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To hurt enough to be worth changing the fines don't have to be a fraction of their global revenue, they have to be significantly more than the benefit gained fr
by lolinder 1y ago
To hurt enough to be worth changing the fines don't have to be a fraction of their global revenue, they have to be significantly more than the benefit gained from the illegal behavior. According to that article TikTok made $10B of that $20B in the US alone, which puts a cap on their European revenue of $10B (likely significantly less because this ignores Brazil and Indonesia, which according to the linked article are its largest markets by user count).
€530m is ~$600m, so this fine is at least 6% of their relevant 2024 revenue, and likely substantially higher. I don't know enough about their business practices to know if that's a big enough chunk to make up for what they gain by cheating, but it's definitely not a wrist slap.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- lukeschlather 1y agoThe thing is, TikTok is not accused of directly profiting off of this, they are accused of operating as part of the Chinese espionage apparatus. Assuming that this is the case, TikTok is going to be happy to continue paying fines as long as they break even worldwide. And the US is making no serious attempts to rein in this sort of behavior so they've got all that US profit to use.
- TechDebtDevin 1y agoI've still yet to see any evidence that TikTok is anymore of a spying/espionage tool than your average app on any device. But I guess if people just keep repeating that It will make it true. Never mind, I forgot, Western Intelligence orgs are trusted sources of truth and definitely wouldn't spy on me or lie to me. My Bad!
- SequoiaHope 1y agoI don’t think anyone credible is taking the position that Meta and Google and Microsoft don’t spy for the US government but TikTok does spy for the Chinese government. This is simply a transparent double standard.
- lukeschlather 1y agoIt's not a double standard. Meta is getting fines too, for similar offenses. Google actually seems to be compliant with the law.
- bobmcnamara 1y agoGoogle was started on CIA MDDS grants.
- hnuser123456 1y agoOne of the big pieces of Snowden's leaks is how the NSA has a backdoor into all of Google. Of course they're "compliant with the law". The law is to give the government a backdoor. This stuff is decided in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court and the cases and rulings are classified.
- SequoiaHope 1y agoIndeed! Eric Schmidt was regularly meeting with pentagon officials. I think he had stepped down as CEO by the time of those reports, but he was obviously very friendly to US government interests. We really tend to assume that CEOs all want to protect their data from the government but if they don’t want to do that we really can’t know or defend against it while using those services.
- lukeschlather 1y agoWe're talking about EU laws. The EU has inspectors, Google has EU datacenters which were built post-Snowden (and built due to the GDPR which was a response to PRISM.) I don't trust Google, but neither does the EU and if they're not fining Google I presume it's because they have more trust that Google is complying with their surveillance laws. Or possibly it's just because they are being strategic with when and how they engage. I do get a sense they have a list of concerns for each company and they are starting with fines for the largest concerns, and don't want to throw so much that the companies cannot respond.
- BobaFloutist 1y ago
- ipaddr 1y agoIn this case they are sending data to China. That's the evidence you were asking for. The average app isn't sending data to China. Thr faangs are collecting data and making money your government is using this data in police investigations but China is using it to undermine your government and way of life. Pretty bad.
- platinumrad 1y agoThe average app also isn't made by a company that is headquartered in China.
- vkou 1y agoSo the thing about fines for non-compliance is that they only have one direction to go if you don't comply.
- chmod775 1y ago> And the US is making no serious attempts to rein in this sort of behavior You mean besides forced divestment under threat of an outright ban?
- nickthegreek 1y agoit’s legally banned and nothing has changed. so where is the serious attempt?
- chmod775 1y agoI'm curious. Do you want to elaborate on what would pass the bar for a "serious attempt" in your opinion? Because I consider TikTok's situation in the US very seriously bad.
- nickthegreek 1y agoTrump just announced he is willing to give another extension. https://www.axios.com/2025/05/04/trump-tiktok-ban-extension-deal https://www.axios.com/2025/05/04/trump-tiktok-ban-extension-...