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LoganDark

> Companies that breach the DSA risk fines of as much as 6% of their annual global sales.

It's nuts that this is all they can manage. Like, take 30% or 40% -- that might actually encourage compliance.

I think they'll comply, but almost entirely not because of small fines.

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The point of fines is to correct bad behavior, not to bankrupt businesses which create jobs.

At some point if they don't follow the law, you actually do want to dismantle them (perhaps by bankrupting via fines). Jobs where the function is to make society worse and perform illegal actions are not actually desirable. It completely makes sense to eliminate those jobs, and possibly jail the people who created them and the people who worked them.

Like if you're building gambling systems for 7 year olds then yes I think you should lose your job and then some. You the programmer, your product manager, your people manager, all the way up the chain. Everyone who participated should be individually accountable.

6% is the cost of sales tax in some places. That is not considered any kind of correction to bad behavior - it's literally the cost of buying goods in a variety of places.

I'd strongly argue that 6% will not correct bad behavior.

What corrects bad behavior? The threat of serious consequences to a business.

For Roblox their 6% of global turnover ($5b) is $300m which while it seems trivial, is 30% of their profit ($1b).

For a company like Google this fine would be in the vicinity of $24 billion, which would be a bit over 20% of their annual profit.

So for companies that have to answer to shareholders this is already a pretty big deterrent, but just in case if they reject compliance it becomes a periodic penalty!

Of one year. How many years does it take complete the investigation and let courts handle appeals? I assume they do not need to change behavior nor can the fine increase during the appeals.

I don't know, there's certainly mixed results so far for the DMA which has harsher penalties and none specifically for how this would play out with the DSA.

We've seen Zuckerburg pivot from openly pledging to defy the EU [1] and then presenting compliant plans six months later to avoid the the periodic fine [2].

But we've also seen Apple in a bid to avoid the periodic fine imposing a ~20% commission [3] on third party payments after their 27% fee was ruled illegal and they were told it must be free [4]. The investigation into that has taken a year now despite being immediately perceived as noncompliant by many developers and ressembling what Google was recently fined €430 million for [5] and Apple seems to feel no pressure to change it.

I guess what happens next to Apple will decide if companies fear this regulation, the periodic fine they were due if they didn't drop the 27% fee was touted to be up to $50m/day retroactively for the entire noncompliance period, which is now at least 400 days so lots of opportunity to send a message.

[1] https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/boards-policy-regulat...

[2] https://www.reuters.com/business/meta-offer-choices-personal...

[3] https://daringfireball.net/2025/06/apple_app_store_policy_up...

[4] https://ec.europa.eu/competition/digital_markets_act/cases/2...

[5] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/jul/23/eu-fines-...

> 30% of their profit

If your company is significantly breaking the law, should the company have profit for that year?

Paying the bills is one thing, but profit to shareholders?

That 6% could be more than your profit margin, depending on what business you operate. There's nothing saying that fines can't keep coming if your behavior isn't corrected, it's not just one fine then they leave you alone.

> it's literally the cost of buying goods in a variety of places.

Not an accurate analogy. This is a fine on sales, not expenditures. It would be like fining you 6% of your pre-tax income, not doubling sales tax on things you buy.

> I'd strongly argue that 6% will not correct bad behavior.

If the government threatened to take 6% of your pre-tax income if you violated a set of laws, would you laugh it off and refuse to change your behavior? Or would you make an effort to not incur those fines?

Laugh it off. Especially when I can earn a ton more off doing it anyway. 6% is cost of doing business. I’ll earn 50% more by doing the sketchy shit.

These laws are not covering things that increase sales by 50%

If that was true, sales would fall to 67% of the pre-law sales. That doesn’t happen. It’s a silly claim.

It would be like the government taking 6% of your total compensation for breaking the speed limit. You could try to speed everywhere to save time but if you get caught it’s going to hurt.

It’s not a “increase sales 50%” scenario. You’re arguing against something that doesn’t exist.

> 6% is the cost of sales tax in some places. That is not considered any kind of correction to bad behavior - it's literally the cost of buying goods in a variety of places.

6% of annual, global sales, as an extra cost from one jurisdiction, which can impose this multiple times if there are multiple breaches, and where they're not the only jurisdiction with such rules, and the DSA isn't the only ruleset where fines are based on global revenue even in the EU (famously, GDPR).

Or, to put it another way: 16 such fines in one year and you've lost 100% of your revenue. You don't get to make up for this by raising prices, because that just means "100% of your revenue" is now a bigger number.

Slaps on the wrist haven't effected meaningful change in the last several decades so at this point yeah, the penalties for breaking the law should be just as disastrous and life altering for a big company as it is for you and me.

6% of sales is just “cost of doing business”.

Sometimes it’s more profitable to eat the fine than change your behaviour.

A fine doesn't give immunity for the future. You pay the fine for the past behaviour, then you start paying fines of up to 5% of daily global revenue for every day you keep being non-compliant. That's the start. The end is not doing business.

Note that this is of "sales" not of profit. So for OpenAI this would be 1.5$ billion. ( based on recent PR spin sales number)

"This year the European Union will again make more money from fining US tech companies

Than from the total tax income from Europe's own public tech companies!"

https://x.com/levelsio/status/2080314960656159018

This isn't the first year either; maybe US tech companies should start obeying the laws.

What that tweet doesn't mention is how much "big tech" has been fined/settled in the US - which is also billions of dollars collectively for privacy, competition and other issues they created.

I am for more maths in laws like these:

  frist_fine = 0.06 × anual_global_sales
  
  fine(n) = first_fine * n^x

And the exponent x is to be chosen by how harsh you want to be. Repeat offenders will quickly run out of money as long as your exponent is reasonably bigger than 1.

If we take an exponent of 2 a repeat offense by OpenAI would look like this:

  1st offence: EUR  1.50 billion (6%)
  2nd offence: EUR  6.00 billion (24%)
  3rd offence: EUR 13.50 billion (54%)
  4th offence: EUR 24.00 billion (96%)
  5th offence: EUR 37.50 billion (150%)
  6th offence: EUR 54.00 billion (216%)

If you tell them their expenses beforehand, they'll budget them in, though.

Sure. You earn 5k a month. The fine is 10k a month. I'd like to see you "budget that in".

It is hard to "budget in" a expense that is multiple time your earnings. Especially if that expense is growing exponentially each time..

But shows that people still don't understand exponential functions, even on this platform. We are truly doomed.

How do you budget for 216% of your gross revenue?

"We lose money on every deal, but we plan to make it up in volume" was one of the infamous quotes from the dot.com bubble.

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