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Comment by rollcat | Hacker News Reader

Yep, bad law, I'd also say bad intent.

Apple is ahead of the curve[1]. You get a system-level popup asking you for consent to be tracked. Actual, not implied consent - only "yes" means "yes".

So you say "no" and it means "no". Apps are blocked from all basic forms of tracking (like device ID), and the App Store rules state that apps that try to circumvent that will be kicked out. Apple doesn't fuck around - they've kicked Meta and Epic without blinking an eye.

EU's response? Kick Apple, because EU companies can no longer do targeted advertising on Apple's platform. Our regulators are full of shit.

[1]: Well Apple still tracks you in their first-party apps, but that's a different story.

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>EU's response? Kick Apple, because EU companies can no longer do targeted advertising on Apple's platform

I guess if you ignore the 3 years of non-compliance and feet dragging on tangential cases, you can say that. That's like saying "Fortnite made apple and what was their respones? Kick Epic from their platform".

The EU courts don't just let that fly like in the US.

> EU's response?

It wasn’t the EU, it was France who fined Apple over ATT (although there are ongoing discussions at the EU level).

They were fined for self-preferencing, which is exactly the “different story” in your footnote.

It was also pointed out that consenting to ATT still isn't sufficient to provide informed consent required under GDPR and is misleading for implementers who think they can just rely on ATT (its effectively yet another non-compliant cookie banner), but the fine was just for the self-preferencing.

> Apple doesn't fuck around - they've kicked Meta and Epic without blinking an eye.

Sorry what?

Everyone lies on those "privacy nutrition labels" on the App Store listings and gets away with it, and everyone is free to embed dozens of analytics/tracking SDKs in their app that track the user by fingerprinting and IP address.

Apple doesn't care. If Apple cared, they could simply say that all apps must comply with the laws of the locale they are distributed in - which they do for things like copyright infringement, etc - and thus ban Meta and most their competitors all the way back in 2018 when the GDPR went into effect. But they didn't.

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