I don't understand meta's statement that this handicaps american businesses while allows European and Chinese companies to operate under different standards.
Which is good in a way, maybe it will lead to a behaviour correction also for the smaller publishers. But it's of course not an equal treatment.
Apple on the other hand completely deserves its fine, without a question. They got clear rules and did everything to circumvent them. The Apple's Core Technology Fee was obviously illegal. Don't know why they expected to get away with that, there wasn't even a minimal chance of that working. Idiots.
The EU focusses, rightfully, on EU macro dynamics with these laws, not how smaller outlets work.
This is very much reasonable. When a platform is big, it has bigger impact, but also bigger budgets to hire legal help and bigger budgets to stay compliant.
This is well established in accounting where there exists different rules depending on size (in many jurisdictions)
As for companies and accounting you can look into the directive 2013/34/EU that established micro, small, and medium sized companies based on their size. These types of companies have different reporting requirements.
So it's not exactly the same regulation but pretty much the same situation. I'd also be pissed.
In pretty much every other area of law in most of the world (including Europe) consent can be bought--the party requesting consent gives the consenter something in exchange for consent, and will not give that thing unless consent is given.
But under the rulings from some regulators that doesn't work for GDPR. Consent is apparently only considered to be freely given if withholding it would not result in any detriment such as not getting the same level of service or having to pay money for service.
If regulators want to outlaw targeted advertising it would be a lot better if they just did that, instead of making consent in GDPR work differently from how it has worked for pretty much everything else pretty much everywhere for centuries.
I'm inclined to think that "pay or be tracked" is usually the former. The issue was never that I shouldn't have to pay but rather that I wasn't given the choice in the first place.
But since it already is established that the Internet works this way, all grocery stores in town are already doing this. I might not want to but I still have to. Moreover, it's been firmly impressed upon everyone that they have to show ID to enter a grocery store, so if I created a new one that didn't, people would just continue going to their closest one anyway. To improve this situation, something more drastic than free competition is needed (if that could work, it already would have).
So the question is, does charging you to not have your ID checked count as coercion or is it a voluntary choice? Or alternatively, does it have a detrimental effect on society at large? Is it somehow unfair to the individual? I'd tend to think that the answer to those questions would depend a lot on motivations - the funding model, the size of the fee, and how much money they make if they track you.
In the case of a newspaper they have to make money somehow. If readers aren't willing to pay I don't immediately see how offering a free tier that has advertisements with tracking is detrimental to society or unfair to the individual.
> When assessing whether consent is freely given, utmost account shall be taken of whether, inter alia, the performance of a contract, including the provision of a service, is conditional on consent to the processing of personal data that is not necessary for the performance of that contract.
Don't blame the regulators, it's pretty clear that "paying" with consent is a no-go from the text itself.
Exactly. As it is now they're practically encouraging publishers to use dark patterns to trick users into "agreeing" to tracking.
It's meta's "pay or allow us to sell your personal informations that is the issue, not advertising by itself.
Also the commission is known to fine European entities all the time for various reasons, one of the recent ones I can think of is Pierre Cardin and it's partners for restricting cross border European sales.
The DMA is gerrymandered to exclude domestic businesses. Whenever the EU faces budget shortfalls, they know they can just make up some bullshit law and fine US tech.
> EU are basically enforcing market capitalism by disallowing monopolistic practices.
Users are free to just not buy iOS devices. Users are free to just not use Meta services.
There is no monopoly here. This is all much ado about nothing.
No real-world user is meaningfully harmed by the current state of Apple App Store/Meta Ads, but plenty will be harmed once spyware/piracy sideloading becomes common. Many small businesses will collapse due to ineffective advertisement (large businesses will love it though - it becomes a winner-take-all market).
Perhaps you prefer an industro-fascist regime where businesses are not bound by any tailored laws? Pretty sure there would already be alternative iOS app stores under such a regime - government controls (IPR system, computer security laws) seem necessary to enable these sorts of tech monopolies.
If that would be the case, the EU could be drowning in money by being more aggressive with GDPR enforcement and follow-through.
The EU's budget is massive, no shortfall is covered by these fines since to collect them it takes another massive legal battle, that's just bullshit being regurgitated on the internet (especially on this forum). If that was the case the EU would be issuing GDPR fines all over the place to cover shortfalls, it doesn't happen in reality.
> Spotify conveniently falls outside of the scope of this law when any artist would tell you it should absolutely be covered.
Spotify does not behave like the most similar category covered by the DMA: video sharing like YouTube. Spotify does not hold exclusive access to the content and the audience, YouTube Music, Apple Music, and other players have almost the same catalogue as Spotify has so users are free to move between those services without penalty. Now try moving from YouTube to a competitor, a completely different beast.
The DMA exists to counter an imbalance in the power these massive tech companies have in detriment to competition, it's quite a simple prerogative, Spotify doesn't hold at all the same power as YouTube has, or Google Search, or any other platform under the DMA.
Except Booking (~EU, based in NL~*) falls under the DMA, and ByteDance (China? I think) does as well. All the same restrictions fall on them too.
> Users are free to just not use Meta services.
True in theory, not so much in practice. I work for a company that deals directly with WhatsApp in NL, and I guarantee you for businesses it's a death knell to not have a WA Business presence. Even the local gemeente (aka city council) and other gov't establishments are on WhatsApp too. Recently more people are moving onto Signal and Telegram, but that remains a minority.
Don't even get me started on Asia, especially India/Indonesia, where even despite the existence of Line and similar apps everything is still* almost exclusively on WA. A bit different in East Asia where Line and other apps are more predominant (hardly relevant for the EU though).
Spotify doesn't fall under the DMA because it's not gatekeeping anything and it does have plenty of competition, many of which pay artists better and have basically equal selections. YT Music, Apple Music, Deezer, Tidal, Bandcamp and I'm sure dozens and dozens of others all exist and are used.
> ... but plenty will be harmed once spyware/piracy sideloading becomes common
Interesting how this evil sideloading boogeyman hasn't happened on Android.
> ... Many small businesses will collapse due to ineffective advertisement
The same small businesses that are forced into paying 30% to Apple/Google for simply existing on their app store?
> (large businesses will love it though - it becomes a winner-take-all market).
So, the gatekeepers as listed under the DMA? Y'know, the giants that literally hold all the keys and can dictate how the entire market should work based on their rules? The very same ones that have opaque ad-bidding systems that they control inside-and-out and can do anything they want to with?
[**] Seems I'm wrong there (See andsoitis' reply to my comment), but didn't want to edit out my original comment.
Regardless, calling it gerrymandering of local businesses is simply incorrect, and I can speak for at least myself that if we even had any tech companies that big (and I hope we never do), we'd expect them be subject to the exact same rules and laws.
Booking Holdings Inc. is incorporated in Delaware, listed on the Nasdaq with principal executive offices in Connecticut. See SEC filing: https://d18rn0p25nwr6d.cloudfront.net/CIK-0001075531/87dc4e5...