is giving preference to it's own apps on that platform. Every non-Apple app that competes with an Apple app is harmed.
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st3fan ◴[31 Mar 25 21:18 UTC] No.43540088[source]▶
This is not what this case is about.
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arrosenberg ◴[31 Mar 25 21:40 UTC] No.43540282[source]▶
Seems like it’s roughly what it is about. Apple has a mandatory consent, but won’t adapt it so that third party apps can integrate their own tracking consent into it. As a result third party apps are treated differently than first party because they have one fewer consent screen. That advantages entrenched incumbents with big, locked-in user bases and disadvantages new entrants. Since Apple owns the platform, it’s anticompetitive to pass regulations (which is what Apple is doing here) that discriminate against other participants in a way that acts as a competitive advantage.
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dkga ◴[31 Mar 25 22:02 UTC] No.43540448[source]▶
Yes, but are consumers that knowingly bought into the Apple ecosystem harmed?
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ajross ◴[31 Mar 25 23:23 UTC] No.43541094[source]▶
Were Windows 98 users "harmed" because IE5 was bundled with the OS? They "knowingly bought into the Microsoft ecosystem", after all.

Clearly the consensus is that YES, they were harmed, and the proof is the Web 2.0 revolution driven by the eventually broken browser monopoly by Firefox and Chrome. But at the time the tech industry trenches were filled with platform fans cheering Gates et. al. and claiming sincerely to want the benefits of the unified Microsoft Experience.

Every time you take an Uber or reserve an AirBnB you're demonstrating the fallacy of that kind of thinking.

Basically: yes, competition is good always, no matter how tempted you are to believe the opposite.

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scarface_74 ◴[01 Apr 25 00:23 UTC] No.43541520[source]▶
The “consensus” was only in the EU. The US never had a browser mandate and never forced Microsoft to ship Windows without IE.

And browser choice in the EU had little long term affect

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/12/windo...

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1. ajross ◴[01 Apr 25 00:35 UTC] No.43541591[source]▶
FWIW, that's just saying that government antitrust action didn't break the monopoly in question, not that it wasn't harmful. Clearly it was harmful. And Apple's is too.
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2. scarface_74 ◴[01 Apr 25 00:45 UTC] No.43541656[source]▶
And yet and still without government intervention, Chrome now dominates to the point where Microsoft gave up and now uses the Chromium engine.

Just maybe if the EU spent more time encouraging innovation instead of passing laws, they would have a real tech industry.

Every Mac and Windows user who uses Chrome made an affirmative choice to download Chrome and didn’t need the government to help them make a decision.

Today in the US, even though the average selling price of an iPhone is twice that of an Android where there are dozens of choices and Android is backed by a trillion dollar company, 70% of users in the US choose iPhones.

In every single country, people with more money choose Apple devices using their own free will even though there are dozens of cheaper Android devices to choose from.

Just like people said “no” to ad tracking when given a choice and now the ad tech industry isn’t happy with that choice.