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Commission opens non-compliance investigations against Alphabet, Apple and Meta
- smartbit 3y agoOriginal https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_24_1689 https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_24_... see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39814690 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39814690
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- mebazaa 3y agoI love the DMA. But if you have to launch a long, sprawling compliance investigation the minute the law enters in force, it might mean you didn’t write it with enough precision…
- ivan_gammel 3y ago…or it means that subjects didn’t take it seriously enough or are ready to die on this hill.
- izacus 3y agoWhat does checking whether companies actually complied with a law that's been published for years have to do with precision? (Lack of precision tends to be a US legal weasel word actually meaning "you didn't leave us loopholes to exploit".)
- kristjansson 3y agoA company will obey the law _exactly_ to the point it's binding. Intentionally making the boundary of law fuzzy[1] with the hope of restraining actors to its _inner_ margin is foolish; they're going to push to the absolute _outer_ margin of plausible interpretations, and find out where the line really is when they get fined. [1]: sorry sorry sorry, predicating an entire system of law on 'I mean when I mean not what I say'
- boxed 3y agoDoesn't it just mean the companies affected are flaunting the law?
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- chongli 3y agoI think you mean flouting (ignoring or defying) the law. Flaunting means to display or show off, like going to the beach in a bikini after working so hard to get in shape.
- hyperdimension 3y agoWow, I've said flaunting (the law, rules, et c.) the whole time. Thanks!
- boxed 3y agoYou can probably continue doing so: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/flaunt https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/flaunt
- yard2010 3y agoWell they kinda do that. "Look at what we can do, normal laws don't apply to us"
- chongli 3y agoThat’s flaunting their sense of impunity though, not flaunting the law itself which they didn’t draft.
- boxed 3y agoHuh. Interesting. I have never heard anyone say "flouting", but I have heard "flaunting" hundreds or thousands of times. Seems the confusion has been common enough for long enough that it's correct now: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/flaunt https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/flaunt Similar to any word really.. if enough people use it a certain way, then that is the correct way by definition.
- rsynnott 3y agoRealistically, unless a law is so targeted that it's basically an act of attainder, you're going to need an investigation, and if the target of the investigation is a multinational, that investigation is going to be long and complex.
- noirscape 3y agoIt's moreso that all major gatekeepers under investigation (note that not all Gatekeepers are under investigation - Amazon and ByteDance aren't) didn't even try to be compliant with the proposed legislation - they attempted to lobby against it, take overly literal interpretations to make the legislation seem crazy and so on and so forth. They had 2 years to be compliant with the DMA. All of them waited until the last second and all of them have attempted some degrees of malicious compliance with it. Apple is the most outstanding horrible one, but they're all trying to avoid proper compliance as much as possible because they think it'll allow them to squeeze out just the slightest amounts of more profits.
- paulryanrogers 3y agoMalicious compliance appears more focused on increasing the pain to the point that users will demand the law be overturned.
- poloniculmov 3y agoIt convinced me not to buy a new Iphone because Apple is acting like a big baby.
- seszett 3y agoThat's because management of these companies is all based in the US, and they apparently don't understand that these tactics just don't work at all in the EU.
- wahnfrieden 3y agoTheir campaign is effective when people like OP say they are innocent victims of regulation which must be tossed
- malfist 3y agoThe presumption of innocence shouldn't be extended to trillion dollar companies. You don't get there by being wholesome. My statement only applies to the court of public opinion, not legal courts.
- Rinzler89 3y ago>But if you have to launch a long, sprawling compliance investigation the minute the law enters in force "Trust but verify" Or "Trust AND verify." Pick your answer, but how else do you want the EU to make sure that Google is now compliant with the law if they don't check. Should they just take Google's word for it? If you go to a concert they always check everyone's tickets at entry. You can't complain they don't let you in by taking your word for it.
- ttepasse 3y agoOr there is a difference between RFCs and laws - and possibly between american and european law culture.
- _heimdall 3y agoWouldn't a compliance investigation effectively just be the evidence collection phase before a charge is filed, assuming the evidence supports it? I wouldn't expect them to write the law and immediately charge Google, for example, based only on public knowledge and no compiled evidence.
- arlcode 3y agoYes. It's basically the reply to their (in my layman's view) offensive non-compliance. They had plenty time to figure it out and now they may reap what they sowed. Not everybody tried to play games e.g. notice how Microsoft is not a subject of this specific investigation. This is probably also a final warning shot. I'm certain that if they "suddenly" and "on their own" find ways to "correct" their software and business practices this investigation can be closed without charges brought forward.
- lucianbr 3y agoThe length of the investigation is so far less than 24h, no? And how sprawling can it be, after less than 24h. If it eventually takes two years, yeah, it will be proof somebody didn't do their homework. But it seems a bit early to tell. Also, I guess some of the size of the investigation is correlated with the size of the company being investigated. And especially with the size of the company's legal team.
- eigenspace 3y agoHuh? IMO it's much more indicative of the idea that the companies didn't actually make a good faith effort to comply and are trying to see what they can get away with.
- Havoc 3y agoOr you wrote the law to address an obvious issue that needs immediate action
- justinclift 3y agoOh, is there a fast way of collecting the needed evidence instead? ;)
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- zoobab 3y ago"I love the DMA." It might strengthen oligopolies on mobile. And even cement them.
- jmholla 3y ago> It might strengthen oligopolies on mobile. And even cement them. Can you expand on this? This is the first time I've heard this claim.
- kristjansson 3y agoThese threads have been rife with the 'teleological interpretation' explanation i.e. the law means what it's intended to mean, not what it says, and firms just have to try their best to meet those expectations. or, y'know, it might be good to try their least, and find out where the constraints of the law are _actually_ binding in the inevitable investigation and fine, since it seems like that's an essential part of figuring out what an EU law actually requires.
- floydnoel 3y agoi wonder how much these changes are costing Apple vs how much they make in Europe. would be interesting to know if there's an amount of compliance costs and complexity that could see Apple leave the EU market!
- varjag 3y agoThe EU is a huge market of people with deep pockets, I conjecture the break even point is not anywhere on the horizon.
- flenserboy 3y agoAt some point control of one's own business future balances out a certain level of profit.
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- mdekkers 3y agoHave you seen how much they all bend over backwards for China?
- lotsofpulp 3y agoAs far as I know, only Apple and Microsoft operate in China.
- techpression 3y agoAt least iCloud is run by a third party and not Apple (GCBD). Similar to how Blizzard does with their games and why World of Warcraft disappeared over night. Important distinction to make when it comes to privacy and security (there’s none) and how Apple washes their hands clean while keeping the Chinese government happy.
- ktosobcy 3y agoAwesome! https://twitter.com/EU_Commission/status/1772207590212063397 https://twitter.com/EU_Commission/status/1772207590212063397 ~~ I wish they would also push forward with cookie consent pop-up - 1) enforce easy reject (as it should be but dumb websites hide it away, which is illegal) and better yet 2) enforce it on a browser config level like we have do-not-track config but should be with 3 levels and enforceable.
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- whywhywhywhy 3y ago> cookie consent pop-up The second you call it a pop-up it's just more hell, should just be a browser setting that has to be abided by. No popup, no constantly asking me for consent. I should consent once, ONCE!
- bootsmann 3y agoThe biggest browser manufacturer is not interested in making it easy to opt out of tracking cookies for some reason, wonder why that is…
- ktosobcy 3y agoAnd because of that it should be _forced_ to do so...
- atomicUpdate 3y agoThey're literally working on a feature to disable third party coookies by default: https://blog.google/products/chrome/privacy-sandbox-tracking-protection/ https://blog.google/products/chrome/privacy-sandbox-tracking... How does that fit in with your conspiracy theorizing?
- bootsmann 3y agoTracking cookies != Third party cookies
- mupuff1234 3y agoWhy isn't Microsoft on this list?
- pkphilip 3y agoGood point. I guess the world recognizes that MS isn't quite as dominant as it was before - aleast on the operating systems side with Apple and Linux gaining reasonable share
- Ekaros 3y agoAlso Windows is comparably open to other environments. The Windows and Xbox stores exist, but you are not forced to use them or does MS take a cut on software sold. Only potential issue I see is bundling of Office 365 and Teams. And they already fixed that one. So they are the least worst player on market.
- robertlagrant 3y agoCan you install a game on an Xbox with no disc drive without using their store?
- Ekaros 3y agoNo... Same goes for Sony. And Nintendo just stopped running their OS on not their hardware... I hope EU gets around to fix those later...
- threeseed 3y agoThat would destroy the console industry as we know it. Consoles are sold at close to break even with money made back through game sales. If EU allowed third party stores and stripped their commissions it would trigger a mass consolidation where Sony, Nintendo etc would buy developers, game engine vendors etc en masse and force exclusivity. Indie developers in particular would have no way to compete. And consumers would be forced to buy multiple consoles.
- dkjaudyeqooe 3y agoIt's a good idea to regulate and examine companies with over a certain share of the market and over a certain size since it's almost guaranteed they will abuse their market position one way or another. These companies pose a general threat to the proper functioning of a healthy market due to network effects and compatibility issues, things that regulators should always be working to counteract.
- stingraycharles 3y agoEspecially because in a global market, these kind of companies can be more powerful than governments. So it’s a good thing that large countries, or unions of countries, attempt to push back a little bit on their power. I think EU has an easier case, because the way I understand it, in the EU anticompetitive behavior in itself is illegal, while in the US, as long as you can argue the consumer benefits (eg Amazon selling stuff at a loss), it’s no problem.
- nameless912 3y agoI think you can replace "can be" with "are". If Google, Apple or Meta feel like what you're saying is not in their interest for the public to hear it, you just... can't say it. Apple can remotely disable your iPhone. Google can remove you from search results. Meta can nuke your social media presence from orbit. This is by no means an endorsement of the guy because he's a complete piece of shit, but the one thing Alex Jones got right during his temper tantrum when he got deplatformed is that getting deplatformed is not a thing that only happens to people you don't like; theoretically, and in fact quite regularly, large multinationals can simply decide that someone should cease to exist in the public sphere, and they can legally disappear people more effectively than the CIA. Today it's anti vax loonies and racist conspiracy theorists, tomorrow it's folks reporting on Apple's Foxconn factories in China or Meta's content moderation staff or Google's spying on people's private communications. We live in a world where we've created the marketplace of ideas, which necessarily means that those who hold the marketplace have to give everyone a stall, almost regardless of how vile their ideas are. Not doing so is a great way for large corporations to silence their critics on a scale never before imagined. I'm not exaggerating when I say these three companies can erase you from existence. Losing your Google account, Apple ID, and Meta accounts all at once would be an excellent way to prevent a corporate dissident from accessing the info they need to keep these companies accountable. It's terrifying, and it's also a mundane kind of terrifying that requires what might seem like overly aggressive government regulation, but I really don't see another way forward. And before someone comes in and says something to the effect of "well, isn't all of the above still true if you replace Google, Apple and Meta with $COUNTRY?" and of course the answer is yes, but at the very very least, countries are theoretically accountable to their citizens. Corporations are effectively accountable to no one, which is certainly worse.
- FredPret 3y ago[flagged]
- hardwaresofton 3y agoI think you might be misreading that -- it says that users either pay the $11 or consent to the tracking that reduces the price to free (in theory, anyway).
- FredPret 3y agoThe deal is perfectly reasonable, but this is what the EU is objecting to
- shortsunblack 3y agoConsent under GDPR has to be 'freely' given. Economic coercion is not freely given consent. Further, fundamental human rights are not for sale. No person can contract themselves into slavery, even if they are "willing".
- FredPret 3y agoConsent in any marketplace is a precondition to participation. Why would Meta continue to operate in an environment where they can't serve targeted ads (the only kind that works) or charge a subscription?
- shortsunblack 3y agoMeta can choose not to operate in the environment. It won't, though. Showing ads (not personalized) still yields them a profit in EEA market. And under GDPR we have a specific definition of consent. Your liberatarian dilusions are not the terms of the discourse. (32) "Consent should be given by a clear affirmative act establishing a freely given, specific, informed and unambiguous indication of the data subject's agreement to the processing of personal data relating to him or her, such as by a written statement, including by electronic means, or an oral statement." Many commentators challenge the notion of a user being able to consent to such processing, since Facebook has monopolistic power in the marketplace ensured by network effects. It is then impossible for a user to give a "freely given" consent. The same way an employee cannot consent to the employer's processing of his or her data. There is also a question of whether the consent Facebook asks for is specific. It really is not, if you've seen the intimidating choice screen forcing users to act (which itself is likely illegal under EU consumer rights protection). The choice screen also uses Facebook's primary color (blue) for nudging the user to consent. This also infringes on the "freely given" aspect, by using dark patterns.
- thiago_fm 3y ago[flagged]
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- chucke1992 3y agoConsidering EU history it would just mean EU will be left behind technologically. Will be over regulated mess - even more than now.
- thiago_fm 3y agoEuropeans spending 2 hours a day on Facebook on the phone, buying an iPhone, buying Chinese crap on Amazon, and seeing ads in Google search isn't going to make the EU more technologically advanced. The EU lacks the demographics to compete in new fields; it's about maintaining what it has. Technological improvements are disproportionally biased over things that don't improve anybody's lives. It takes ages before those improvements actually impact life expectancy or making life easier for human beings, and if you dig enough, you'll see companies from Europe and elsewhere innovating in that space (like CRISPR therapeutics etc)
- panick21_ 3y agoParis turning it into into a cylcing city is probably medically better then anything google ever did. It will have effect on all other French cites, as it always does with Paris. Those kinds of changes have far larger impact that anything related to what most tech companies do. I don't really care that Europe isn't leading in Self-Driving cars or Air-tax or whatever the latest investor dream is. The reality is we already have the technology to solve most of the major issues in regards to climate change and health.
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- IshKebab 3y agoAll sounds great. I'm quite curious what their objection to Apple's browser choice screen is though: > The Commission is concerned that Apple's measures, including the design of the web browser choice screen, may be preventing users from truly exercising their choice of services within the Apple ecosystem, in contravention of Article 6(3) of the DMA. Looks relatively reasonable to me: https://preview.redd.it/ios-17-4-db1-new-default-browser-pop-up-available-now-v0-eon2agynhmfc1.jpeg?width=1080&crop=smart&auto=webp&s=eefa61cc6b9f9af89b016dade4c1515fb1763784 https://preview.redd.it/ios-17-4-db1-new-default-browser-pop... Is it because they always put Safari at the top and then try to randomise in a mix of browsers most people won't have heard of?
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- threeseed 3y agoWhen you look at the list you have to be concerned about the state of the browser market. Chromium is going to dominate desktop and mobile and entrench pro-advertising measures eg. browser fingerprinting, long term first party cookies etc for years to come. Meta and Google must be thrilled. Of course it makes a mockery of GDPR and other privacy measures EU has been pushing.
- shuckles 3y agoBut users are demanding choice in browsers, and they are picking the least private, most pro-advertising one en masse! What’s its biggest benefit? It offers a suite of native-replacement, in-the-standards-process-but-not-finalized APIs so developers can write slow, bloated applications once and run them everywhere! This is what users want!
- st3fan 3y agoIt is only good for Google. Not for the web.
- hu3 3y agoThanks for sharing. I'm curious about the sorting of that list. From the image (mirror: https://i.imgur.com/pjo78lS.png https://i.imgur.com/pjo78lS.png): Safari Vivaldi Opera Web@Work Edge Onion Browser Seznam.cz Brave Firefox? (cut in half) Is it Safari first then randomized names? It doesn't look alphabetical order to me. Chrome doesn't even show up, Firefox is almost hidden.
- whywhywhywhy 3y ago[flagged]
- thiago_fm 3y ago[flagged]
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- madmask 3y agoAfter “EU launches probes..” i was hoping to read planet names
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- oaiey 3y agoAfter reading your comment, I really appreciate it. The thinking has a positive world spin (progress for all mankind) instead of the ugly truth of our word. We all should think like that.
- ttepasse 3y agoThat's ESA. :) (Next launch to another planet seems to be ExoMars 2 to Mars in 2028, carrying the Rosalind Franklin rover. Originally planned for 2022 on a russian rocket, now with a european launcher.)
- dmathrowaway 3y agoThrowaway account for obvious reasons: As a SRE SWE at Alphabet/Google, I find this assumed-guilt and assumed-lack-of-giving-a-shit irritating. For the past several quarters we have spent a significant proportion of our effort on DMA compliance, right down to the infrastructure & RPC level. It is top priority mandate level stuff and getting absolute top billing from managers and TLs in planning and day-to-day activities. I have spent a long time over the past few months working almost entirely on DMA projects so it is pretty aggravating to then see these "probes" into if we are taking it seriously. Don't get me wrong, I think the DMA is a good thing and it is totally the right thing to do. But this assumption that Google don't care and are ignoring it or whatever is just exasperating when myself and many other good engineers are working their hearts out to implement it. </rant>
- McDyver 3y agoIf there wasn't a DMA, and no prospect of probe or accountability, google, and the likes, wouldn't give a shit. As we can see from the current state of affairs (that led to DMA and all that)
- izacus 3y agoI mean, if you did a good job, then this is no extra work for you. But there's very little reason to trust any of you right? Especially after stunts Apple is constantly pulling, everyone in EU leadership would have to be a brain dead moron to believe whatever US corps are telling them without any kind of verification. If you pass with flying colors, that doesn't diminish any of your work - it confirms that you did it well.
- hn_go_brrrrr 3y agoYou've very clearly never participated in an audit if you believe this. Audits are a ton of work, to prove in excruciating detail that things actually work the way you claim they do.
- izacus 3y agoI have participated in such audits (and actually worked on things like GDPR compliance on rather large corporations). Yes, they're a ton of work. But that's what the job is, sorry if now developers need to work to undo anticompetitive crap they pulled in their products.
- oaiey 3y ago> The Commission is concerned that Alphabet's and Apple's measures may not be fully compliant as they impose various restrictions and limitations. These constrain, among other things, developers' ability to freely communicate and promote offers and directly conclude contracts, including by imposing various charges. Oh that hurts Apple. "directly conclude contracts". That goes deep.
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- jojobas 3y agoNow imagine if TTIP was signed, EU would most likely be forced to abolish DMA or GDPR altogether.
- inetknght 3y agoThat is not a good thing.
- jojobas 3y agoI guess my bad for sounding ambiguous, of course it's very good that EU is not obliged to bow to US "investors".
- jpgvm 3y agoA terrible thing in fact. We should instead hope for a trade treaty that abolishes the DCMA. It's policies like these that make it clear that the government only serves special interests and not the average voter.
- ronsor 3y ago> We should instead hope for a trade treaty that abolishes the DCMA. Trade agreements have weaseled more copyright and DMCA nonsense into just about every treaty now. Good luck going against the grain there.
- FMecha 3y agoNot only that, generative AI boom also likely means more copyright maximalization that ever before.
- davikr 3y agoI wish Discord was affected by the DMA so we could get some kind of official interoperability.
- Sakos 3y agoIt's crazy how the 00s was this golden age of interoperability. You could use almost every messaging service with a third party client. Now all we have is walled gardens.
- kmlx 3y agoi was there, i was developing on those systems. i think you're romanticising things. the whole situation with interoperability was not sustainable, as evidenced by the fact that it was dropped by every player as soon as possible. one of the reasons why it was not sustainable was that the standards at that time were conceived for a different era, and everyone wanted special features not available in the standards. it does seem like we're having much better success with interoperability nowadays, but only because the standards are much better today.
- thomastjeffery 3y agoNo, people left because a large enough percentage of their friends and coworkers did. That's how walled gardens work: exclusivity demands participation.
- kmlx 3y agoyou're describing the "network effect". but it only happens once people actually move away from certain platforms. why did they move away? features that couldn't be implemented using a shared standard.
- thomastjeffery 3y ago"move away" is a tenuous assertion. If someone puts the majority of new content on another platform, is that "moving away"? What if they only use the old platform once a week? What if they only use the new platform once a week, but that's when an important discussion happens? No one moved away from email.
- _factor 3y agoThe web as designed by Tim Berners-Lee was a decentralized system where you could host a website and others could see it. Google came along and made finding these websites much more convenient and accessible. Along the way Microsoft IE began using monopoly advantage to make the web in Microsoft’s image. It was a clunky unstandardized mess for many years as only Microsoft could officially push a standard. You could build for Netscape/Firefox, but you would be breaking 90% of your users due to undocumented and tailored code. Now Google has the market share. The standards are much more aligned amongst the major players, and it would be a stretch to call it a monopoly. That’s the goal. Google unofficially pushes the new browsers standards towards Google’s image, just as Microsoft had before. Just look at Chrome extensions for an example. It’s not a coincidence ad blockers are becoming weakling in the name of “security”. Apple has their entrenched user base, solidifying with every iOS app unavailable to other ecosystems. Compound the issue when people have paid real money for useful apps that they don’t wish to sink the cost for. It’s better than before, but companies will never have your best interests at heart. Profit is incentivized first, then product (including you). A decentralized web is possible, we have the technology. There is no reason a static site server couldn’t be implemented with a proxy hiding feature, even using IPFS potentially. Large plates can still cache and serve data to get paid, but your data doesn’t have to be centralized. Moreover, serving up a web server from your local machine could be as easy as opening a custom pinned tabbed and sharing it out. CRDTs and homomorophic tech open worlds of possibility with secure p2p applications at scale. But this is not what a cloud provider wants. It is not the direction we are heading. We are trained to be paranoid (rightful so unfortunately), and cloud providers tout themselves as the panacea. In some ways they are, but at what cost? We no longer trust the user to have a direct connection. All of your services should be on the cloud if you’re “enterprise” enough, and you’ll pay for it accordingly. What I want to see: Governments recognize that the internet is a public utility at this point, and reduce the roadblocks to hosting your own data. Allow all GUA IPv6 addresses to be static if requested. Don’t allow carriers to give special preference to business accounts vs personal for static assignment. There is no technical reason for this if a customer requests it. We’re not running out of IPv6 addresses. This fixes the STUN/TURN debacle created by NAT, and opens up the field for new possibilities. It also allows for real decentralized competition with cloud providers. It used to be that I got excited about the random blog posts I could find. Simple HTML sites from interesting people, which I mostly get on Hacker News now. Search engines filled with ads and SEO/AI garbage only exist because of the profit structure and centralized control. With ID verification a certainty due to AI advances, we’re going to be even more locked into these monopolistic systems. We need competition, and as long as they hold the search screen, we’re only going to move towards higher profits for them. Yet something tells me our governments have something to do with it. Data collection isn’t just profitable, it’s potent.
- bcye 3y agoDoes someone know what the minimum fine is gatekeepers face? All sources I find only talk about the maximum fine of 10% EDIT: Or maybe rather an expected fine, we saw with GDPR that the maximum fine isn't really used much, if at all.
- wdr1 3y agoThe DMA does not specify a minimum fine for violations.
- polycaster 3y agoI'm not a lawyer, but I guess that would be zero. The maximum in absolute numbers would be ~40B USD or ~80B USD for repeated violations, as I read it.
- layer8 3y agoThere is no minimum fine. But: “In fixing the amount of a fine, the Commission shall take into account the gravity, duration, recurrence, and, for fines imposed pursuant to paragraph 3, delay caused to the proceedings.” (Article 30 paragraph 4) So you might compare the actual noncompliance to the worst conceivable noncompliance with respect to those factors and make a guess. Edit: There’s also this quote by Thierry Breton, Commissioner for Internal Market, on the linked page: “[…] Should our investigation conclude that there is lack of full compliance with the DMA, gatekeepers could face heavy fines.” This would imply that anything but full compliance could already incur “heavy” fines.
- bcye 3y agoThank you. I think Big Tech is already quite close to the worst perceivable non compliance, but I guess we'll see.
- shuckles 3y agoImagine how much time will be wasted to comply with crazy demands like making the Photos app uninstallable which help basically nobody.
- trompetenaccoun 3y agoThe EU has long lost the plot with all the bureaucracy and rules. People like it when the government cracks down on powerful corporations, not understanding that the government apparatus is the most powerful and dangerous institution of them all. I'm not fully against that part of the DMA, breaking up these walled gardens could be positive. But history has shown once they start meddling with the markets, governments rarely know when to stop. That's because people in positions of power generally think they're in control and know what they're doing. Look at the recent bottle cap directive for a more insane example. There are sadly hundreds of such cases at this point and the number of rules keeps growing year by year. Doing business in the EU will become more and more difficult and especially the cost for starting a new business is growing massively because of what needs to get invested in compliance before you even get started. This will be devastating for innovation and their economy as a whole.
- yokoprime 3y agoI’m sorry, but what was that? The economy will collapse due to bottle cap directives? You know that these arguments have been thrown around by anti-EU interests since the 90s and its never ever panned out
- sweeter 3y ago"step off the multi-billion dollar corporation, bully!" seriously though, it never ceases to amaze me the level people repeat corporate propaganda and conflate corporate success with their own self-worth. These companies literally spend billions in lobbying the government to "influence" their decisions and run rigorous ad campaigns that smear any sentiment that isn't vehemently pro-billionaire, pro-corpoate, pro big-tech etc... so its not all that surprising that people fall for it but it is truly astounding.
- 1letterunixname 3y agoIn turbulent times, the tallest grass gets chopped first. But also, a few megacorps increasingly occupy increasingly numerous facets of lives of billions of people and should be carefully monitored so that they don't abuse their power.
- glitchc 3y agoThese megacorps have been avoiding paying taxes in the jurisdictions where they make most of their money. It's only natural to expect govts. to claw some of that revenue back. People think it's about privacy but it's really about tax revenue.
- meristohm 3y agoAnd I would appreciate it if those companies currently getting away with paying too little in taxes paid more, perhaps commensurate with the amount they benefit from existing infrastructure.
- avianlyric 3y agoThat doesn’t really stack up as an argument. From 2004 to 2014 Apple used the “double-Irish” tax arrangement to shield 110B USD of profits from taxation, EU corporation tax is about 20% (taken as an average over all the countries), which would amount to about 22B USD of “unpaid” taxes. Since 2014 Apple’s revenues have doubled, if their profits have done the same, and they’re following the same broad profit margin and tax avoidance schemes (and everything suggests they do), then Apple’s “unpaid” tax is at least 66B USD. Apple’s global revenue for 2023 was about 400B USD, and the DSA caps the fines at 10% of global revenue, so 40B USD for Apple. It’s very unlikely that Apple will be hit with a maximum out of the gate, that’s not really how these regulators work (you want to make sure you can always issue a bigger fine later). How is clawing back at most 57% of the unpaid taxes, in a one time fine, a good strategy for tax revenue? And of all the big tech companies, Apple has the lowest profit margin at a mere 25%, Facebook has higher margins of 30-35%, so the fines make even less sense a tax clawback mechanism there. All of that is of ignoring the fact the EU and European Commission isn’t a federal government, and doesn’t have any tax revenue at all. Member states charge tax (or not in the case of Ireland), but the EU as an entity most certainly does not. Indeed countries like Ireland have been fighting tooth and nail against EU to avoid clawing back taxes. So in reality, the idea the DMA is about tax revenue simple doesn’t stack up. It doesn’t stack up economically, it doesn’t stack up politically, and it doesn’t stack up practically either.
- idle_zealot 3y agoThe most interesting thing here to me is this bit > Apple's new fee structure and other terms and conditions for alternative app stores and distribution of apps from the web (sideloading) may be defeating the purpose of its obligations under Article 6(4) of the DMA because, well, yeah, that's exactly what they do! When Apple users complain about the DMA forcing Apple to allow other stores and sideloading they often predict that Meta and other nefarious corporations will launch their own distribution as the exclusive source of their popular or near-required apps in order to skirt Apple's privacy rules. That is a possibility (though it hasn't happened on Android), but I feel that the benefit of sideloading community-made apps that break Apple's rules by interoperating with services unofficially would more than offset any losses to privacy. However, as Apple's implementation stands the fees and agreements necessary to distribute apps would keep most FOSS or community-maintained apps from being distributed, while allowing rich bad actors an avenue of further abusing their users. It's the worst possible world; a free-for-all for rich corporations to distribute whatever garbage they want and no balancing pressure from unofficial apps keeping their behavior somewhat in check. Moving from a world where Apple gets to decide what code runs on your phone to one where anyone with sufficiently deep pockets makes the call. I hope that the EC finds that the spirit of the DMA is that users decide what runs on their phones, and that Apple's proposed changes are not in that spirit.
- aednichols 3y agoCTF is waived for nonprofits, which is how a lot of FOSS projects are structured.
- asadotzler 3y agolots is doing a lot of work here. the overwhelming majority of FOSS projects have no structure at all much less non profit corporations behind them. more accurate would be to say "a small number of FOSS projects" or "a lot of the top several FOSS projects".
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- msdrigg 3y agoI don't see a lot of discussion of the Meta "pay or consent" investigation. Why wouldn't giving users the option to pay for tracking-free, ad-free service meet the requirement? Is the concern that the $10/month price too high? Would this kind of model be acceptable at a more reasonable price point?
- acedTrex 3y agoYa I am also not following what the problem is with this approach. Is that not the entire point of options? Do people feel entitled to have all free services with no obligations of their own?
- msdrigg 3y agoSo from the articles I can find about the complaints filed against Meta [1] I can't find any explanation of what would be an acceptable price for non-consent besides free. I mean like it's their right as a government to say 'you can't charge for consent. either charge everyone or no-one', but I wonder how it'll all pan out. [1](https://techcrunch.com/2024/02/28/meta-consent-or-pay-consumer-gdpr-complaints/?guccounter=1 https://techcrunch.com/2024/02/28/meta-consent-or-pay-consum...)
- epolanski 3y agoI think the idea is that you cannot have these options like denying access to content only if user pays with $ or personal data. But the issue I find here is that Meta has not premiered this technique, the first offenders were Italian digital newspapers either requiring your data or a subscription.
- somenameforme 3y agoI'm never fond of these sort of comparisons, because size does matter. Meta services billions of customers around the globe - a sizable chunk of the entire human species, with a defacto monopoly in terms of raw reach and scale. For them to be held to a higher standard than e.g. an Italian newspaper is not at all unreasonable. In an ideal world the rules and regulations companies have to follow would be strongly correlated against their size, with penalties growing increasingly harsh for violations. In reality, it's the exact opposite. Small companies can get destroyed by even minor rule violations, whereas massive corporations will endlessly litigate out even absolutely overt violations, and even when they lose the cases after dragging them out endlessly, the penalties they face are entirely inconsequential - a few days of revenue at worst. That's just so wrong on so many levels.
- noapologies 3y agoA lot of people are quick to lock themselves into a gatekeeper's walled garden, and throw away the keys. That Linux has not only survived for so long, but thrived, is a true testament to the will, technical expertise, and product vision of community developers. FOSS was founded on the principles of openness and collaboration, something that we need now more than ever, as the largest companies of the world have managed to weaken that resolve through slick marketing and anti-competitive practices. Think of what truly open VR headsets, smartwatches, tablets and smartphones etc. would be capable of, the rich ecosystem of apps and capabilities that could exist - but greed is literally holding us back by decades. Think of the kids growing up now, forced to be consumers rather than producers. And compare them to the last century, the sense of wonder and expression that the internet and infinitely hackable devices brought. It was revolutionary, and many of the giants that exist now were built literally on the backs of that openness.
- wilg 3y ago> Think of what truly open VR headsets, smartwatches, tablets and smartphones etc. would be capable of, the rich ecosystem of apps and capabilities that could exist - but greed is literally holding us back by decades. Nothing is stopping anyone from making these devices, and I think many do in fact exist but are not popular.
- fsflover 3y ago> Nothing is stopping anyone from making these devices Anti-competitive practices do. Example of a struggle: https://puri.sm/posts/breaking-ground/ https://puri.sm/posts/breaking-ground/
- ephemeral-life 3y agoDoes anyone know of good online resources to teach yourself law. CS and engineering have great courses online, surely there are some hidden law gems.
- dmoy 3y agoBy law here, you mean EU style civil law?
- ephemeral-life 3y agoI mean any set of resources that after studying it will make you confident in reading material in law. It doesn't necessarily have to be a specific law system, or is that not how things work?
- dmoy 3y agoThere's some overlap, but yea it's really not how things work. If you're in the US, UK, Aus, Canada, etc, the common law system in use is fundamentally quite different.
- dragonwriter 3y ago> I mean any set of resources that after studying it will make you confident in reading material in law. It doesn't necessarily have to be a specific law system, or is that not how things work? That's mostly not how things work, at least if you mean to imply “justifiably” before “confident”. Law isn’t physics where there is a universal underlying truth; it is a social construct, and each system of law is its own construct.
- MBCook 3y agoWhat changed that caused all this? They can do this now because of the passage of the DMA but was there some specific event that triggered the creation and passage of that? I’m surprised that so little happened for such a long time in terms of regulation (EU or US) and then suddenly it feels like the EU really jumped in to the fray.
- asadotzler 3y agoThe DMA came into full effect this month. The EC looked at the big companies targeted by the DMA and the state of their compliance, had questions about several of those companies' compliance and so opened investigations.
- Alpha3031 3y ago> was there some specific event that triggered the creation and passage of that? Not really, but the DSA package has been in the works for quite a while now even though it seems very recent. The DMA may have only really come into effect May last year and the compliance deadline was only three weeks ago, but it was first proposed by the Commission all the way back in 2020, and building off proposals from the previous Commission. In a sense, they've been working on it since GDPR in 2016.
- MBCook 3y agoOk that’s what I was missing, that this back in some ways to 2016.
- Nevermark 3y agoTwo questions I have - which may not have answers as of now: 1. Will new app stores be able to sell iPad and Vision apps too? I.e. or just iPhone apps? Apple would obviously restrict this to iPhone apps if it can. But given apps can be cross platform/device, new app stores and their developers are going to want to sell to all devices. 2. If alternate app stores can sell to all Apple devices, will that mean as a practical matter, that the memory allocation/permissions API used for JIT on Macs, and by Apple on its other devices, will now be available to developers for all Apple ecosystem devices? Among other things, JIT API availability is required for alternate web browser, Javascript, and WebAssembly implementations. If JIT access becomes universal on iOS devices, then more serious development tools, as well as development friendly interfaces, and third party APIs, are going to be possible. Lots of barriers to serious computing on other devices will be gone. I am particularly interested in this in terms of Vision Pro + keyboard + trackpad/mouse as a complete Mac replacement for serious work. As apposed to requiring a Mac as it does today.