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Comment by JohnGB | Hacker News Reader

Wow, that's going to teach them a lesson! A whole $8.5M - That's literally only 23 minutes of 2022 revenue lost (I did the maths). I'm sure they will never do it again, despite the fact that they likely made way more than $8.5M from doing it.

If we want companies to stop doing illegal things, then the punitive consequences need to be so high that they prioritise not doing it. If a person steals $100, they could spend a decent amount of time in jail for it. Time that is worth a lot more than then $100 benefit they received. Companies want all the benefits of being a "person", so let's apply the same principles to them.

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It will cause more damage to their brand than $8.5M ... Apple has been positioning themselves as "privacy focused" for years. They're obviously still better than Google in this respect, but it will hurt them more than $8.5M.

No, this will not make a noticeable dent.

Apple's branding and marketing are too powerful for that to happen. An obscure court ruling matters to people on HN. To the average consumer, it never happened.

people like news stories that reinforce their perceptions, not news that tells them they're wrong. this isn't going to be widely reported on, because "you were wrong to like that company that everybody likes" isn't a nice story.

if the fine was huge, it would be news. but this fine is an amount that's easily ignored, so it will be.

> They're obviously still better than Google in this respect

Are they? Google is probably the most open company about what they collect and how they use it and I've never seen any evidence whatsoever that they ever sell you out ie. do more than simply link you to contextual ads.

All their apps and services also ask for permission pretty explicitly.

This. I have a home full of Google Home devices. I have been thinking about switching to Apple (a fairly expensive proposition given the payoff) but this sort of news makes me rethink the value prop of pouring more money into Apple products.

You could probably consider switching to MyCroft instead.

People really hate on Google but I don’t think a lot of people separate what something or someone does from how they do it

Google collects a lot of data but I know they’re not going to sell it, they’re not going to let it leak (probably at least — their security engineering is on another level), and in all of their years, the only thing they’ve done is shown contextual ads or suggestions in extremely mundane places. They’re also such an extremely slow moving ship so it makes them extremely predictable, which is the most critical requirement for trust

Google doesn’t need to sell your data to anyone else because they also run the business which can extract the most (legal) monetary value from your data.

That's always been Google's "problem".

It seems like they bend over backwards to be open and precise about their data collection and the risks you incur by accepting it. And gives you tools to view and manage the data (at least some of it).

Meanwhile everyone else is doing similar or worse, while just staying silent -- in Apple's case hypocritically seeming to position itself as a leader of the "privacy" movement, when it really appears to primarily be about Apple's privacy first, then yours (maybe).

But how IS your privacy really better under Apple's control versus Google's? One could argue it's worse under Apple because you're left in a state of not knowing what they're collecting, only reading about violations in court judgments and such. Although it would be prudent in that case to just assume the worst, instead it seems we often prefer not knowing, and living in blissful ignorance.

> They're obviously still better than Google

Really? Google spies on their users. But everybody knows that.

Apple lies to their users telling them they not spying on them despite doing exactly that.

So who's more dishonest?

(This question is independent from the question whether it's morally OK to spy on people in the first place.)

Repeated anti-privacy moves, like CSAM scanning, haven't affected public discourse yet. And I'd imagine that a small fine would instead convince people that it wasn't a serious violation.

> It will cause more damage to their brand than $8.5M

You say that, but a non-negligble number of comments here are outright defending Apple saying "just a wrong default setting", "nothingburger", etc.

It needs to hurt more than just costing the company money.

Finally people from high management need to land in jail on a regular basis for the missteps of big companies. Because those people actually don't care if they loose money they don't own themself anyway.

^^^this. Apple illegally collected data. How many kids did they just commit that crime against? Jail time for c-suite management needs to happen. This whole crime is the cost of doing business is gross af.

> Finally people from high management need to land in jail on a regular basis for the missteps of big companies

Amazing number of people baying for prison time for this pretty trivial mis-step.

As I said in another comment, just finished reading a book where one of the chapters was about the Diamond Alkali works near Newark, where executives knowingly covered-up the intentional leaking of dioxin (the most lethal chemical known to man - the smallest dose will cause cancer) for decades.

But people on HN want to put Apple employees in prison for some trivial, minor EU law contravention.

Something worth at least $8.5M is a minor trivial "misstep"?

What do you need to do as a private person to get fined at least $8.5M? Kill somebody by accident? No, that does not cost so much usually (even if you would count all your time lost in jail).

My proposal would be: Calculate the daily rate of an average Apple employee (this includes the poor people in some Chinese factories), divide the fine by that, and this will result in the days the responsible C-level staff gets jailed. This would be simple and very effective.

> Something worth at least $8.5M is a minor trivial "misstep"?

For a company with probably ten million affected customers within the relevant jurisdiction, yes. The fine itself categorises this matter as a trivial misstep.

Also your logic is weird. You’re using the assessed punishment as justification for why the assessed punishment is insufficient.

> this will result in the days the responsible C-level staff gets jailed. This would be simple and very effective.

I really recommend you transfer your hatred and sense of injustice to companies that are right at this moment poisoning environments - even in the US - and actively covering-up chemical leaks, or the pollution of people’s drink-water, or allowing workers to use carcinogens that executives deny are dangerous.

Some pathetic technical contravention of a trivial rule by Apple here is not worth your energy and passionate hatred.

>That's literally only 23 minutes of 2022 revenue lost

Right, because apple is a conglomerate that does much more than just serve ads.

>despite the fact that they likely made way more than $8.5M from doing it.

What makes you think that?

> If a person steals $100, they could spend a decent amount of time in jail for it.

Realistically speaking in most parts[1] of the US you won't get any jail time unless you're a repeat offender.

[1] saying this as a hedge in case there's some crazy judge/sheriff somewhere that's bucking the trend.

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