Additionally, it helps to actually learn how the current law developed - it primarily was modeled after the german Bundesdatenschutzgesetz, which was put into law in a modern form in the 90s, long before FAANG.
[0] see the tracker: https://www.enforcementtracker.com/
Speaking from personal experience, American companies, especially the big ones, tend to treat everyone else as "Americans that they don't know they're American yet" or alternatively "slightly dumb Americans".
At least for one of them, yeah, they apply the legal laws, but the general decisions are taken in the US with little regard for local "non-impeding laws", I would call them. "Impeding laws" would be laws that would block the launch of something (for example they wouldn't attach an AR-15 to every product sold). "Non-impeding laws" would for example be, labor laws. They just assume that what works in the US sort of works everywhere else and deal with the consequences along the way.
Again just a rough feeling from the list but I would speculate that over 50 percent of fines in total were towards US or non-EU based companies.
In fact Meta alone is fined more than everyone else combined.
What exactly am I missing ?
It's a bit like the sweatshop argument. If your company wins out by using sweatshops, yeah, you're going to end up with the billion dollar argument. But if a certain market doesn't want stuff produced by sweatshops, and they decide to dis-incentivize it by tariffing it, that:
a) makes sense from their point of view
b) is moral from a global perspective
Similar approach here.
But saying that the fines are mostly towards EU members when over 2/3 is fined towards US companies is misrepresenting the data and the opposing viewpoint.
* you're going end up with the billion dollar company
If a company does business in the EU, it's dealing with EU citizens, giving the EU jurisdiction over how that business is conducted.
The EU absolutely has full legal standing for this; if big tech doesn't want to abide by it, they can always leave the EU.
American companies get fined more often for the simple reason that they break the GDPR more often since the US lacks the same legal privacy framework, which means they don't have the same incentive to comply with it and instead try to rules lawyer around it.
It's not a shake down, it's the fucking law which they don't follow and have to pay fines accordingly. Every single business in the EU has to follow these laws, if the US-based ones are not taking proper measures to not act illegally that's on them, not on the legislation, this shake down narrative is quite tired by now.
> Again just a rough feeling from the list but I would speculate that over 50 percent of fines in total were towards US or non-EU based companies.
Perhaps because the US companies are more eager in breaking laws and figuring it out later? Isn't that the whole take on EU vs US business approach, the US ones are big risk takers (including in acting illegally) vs EU ones being risk-averse?
I feel disheartened that this narrative is still spewed on HN, it's just vitriol, the US companies are breaking the law of EU members, if they do business here they need to follow the law, it's absurdly simple.
Whatever this is based on - OP was misrepresenting the data.
US companies have been fined larger sums because their transgressions are more common, they do it repeatedly, and their global revenue is higher, there's no conspiracy here, it's exactly how the law is written.
I invite you to re-read their point:
> The vast majority of fines are towards european businesses.
Which is true, the majority of fines are towards EU-based businesses, not the majority of the amount in fines.
Again, if US-based companies with a much higher revenue and market penetration weren't breaking the laws they wouldn't be levied the higher fines.
That’s a lie, and you know it.
Spotify is not a “gatekeeper” according to the DMA. Why? Because there is a specific carve out for streaming businesses. German newspapers do not have to comply with the GDPR. Why? Again, because there is a specific carve out for newspapers.
These laws are specifically written so that they only apply to businesses that by an unbelievably amazing series of coincidences just happen to be those not based in the EU.
Also known as a shakedown.
Edit: found the "carve out" for newspapers: https://data.consilium.europa.eu/doc/document/ST-6087-2021-I...
And it applies to all newspapers so there's no distinction between being German or American.
If you believe it's a shakedown maybe you are looking at this with very nationalistic eyes, if US companies cannot abide by the law it's on them, most other companies do.
And Spotify doesn't have a carve out, if you read the DMA you'll understand why streaming is not considered a gatekeeper (since it's not a walled garden).
No, the EU is trying to protect the rights of its citizens.
If they wanted to "shake down big tech" they'd just do a Turkey or India and pressure them to do their bidding in terms of censorship and information exchange.
We are already leaning on US intelligence agencies for data and every audit finds no problem in how the US handles EU data... get real - the EU is just not in the position to pull the same move because it is not the same kind of entity or legal structure, they do tariffs and regulations/collecting fines.
Though probably safe to assume the smaller fines against smaller companies with smaller lobbying^H^H^H^H^H^H legal teams most likely have :-)
Spotify found in violation of EU data protection laws by Stockholm Court - https://www.investing.com/news/stock-market-news/spotify-fou...
Or what about Enel (Italian): https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/italy-regulator-fine...
Or Criteo (French): https://techcrunch.com/2023/06/22/adtech-giant-criteo-his-wi...
H&M (Swedish) fined for breaking GDPR over employee surveillance: https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-54418936
etc.
"My grandparents have a clean iPhone for 40 years because of the Snapp Store!! Nobody should be able to install things from 3rd party Snapp Stores, they might be harmful!!"
Hell, you can find some of the same moronic arguments on this very thread still.
I remember it. I'm pretty sure it's always just been the sellouts that work for anti-consumer tech companies (and the wannabes). Sometimes they're rationalizing their career to themselves and us, othertimes they're aware and just saying whatever they think will keep the con running for as long as possible.
One of the things HN serves as is a no-risk place for scrupleless software businesspeople to practice how to swindle nerds with specious arguments.
has it? if anything, EU continues to fleece US companies with nonsensical, hastily-implemented laws and absurd fines.
Or, you know, they could just respect the law. Like other companies that operate here. Novel concept I know.
And, to complement your lack of research, EU companies are subject to those laws and are frequently fined as well for those violations.
spend a lot of time and money moving your things there
live there for a decade
the landlord shows up and informs you that you are forbidden from using the toilet between 6 PM and 8 PM, effective immediately, punishable by a fine equal to your monthly income. why? fuck you, that's why. if you don't like the legal environment you can just pack up and leave
As far as I hear from the HN crowd if the company feels it's not profitable anymore they will just pack up and leave (hence why many here defend not taxing corporations), this is exactly that case: there's money to be made, they will stick around, perhaps realising that paying fines is eating into their profits and change behaviour. If they don't like it, just pack up and leave, corporations are only interested in making profits, housing is not an analogous to that as much as you might want to play that card.
Pretend you're a normal person.
Secretly snoop on all the phone calls, conversations, documents in the whole house.
Take creepy pictures and upload them "for later"
Monitor all the internet traffic in the house, for all the other inhabitants.
Throw a hissy fit when you're fined for knowingly, blatantly breaking the law for years (and sometimes lying about that).
https://wire.com/en/blog/metas-stealth-tracking-another-eu-w...
But these privacy-violating actions are completely optional, so optional in fact you need to go very far out of the way to implement them. Most of them rely on shady pseudo-vulnerabilities, which may be patched at any point. And they sometimes are - I mean, entire businesses have been killed by this sort of thing.
It's risky. You're relying on the legislator, yes, but you're also relying on platforms. If your revenue rides on some rare, convoluted "feature" in Chrome, for instance, Google can fix that at any point and you're fucked.
So just stop doing that. It's a bad idea. These companies need to find more reliable and ethical revenue streams. If you do volatile shit then yeah, it's volatile.
Just to clarify I completely agree with the fines in both the US and EU, remember big corporations are not your "team" (for the vast majority of you).
But the entire structure of US car design is an anti-competitive barrier! There's all sorts of special extra requirements and taxes to discourage overseas manufacturers or smaller cheaper cars, and Americans are proud of that! Not to mention the recent fad for tariffs.
I don't think you're right on the timing, but a related essay:
https://www.imightbewrong.org/p/why-doesnt-hitler-mcfuckface...