EU fines Apple €500M and Meta €200M

https://www.politico.eu/article/eu-fines-apple-meta-breaking-europe-digital-markets-act-dma/

93•nottorp•4h ago

Comments

izacus•3h ago

The EU Comission press release: https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_25_...

robinwohlers•3h ago

It’s funny to see a “share this page on Facebook” option at the bottom of the press release.

qwertox•3h ago

Which shows that they're not discriminating. TikTok is missing, though.

diggan•2h ago

At least they seem to have their own system in place for displaying those share buttons, as there are no requests to 3rd party domains on page load, everything loads from *europa.eu. Could have been worse :)

owebmaster•1h ago

It shouldn't be funny, social media isn't doing the world any favor, they gotta behave

robinwohlers•1h ago

“Not funny haha, funny weird”

popol12•3h ago

I hope this will make Apple finally comply with EU law and allow app side loading on iOS. Real side loading, not the joke they implemented since iOS 17.

SanjayMehta•3h ago

I would not hold my breath. They are adept at malicious compliance. Cook will do a cost/benefit assessment and will come up with another workaround.

londons_explore•2h ago

The EU should instead set targets.

Ie. "More than half of users have installed at least one app from a non-apple affiliated store by Jan 2026 or you shall pay a fine of $10 per month per iPhone in use in the EU".

dlachausse•2h ago

That’s a terrible idea. How would they have any control over that. I think you are way overestimating the amount of iOS users that want to use software from outside the App Store.

rokkamokka•2h ago

Agreed, the only realistic way they could hit such a target is to shut down their own app store...

londons_explore•1h ago

If 3rd party stores didn't charge the Apple tax, I think you'd find plenty of apps moving to other stores, and within a matter of weeks more than half of users would have used a 3rd party store.

dlachausse•34m ago

That’s my worst nightmare. On my iPhone I want the equivalent of Spotify, not Netflix, Hulu, Disney+, Max, etc.

StopDisinfo910•1h ago

> They are adept at malicious compliance.

They just got fined 500 millions for failure to comply so I'm not sure adept is the adjective I would use.

weavie•1h ago

500 million is like half a days revenue.

mdhb•1h ago

The actual fines for this moving forward are up to 10% of a companies global revenue. The EU made a big point to say that this is the first time they are issuing those fines and as a result they are smaller than they otherwise would be especially in the case of repeat offenders.

serial_dev•1h ago

Whether it's adept or not depends on what would have happened if they actually complied.

Sure, a half a billion fine sounds like a lot, but if you don't have another number to compare against, you can't tell if it was clever or not.

judge2020•1h ago

Isn't it just in the name of competition, i.e. alternative app stores? Or is sideloading an explicit goal of the EU's efforts?

prof-dr-ir•3h ago

Duplicate: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43770337

p_ing•2h ago

Is this a fine the companies can appeal, or is this a final decision?

lekevicius•2h ago

They can appeal.

zoobab•2h ago

They will appeal to Court so that they win another 2 years.

phtrivier•2h ago

> Apple faces a €500 million fine for breaching the regulation’s rules for app stores, while Meta drew a penalty of €200 million for its "pay or consent" advertising model,

> The procedural fines fall short of the two giant penalties issued by the EU executive under its antitrust laws last year: €1.8 billion to Apple for abusing its dominant position while distributing music streaming apps, and €797 million to Meta for pushing its classified ads service on social media users.

Really honest questions: are those fines actually paid, in practice ? Is there a way for a citizen to know ? (As in, do they appear in the public budget of the UE ?) Or are they somehow deducted from subsidies, added to taxes, etc... ?

I know who collects taxes in France ("Le Tresor Public"). I don't know of a EU version of a treasury. Is it collected by one of the member states (Ireland, I would guess ?)

i_have_an_idea•1h ago

> somehow deducted from subsidies

Do you think the EU subsidizes Meta/Apple.

tomalbrc•1h ago

No but the EU does subsidize Tesla.

bboygravity•1h ago

No. The EU subsidizes electric vehicles. Not the same thing.

nuthje•1h ago

> Fines imposed on undertakings found in breach of EU antitrust rules are paid into the general EU budget. This money is not earmarked for particular expenses, but Member States' contributions to the EU budget for the following year are reduced accordingly. The fines therefore help to finance the EU and reduce the burden for taxpayers.

This quote is re: anti-trust, but likely generalizes.

https://competition-policy.ec.europa.eu/index/fines_en#:~:te...

bboygravity•1h ago

So, in a way, the fines sponsor moving away from democracy in the EU (since the EU is not really actually democratic in any real practical way).

libertine•1h ago

This is a recurring Russian propaganda point, now amplified by the new US Administration. I am curious about the basis for this.

Could you explain further from your perspective how you came up with this conclusion?

theyknowitsxmas•31m ago

Those pesky Russians and common sense of using #964B00 in your navbar then getting hit for 500 million is stupid.

libertine•1m ago

It doesn't strike you odd that these claims pop up out of the blue when certain subjects are brought up?

The answer could simply be: "oh it's just ignorance at play, and some people just repeat what they heard and made them feel good because it helped them cope/made them resentful/.."

100% of the time I had these engagements, these folks didn't even know what the EU was. Donald Trump is a great example of this, he has no clue what the EU is, nor how it came to be lmao

judge2020•1h ago

> "pay or consent" advertising model,

Wait, so the EU has made it illegal to sell a paid service while also offering an alternative where the user pays via seeing ads?

tantalor•1h ago

It's not the ads you are consenting to, its the personal data collection and targeting.

You could have non-personalized, or contextual ads. But those are much less effective.

tremon•1h ago

No, the EU has made it illegal to extort payment before allowing people to opt-out of data collection or profiling.

g-b-r•59m ago

Except for newspapers

tantalor•57m ago

Extortion is a stretch. Nobody is being forced to use these services.

jdlshore•15m ago

Under the GDPR, it’s illegal to treat PII like currency. You can’t gate a service behind PII consent.

mapcars•1h ago

> while Meta drew a penalty of €200 million for its "pay or consent" advertising model, which requires that European Union users pay to access ad-free versions of Facebook and Instagram

Wait, isn't pretty much all web content is like this nowadays? You have to buy youtube premium to avoid ads, how is it different?

tpm•1h ago

> You have to buy youtube premium to avoid ads

Or you can block the ads in the browser for free. In this case, you have to consent being tracked (or pay) or otherwise the page will not display.

sussmannbaka•1h ago

It’s not about being shown ads, it’s about collecting (and sharing to third parties) private information that goes beyond the technically required amount to use the service. GDPR says companies need to get my consent in order to do that, that I am free to not give this consent and that a service can’t not be provided to me just because I don’t give this consent. Facebook and a bunch of other companies said “aha! We’ll just create a paid alternative!” but this doesn’t comply with the law. It just took a while to take this through the courts but if you read the law it’s clear they just stalled for time on this one.

mapcars•57m ago

Thanks for clarifying, it was confusing to figure that out from the article

blitzar•1h ago

Pay or have your information harvested and sold. Its extortion.