> Under the DMA, app developers distributing their apps via Apple's App Store should be able to inform customers, free of charge, of alternative offers outside the App Store, steer them to those offers and allow them to make purchases.
To me, this is the most easily agreeable part of what the EU has been after. It is unfair that Apple restricts Netflix from telling it's users that they can sign up and pay for Netlifx on their own website. It's unfair that Netflix can't even tell its users the rules that Apple enforces on them.
It's telling that Gruber is pretty staunchly against EU/DMA interferance in Apple, and broadly thinks they're wrong. But this is the one thing he agrees on
> If Apple wants to insist on a cut of in-app purchased subscription revenue, that’s their prerogative. What gets me, though, are the rules that prevent apps that eschew in-app purchases from telling users in plain language how to actually pay. Not only is Netflix not allowed to link to their website, they can’t even tell the user they need to go to netflix.com to sign up
> The Commission takes the preliminary view that Apple failed to comply with this obligation [to allow third party app stores] in view of the conditions it imposes on app (and app store) developers. Developers wanting to use alternative app distribution channels on iOS are disincentivised from doing so as this requires them to opt for business terms which include a new fee (Apple's Core Technology Fee). Apple also introduced overly strict eligibility requirements, hampering developers' ability to distribute their apps through alternative channels. Finally, Apple makes it overly burdensome and confusing for end users to install apps when using such alternative app distribution channels.
This is great to hear. It sounds like they've just found Apple non-compliant in making alternate app stores as discouraging for both developers and user as possible. I guess it'll take another 12 months for any fines or changes from Apple.
>the most easily agreeable part of what the EU has been after
It's also probably the most dangerous for Apple. It creates a cash incentive to push people outside of Apple's walled garden and show them what's outside.
I really really hope Apple gets its act together, they are the greatest "the user experience comes first" company and they actually have great hard tech but they show signs of rent seeking behavior which can destroy them.
If Apple just play nice with EU, open up and focus on bringing the greatest experience possible they will keep winning. If not, they will have blunders and they will lose Europe since people are willing to look for alternatives as USA gets increasingly unpopular among the Europeans due to politics.
The Apple's AI blunder is mostly a blunder only because they insist to do it all by themselves so to have higher margins on the services revenues. IMHO those blunders will be more damaging as the Americans no longer have the higher moral grounds than Koreans or Chinese.
"Show signs of rent seeking behaviour" seems like an extremely generous position. Forbidding your customers from even mentioning The Outside is full-on rent seeking behaviour, since its inception.
They've been hard rent-seeking since iTunes and iPod. They aggressively eliminated and made inconvenient other ways for getting music onto iPods. Hardware was great, but hard dependence on iTunes killed it for me.
> If not, they will have blunders and they will lose Europe since people are willing to look for alternatives as USA gets increasingly unpopular among the Europeans due to politics.
But what alternative? There is no European smartphone OS. Windows and Steam OS and XBox are US-american, too.
I know it would leave a lot of money on the table, but if Apple had set the app store fee at 5% (enough to cover credit card fees and running the service) and been content with a 50% margin on hardware, it never would have been in this mess.
I would imagine that getting the user out of the in-app purchase payment screen and attempt to redirect them at the website for payment, have them figure out how to enter credit card details etc would result in a drastically decreased conversion rate though.
Apple has its act together. Those, who are not Apple, do not in comparison. They are Big Mad that Apple does.
You don't understand the term "rent seeking". Because in this case, it's Apple's competitors that are rent seeking by utilizing the force of the government to make Apple give competitors access to its private but non-monopolistic ecosystem.
I think that Apple should call that bluff and leave the EU.
Which in turn will increase public pressure on the EU, but not as functionally as it would in a democratic system.
All hollow talk. It will lose all of its aggression the moment that Apple leaves the EU, and EU citizens are left with the remaining options.
> It's telling that Gruber is pretty staunchly against EU/DMA interferance in Apple, and broadly thinks they're wrong. But this is the one thing he agree on
I’ve stopped seeing Gruber as any sort of authority on Apple for a while now. He’s just a single guy with an opinion like everyone else, and it’s, more times than not, clearly biased in favor of Apple.
Some of his analysis of objective data is informative, but when he gets into subjective material, I tune out. I don’t really care any more about what he says than most others sharing their opinion on the internet — it’s just one more data point to consider collectively alongside everyone else’s.
I agree with your overall comment, but I think this is basically what OP was getting at: it's not surprising that Gruber is against EU/DMA interference, yet even he has issues with this particular point.
Technically, the first amendment applies only to state actors, not private entities. See Manhattan Community Access Corp. v. Halleck, Hudgens v. NLRB, and many other cases that upheld this interpretation. Private companies like Apple can restrict free speech on their platforms legally (at least as far as the first amendment is concerned).
That said, I believe in the principle of free speech, especially as envisioned by Tim Berners Lee for the Web. I wish more Americans could adhere to those principles even when the speech is not to their taste. Certainly feels like a lot of cultural backsliding happening.
As an American who thinks free speech is one of the most important rights we have, I wish the answer to your question would be a collective "yes" but unfortunately it is not.
If you extend "speech" to "any kind of action an individual or company can do", then no. There's plenty of laws regulations that restrict what you can do in USA.
Most people who go on about free speech are the ones who clamp down the most on it and are massive snowflakes when people decide not to buy their stuff because of their speech.
Usually the user should heavily penalize such behavior, but Apple has users and apostles. To a degree that some believe Daddy Apple should shield them from temptation by evil Netflix.
It ridiculous and also comes with costs for other customers of that ecosystem. I believe brands really make some people stupid.
US officials and businessmen keep on repeating the same thing:
> The European Commission is attempting to handicap successful American businesses while allowing Chinese and European companies to operate under different standards.
But this is wildly untrue. The EU isn't hand-picking individual organisations and fining them because they're American, they're fining them because they're in breach of existing legislation. The same legislation applies to local companies.
Ironically, it's the US who takes stances like the one they claim the EU is taken. E.g.: The US required that TikTok be sold, without actually proving that TikTok was in breach of any actual law.
But repeating the same claims gets those claims out into the media, and that's what people hear. So we see a dissonance between what the media says (and many people believe) and what's really happening.
Agreed with your first point. Regarding TikTok though the argument was never (AFAIK) that they were actively breaking the law but rather that their structure and ownership posed a threat to US interests. That's pretty reasonable and largely mirrors China's stance against the US.
If anything the surprising thing is how lenient western governments tend to be towards foreign corporations. They seem to prioritize free trade above all else.
The US is lying about tiktok, the only reason is to mirror China's strategy towards American app. After watching the tit-for-tat video of Veritasum[1] I agree with America's strategy of banning Chinese apps until China allows American apps. That being said, I wish the US was more transparent about why they're doing this instead of lying.
I'm guessing the reason why they're lying is that they don't want to scare ALL Chinese companies.
I find this so confusing. Rupert Murdoch and Elon Musk are foreigners who are both demonstrably influencing American politics through media they control. What makes Tiktok different?
Well... Though I agree with you in principle, the DMA does target specific gatekeeper companies and the criteria for these were set conveniently to ensure no EU company is regulated by it. So I can see their point a little
I'd argue this style of concentrating power under a single giant company is mostly American style.
EU companies tend to keep group entities separate instead of running for absolute synergies. For instance the AOL-Time-Warner-Direct-Dish kind of merger is pretty much unheard of.
thats only kinda right. The DMA does include booking.com as a gatekeeper, which is european. But most gatekeepers (except booking and tiktok) are US-based
US corporations are too used to breaking laws as they see fit and getting away with a slap on the wrist, so being asked to follow the rules feels like an attack to them.
That is not my experience. Every US company I have worked in spent a lot of time training employees to follow the relevant laws. I have even been on teams which had to do work to comply with the European GDPR. The message I have always received is follow the law and don’t break it.
I think you make many good points. Slight tangent: Why isn't EU more concerned about TikTok? While it is very difficult to prove, various studies have demonstrated that TikTok pushes more content favoring the Chinese Government (CCP).
In my anecdotal experience of one, American platforms are way faster in pushing far-right content on me even though it has to be clear to the algorithm that I don't want such content.
it's not difficult to prove. In the wake of the tarrifs, everyone in the US got Chinese manufacturing videos pushed to their feed so customers can buy direct from factories and avoid huge markups by a middleman.
> But this is wildly untrue. The EU isn't hand-picking individual organisations and fining them because they're American, they're fining them because they're in breach of existing legislation. The same legislation applies to local companies.
The iPhone App store existed before this legislation, and I suspect the rest of the targetted things did too.
This legislation only applies to companies that have a certain marketshare, which includes no European companies unless you count one that's a subsidiary of a US company.
Maybe it's the case that it is reasonable to handicap successful businesses, but this is a handicap that only applies to some businesses, most of which are US (but one is Chinese).
That's called gaslighting, and it's a hostile act. Truth is the first casualty of war. If someone is trying to deceive you (or deceive others and ruin your reputation), they are actively exposing you to some kind of risk, usually for their own benefit, which is a hostile act. Recommend you act accordingly.
There is no irony. The EU is targeting US companies. The US is targeting Chinese companies. The US is or soon will be targeting EU companies. China is targeting US companies. China will probably soon be targeting EU companies if they aren't already, which is probably already debatable. And this is not a complete list, it's not even a complete list of the highlights.
If they're doing it by legislation, well, the EU has been passing "legislation clearly designed for US companies to be in infringement of" for a while. Maybe you like that. Maybe it's a good thing; after all, the things they're passing laws about are basically just actions only US companies are capable of taking right now. Nevertheless it is clearly targeting. It's just targeting you like. The US has passed such legislation. China does it both with formal legislation and with de facto rules.
Free trade is a dead letter. Whether you like that or not is not very relevant to whether or not it is dead. It's dead. Maybe it'll swing back around in a few decades but right now even that is a distant prospect, we're not even done accelerating into the current merchantalist phase of the cycle, let alone decelerating, let alone heading back.
(Note "whataboutism" would be an inappropriate response to my point here; that's about "it's ok for us because they do it". My observation is not normative, merely descriptive... everyone is doing it, and they're doing it more rather than less right now.)
>So we see a dissonance between what the media says (and many people believe) and what's really happening.
This thing right here terrifies me. The entertainment-information media oligopoly has a tight grasp on public conversations. It feels like a hydra that can't be defeated.
It can be defeated by talking to people about things. If you are known to be an expert in topic X, and you are saying something different to what the media says about topic X (and which makes more sense), people (who know you and your reputation) are inclined to believe you over the media.
This only has a local impact, but global is made of local.
Ah, they said the T-word, presumably to invoke some political fire support from across the Atlantic. I wonder how that will go. Of course, this is not a tariff, for two reasons: firstly, it does not involve money (the UK's digital services tax does, but that's not this), and secondly, the same rules would apply to EU native competitors .. if there were any. It's what's knows as a "non tariff trade barrier". Of course those are all over the place, and many of them are there to protect consumer and public interests.
> The EU regulator also dropped Meta's Marketplace's designation as a DMA gatekeeper because the number of users fell below the threshold.
Now that's interesting. I think the threshold is 45 million? Falling EU userbase?
"the same rules would apply to EU maybe competitors... if there were any."
That can actually be an example of a tariff, though. Basically every country specializes in something, and imports things they're not good at making. For example: cheese, or luxury watches, or GPUs. If you have a special law that charges companies money only for the categories you import and you carve out exceptions for "small" (aka domestic) markets, a la the DMA, you have effectively created a tariff.
eBay's listings are no longer free. They are now extorting their pound of flesh via a so-called "Buyer Protection Fee" which forces buyers, rather than sellers, to pay extra when purchasing items from private sellers.
I'm a bit surprised usage was ever that high; that would imply that almost 10% of the population was using _Facebook Marketplace_!
I think I've looked at it maybe twice since it launched, to admire all the weird scams. Maybe it's gotten better since? It used to be sub-ebay levels of complete nonsense.
Remember that you're probably in a bubble. Marketplace was incredibly popular back in the days when I was at FB, and I'd have expected it to get more popular based on the people I see around me (kids stuff is all over it).
Maybe the gatekeeper thing is a reflection of less people in the EU using FB at all, rather than specifically Marketplace.
> 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 ?)
> 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.
No. They just made it illegal for Meta specifically to do it, and they’re reserving judgment for anyone else on their hit list covered by the DMA. The DMA is not neutral laws on neutral principles despite the PR and the extra layers of indirection, it targets American and Chinese companies specifically because that’s what it was designed to do.
> "This isn't just about a fine; the Commission forcing us to change our business model effectively imposes a multi-billion-dollar tariff on Meta while requiring us to offer an inferior service."
Meta complaining about getting tariff'd is objectively hilarious.
> the Commission forcing us to change our business model
This is total, utter, complete 100% grade A organic nonsense.
I worked at FB (but the same is true of basically all action driven advertising systems). Only a tiny proportion of users ever click, but they are incredibly lucrative for online advertising platforms.
The whole subscription was a really transparent attempt to get people to accept the tracking and it's honestly profoundly depressing that this is what they're reduced to.
At least, old school ads. Sensible ads. Like Coca-Cola. I have no idea how these ridiculous online gaming things stay in business but I'm sure it's much stupider.
No, like the rest of these power games it should be worrying. It's not about whether it's actually a tariff or not - it's not about objective truth. It's about getting the orange guy to do things that are beneficial for Mr Sugarhill's money pile. It might or might not work in this particular instance, but it should be very concerning that this sort of thing is the way to get money now.
Mr Sugarhill's ploy is presumably to get Mr Mango enraged about the tariffs so he tariffs them back 200%, and they back down to avoid the 200% tariffs.
I don't understand meta's statement that this handicaps american businesses while allows European and Chinese companies to operate under different standards.
It's not completely unwarranted. According to the article, Facebook was fined for their model of asking for pay or accept tracking. Which is exactly what almost all publishers do, e.g. all big German newspapers. It's absolutely clear that this is against the law - they could show ads, but can't invade the users privacy for that, so no tracking ads - but they do it anyway and got away with it in various decisions. And now Facebook gets a huge fine for the same behaviour.
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.
Big German newspapers do not need to comply under DMA.
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)
I agree, except the DMA specifically only applies to companies over a specific size. I think if the German newspapers were at FB/Apple scale, in terms of number of users, then the DMA would apply (i.e. they would be designated gatekeepers or similar) and they could also be fined. Although I think pay for no ads is also a violation of GDPR maybe?
The measures apply by size, not by country of origin. It happens that the companies over the threshold are American. So their statement is basically untrue, but that's politics these days.
Spotify conveniently falls outside of the scope of this law when any artist would tell you it should absolutely be covered.
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).
A good start, but far from enough regarding the societal damage (anti-competitive, anti-user, psychological harm especially of minors, proliferation of radicalisation) they did.
The EU made a serious point that these are the first time they are issuing those fines as as such have capped them as a signal to show that they are serious but also that they aren’t taking the maximalist approach some in the US are accusing them of.
They can legally go for 10% of global revenue if I’m not mistaken as the top level of fines and both Apple and Meta would be wise to not find themselves as repeat offenders as a result.
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.
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".
Generally, as a society, we hold that a contract cannot be modified without both parties’ agreement. When you bought that phone, it was with the completely clear, overt, and in no way uncertain understanding that it does specifically X Y Z, and does not do A B C. Now, without additional payment to the counterparty, you’re demanding your phone do A B C. What am I missing? According to accepted understandings of contracts, how are you possibly in the right? How are you possibly in a position to demand government use force to modify a contract you accepted before to somehow benefit you more at a cost to your counterparty?
You are of the opinion that it is reasonable for a company to expect you to read, understand and fully agree with a contract that consists of countless pages of opaque legalese and that you have no say in whatsoever, just in order to use a service that's arguably a necessity to participate in public life?
The EU does not seem to share that opinion, and puts some restrictions on these types of 'contracts'. Are you really concerned that this is somehow unfair towards these companies? Companies that retain whole teams of lawyers to create a contract that hardly any of its billion counter parties (individual consumers) can fully comprehend, let alone push back on?
I'm not sure what society you are referring to but contracts have to adhere to laws in the EU.
This is also about software that is being updated. So the transaction is not completed yet. Apple could probably go the route of not providing the update to phones that were sold before the law was voted on/in place. I would guess that would lead to other legal battles.
There's a range of anti-competitive behavior which can subvert that ideal, and as such there's regulation aimed to prevent it. Apple used to forbid apps from telling users about Apple's 30% cut or cheaper places to buy the app, for instance, hindering users from making an informed choice.
Many of the policies in question are intentionally not publicized to end-users, often requiring first paying to be part of the developer program before you can even see what you need to agree to to publish an app.
The EU is using populist claims to introduce laws with ideological bias (big corp bad, America bad, America corp super bad). Everyone knows the digital act was never meant to be a fair set of rules, it was introduced to punish US companies at will.
At the same time, most governments, public offices, agencies and businesses in Europe would not be able to operate normally without access to American software.
The problem is that it is way easier to (over)regulate and tax, than to create a strong environment for business and innovation to thrive, in order to grow your own tech giants.
I don't see how your comment is adding value to the discussion besides claiming emotionality and an absurd reference to FOX news, which implies that my opinions are not welcome here and I should go elsewhere with them.
My post is my opinion, offering an entry point for a discussion to those who might have a different opinion from mine.
Can't deny that some EU politicians (mostly conservative ones, surprise, surprise) have a hidden agenda behind it.
The statement that gov & businesses in Europe would not be able to operate normally without American software is easy to disprove. Just look at how easy the Chinese or the Russians could shed or avoid their dependency on crappy Microsoft or expensive US cloud providers. The problem is just that many European politicians are so technically inept they believe it themselves.
The real problem was that Silicon Valley was flooded with capital and bought out all competitors. Or undercut with free. Or all kinds of other Microsoftlike practices. So nobody was left in the EU to advocate for better rules.
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 :)
> 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?
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.
> Today, the Commission also found that Meta's online intermediation service Facebook Marketplace should no longer be designated under the DMA. The decision follows a request submitted by Meta on 5 March 2024 to reconsider the designation of Marketplace. Following a careful assessment of Meta's arguments and as a result of Meta's additional enforcement and continued monitoring measures to counteract the business-to-consumer use of Marketplace, the Commission found that Marketplace had less than 10,000 business users in 2024. Meta therefore no longer meets the relevant threshold giving rise to a presumption that Marketplace is an important gateway for business users to reach end users.
Just once, I'd like to see one of these companies stand up for themselves and say, "Fine, we'll be withdrawing completely from your market." Ok, that's nonsensical, but it sure would be fun to see the politicians scramble.
Not really. If citizens see "fines" and think "whew, they got their just deserts", it's almost worse than no fines.
But the EU is frequently performative, so it doesn't surprise me. It wouldn't surprise me if they agreed in advance with the EU the fines, behind some closed doors.
Nothing less than a billion these days even registers
I met a member of an EU pact
Who said: two vast and fruitful suits of law
Prevail in the courts. Near them, in their acts,
Half won, a shattered victory lies, whose maw
And wrinkled smile, a sneer of bitter spite,
Tell that its makers well those voters fed
Which yet survive, in those politic corps,
The lips that lied, the hearts that bled
And on the cover these words, in bold, underlined
“My name is Brussels, Home of Kings:
Look on my rules, ye Mighty, and be fined!”
No thing beside remains. Around the court
Of that great parliament, in open plans, Aerons reclined
The ever mighty FAANGs endure.
The "EU over-regulation" argument is pathetic. The exact opposite is true, 2-3 decades of zero regulation has led to Big Tech empires that can get away with anything.
It harms the free market, harms the freedom to compute, creates an asymmetrical extractive relation between mega-corp and average internet user, and omnipresent surveillance. It's anti-American if "American" still means a love of freedom, personal privacy and fair competition.
But I do understand the "new" American perspective. These companies are money printers some of which produce as much as $30B of pure profit in a single quarter. If such companies are to exist, they best be American I guess.
> The "EU over-regulation" argument is pathetic ... It's anti-American ... I do understand the "new" American perspective.
"American" means being able to make your own decisions without government overreach in every aspect of your life.
"American" means being able to decide if you want to engage with a business or not, without getting the government involved.
"American" means being able to reach the highest highs or risk the lowest lows on the power of your tenacity and skill alone, without having the government shoot you down when you succeed, or put meaningless performative roadblocks in your way.
"American" means understanding that the government is not your friend and it doesn't need to replace your own decision making capability or ability to make choices.
From your dismissive sneering tone you do not understand the American perspective. Honestly, I am not sure the typical European even could. You have not grown up in our culture, so ideas like personal responsibility, self-reliance, and the American spirit are foreign to you - or at least heavily deprioritized.
You simply sneer and scoff at these concepts. You do you - this is why the EU is three decades behind and totally, utterly dependent on foreign tech - yet still somehow convinced it could catch up "if it really wanted to."
The context is is Big Tech regulation. Of which there is barely any, allowing these monopolies to exist in the first place.
Everything you claim to be American, responsibility and choice, is harmed by having monopolies. You're so anti-government that you miss that monopolies remove even more choice.
As for dependencies, the US is the biggest importer in the world.
You're not that special. While the American special snowflake syndrome has been useful in giving its citizens a sense of purpose, freeing them of apprehension and bringing it where it is, it's ultimately baseless. Things get dangerous when people start believing in their own bullshit. The same is true for Europeans as well. There's a lot of navel gazing going on and I'm very annoyed at European leaders sweeping increasing authoritarian behaviour under the rug or proclaiming with great confidence, as did von der Leyen, that we don't have oligarchs.
> The EU fines could stoke tensions with U.S President Donald Trump who has threatened to levy tariffs against countries that penalise U.S. companies.
Mark Zuckerberg, in his appearance on Joe Rogan's podcast, specifically noted this as his goal for falling in behind Trump. That Trump would be the big-stick man that would protect Meta and other cos from foreign interference. Where "interference" is anything restricting that American exceptionalism "do anything we want, however we want".
Only then Trump started a trade war with quite literally the entire world -- aside from, predictably, Russia -- and now he holds, as he likes to say, no cards. The EU and anyone else can do whatever they want and Zuck and co can cry about the millions they wasted trying to buy a protection racket.
Of course Meta could just withdrawn from the EU. I wish they would withdraw from Canada. Their garbage misinformation platform is a massive net negative for humanity and has offered nothing but harm for the planet.
Someone here hazarded the hypothesis that Trump's tariffs are a stick aimed not towards other countries, but towards American corporations, who have to pledge fealty (and resources) to Trump in exchange for relief. I think it makes a lot of sense, if any of this is rational, which I'm not entirely sold on.
It's always funny when shit happens and everyone jumps over themselves to figure out what "5D chess" the people in charge are playing. There's never any chess. They are just incompetent.
Look at 47's truth social some time. In between the posts 'destroying' liberals and lionising the worst actors in his party, he posts up a disturbing amount of 'settlements' with Law Firms that previously displeased him.
They were basically forced at gunpoint to make deals to provide pro bono services to the Trump administration, in return for regulators dropping investigations into their diversity practices.
The firms - including Kirkland & Ellis, Latham & Watkins, Allen Overy Shearman Sterling, Simpson Thacher & Bartlett, and Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft – are among the most prestigious and recognized firms in the US.
Cadwalader is the former firm of Todd Blanche, who resigned his partnership there to represent Trump in criminal cases when the firm would not take on Trump as a client. Blanche is now the deputy attorney general – the number two official at the Department of Justice.
Overall the MAGA cabinet has now secured more than $900m in pro bono pledges from law firms threatened with either executive orders or investigations from the equal opportunity commission. How this isn't seen as a straight up RICO case or old-fashioned criminal shakedown is beyond me.
> Of course Meta could just withdrawn from the EU.
I mean, probably not without being sued by their shareholders. As a public company, you cannot simply abandon 40bn revenue/year because you feel aggrieved.
But yeah, the "you'd better be nice to us, EC, or Trump might be angry" tactic is kinda shot at this point.
> I mean, probably not without being sued by their shareholders. As a public company, you cannot simply abandon 40bn revenue/year because you feel aggrieved.
Most Canadian small businesses rely on Meta to get customers.
If you think these companies don't add value, you are totally oblivious to the millions of small businesses that rely on these platforms to reach customers and niche audiences around the world.
The EU has zero innovation and zero new big businesses because of crazy regulatory overreach and harassment that is solely driven by greedy politicians.
Would looove to distribute an app without it having to be in the App Store, and not paying the App Store fee (direct download of signed binary). Happy to pay a yearly fee or fee per update to cover code review if it’s crucial. But 30% of revenue for doing bugger all… cmon, they’re squeezing the lemon a bit too hard.
Personally I wouldn’t install software unless it were from a really trusted person doing something extremely unique and useful that doesn’t have an alternative on the Apple Store (think UTM with JIT for iPad).
Please don’t take that as a negative comment but I suspect most people source their software from conveniently centralized repos whether it be App Store, Steam or even the main package manager on a Linux distribution.
But I'd still like to be able to install whatever the fuck I want on my iPhone, should I decide to based on my own criteria, without going through Apple or even a fucking "alternative app store" that is still Apple censored.
The point is that it becomes your choice. For example some people might choose to use a different web browser instead of Safari on their Apple device so they can use some web apps fully and not have to install similar local apps at all.
You mentioned linux package managers, these existing are proof enough that a 30% cut isn't required for ensuring the safety of what you install. In fact, I'd wager there is that much more dangerous garbage in the app store than in pacman's database.
> cmon, they’re squeezing the lemon a bit too hard
They got hooked on the lemon juice. Nobody at Apple making millions a year to write emails and sit in meetings wants to be out on the street for putting up their hand and saying "hey lets just take 10% and have a healthy ecosystem long term, which will let us continue to sell phones to people every year with a profit margin of $500".
Phil Schiller has actually made some comments about being less greedy, like possibly ratcheting down the 30% cut once the App Store started making serious revenue or not shaking down developers if they use external payment methods. Not that Schiller has actually made any changes at Apple to do any of the less greedy things.
The barrier of entry for me is having to pay $99/year just to notarize and sign my macOS applications that me and maybe three other people use. Just a lot easier to link to instructions on how to bypass Gatekeeper or make them compile it themselves from source.
Frankly, the whole "it's pointless, so this is stupid" response to some things is more tiring to me than anything. What exactly is the end-game for these people? All or nothing? That is just delusional. It is simply not how progress is made. So let's be appreciative of what little is done, and push for more?
Not to mention the amount of people in here just focusing on the fine - by the way, I don't know how people can square the belief that these companies are endlessly greedy and will do anything for more money, with the belief that half a billion euros lost profit will just sit well with them - while completely ignoring the bit where these companies either comply or face even more fines.
There's nothing special about US software engineering vs. software engineering made elsewhere from a purely technical and know-how point of view.
The key difference is availability of capital and appetite for risk that make US exceptional by enabling a speed of scaling and execution not possible anywhere else (well, other than China).
If US companies that can't be bothered to follow EU laws leave the +500M people market that is the EU, I'm positive some other equally competent alternative (local or otherwise) would appear sooner or later to fill in the gap.
Perhaps the same regulations that US companies keep running afoul of are the regulations that prevent European investors from putting money behind European startup competitors.
The EU has some extremely strong consumer protection laws, which is excellent for consumers, but it comes with downsides too.
> If you want to sideload, just get an Android device. There is no monopoly here.
The Digital Markets Act is not about a user's right to sideload. It's about 100s of thousands of businesses' right to reach billions of users without Apple in the middle. That's why it's called the Digital Markets Act, not the Phone User Rights Act
This word doesn't simply mean 'I don't like this', you know.
Facebook is under no obligation to operate in Europe. Of course, they make about 40 billion revenue in Europe annually, so they will be inclined to want to stay in Europe. And they can do this! They just have to follow the rules.
I'll be generous and assume you're being disingenuous by accident: This isn't about the ads, it's about the tracking. Meta is free to put ads wherever it wants, but it's not free to track people who don't want to be tracked.
In the end, a population has the right to govern itself how it wants. There's absolutely NOTHING wrong with that - Meta is free to simply not operate in the EU.
Why shouldn't you allowed to track people across your own services if users consent? If they don't consent, they are free to simply not use your services. Problem solved.
There is no actual need for this law. No rights are being infringed on. Just don't use the website.
Blaming Europe for "rent-seeking" when enforcing basic consumer protections rules on those massive foreign-propaganda disinformation and wealth extraction engines really takes the cake. Fuck Meta, if it was up to me Facebook, Instagram and X would have been long gone from European soil. We gain nothing from them.
Because the fine is exactly about giving people a more fair chance to vote with their wallets.
This is from the Yahoo article:
"The EU competition watchdog said Apple must remove technical and commercial restrictions that prevent app developers from steering users to cheaper deals outside the App Store."
The irony is that smaller American companies stand the most to benefit from EU DMA, including startups. Stripe could offer deeper payment integration without the Apple cut. You could start an indie game store. And Garmin can make better sport watches with better integration.
20 years ago Europe had a thriving phone industry. Now it's just gone, and they want to blame everyone else for this, and fail to reflect on why it happened.
The problem is if you go for a free market "vote with their wallets" approach, you end up with a problem like the US did with Microsoft having too high of a market share and control on browsers, media players and operating systems.
Customers can only really vote with their wallets when there is choice and no de facto standard. On top of that, many consumers don't really understand that things like their privacy and and choice has been taken away from them.
I do not agree with all parts of the DMA and I think it's overbearing in some areas but also lacklustre in others but I do think it's important that we don't let monopolies control our lives.
> if Europe actually produced a company with the innovation and scale of Apple.
Except a functional society does not need companies "the scale of Apple" to work.
In fact it's probably the opposite : nobody can beat Apple or Google because they already have too much power worldwide.
Even in the US, where is the free market ? Nobody can create a company that will compete with Apple or Google. Sure, there was an open window for new competitors in the capitalism game in the 90-2010 era with the rise of the home computing but now everything is locked up again.
A functionnal society doesn't need huge actors, it only needs an environment where companies that win the capitalism game don't become trusts and where small companies can shine.
I don't want an european alternative to Apple, I want an ecosystem of companies that specializes in what they are good at and that are forced to work together to be interoperable.
It's hard to make informed choices and vote with your wallet when you're unaware of alternatives. Apple's ban on even mentioning competing options tries to preserve this information gap to the detriment of its customers.
Well.. ish. But really it started with iPhone. I've used those Nokia "smartphones". They were less the start of the smartphone revolution than PalmPilot or the IBM PC.
They keep doing that to try to paint this as a loss for users. Users have much to win with this, as it will give some real competition to the Apple ecosystem, and potentially saving users money. So it's only natural Apple will pull all the cards like saying it threatens users privacy.
They called it on themselves. Were so greedy with access to unlimited capital, bought everything out or undercut with free. And now there are no EU competitors left to lobby for more favorable regulations.
Genuine question for debate: iPhone app store is a private club to which businesses can choose to belong, if they want to sell their product to certain customers. Membership in the club comes with the condition that you not talk about alternative ways to buy the same product, while selling via the club. Membership in the club is not a monopoly; there are many other channels through which to sell a company's products.
The EU's regulatory stance on antitrust does not require a monopoly, it requires a dominant position in a market meeting use of certain criteria marked as abuse. https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CEL... From there when they tell a company they are breaching criteria for abuse and the company doesn't change the EU issues according fines.
As for "why" this is against the law, I assume that more to mean "why did the EU make this against the law" (since the other answer is simply "because the EU law was written as so". The arguments are largely the same as for why monopolies should not be allowed to operate: to ensure free market competition by preventing a few dominating companies from unduly pressuring the market. There are, of course, some who feel the freest market is one with no governmental regulations at all but they are not the majority (at least in the EU).
Apple has always allowed anyone into their club. You have to pay dues and follow some strict (but non-discriminatory) rules, but the result was a place which people liked going to.
Analogies aside, the REAL question is whether Apple is entitled to charge money for access to their developer APIs. Or whether Apple is entitled to place software license terms upon use of their intellectual property, e.g. when you link against Apple libraries which are then compiled into your binary.
We get up in arms about GPL violations, but also want Apple to suck shit. I don't think it's right to want it both ways.
> Under the DMA, app developers distributing their apps via Apple's App Store should be able to inform customers, free of charge, of alternative offers outside the App Store, steer them to those offers and allow them to make purchases.
To me, this is the most easily agreeable part of what the EU has been after. It is unfair that Apple restricts Netflix from telling it's users that they can sign up and pay for Netlifx on their own website. It's unfair that Netflix can't even tell its users the rules that Apple enforces on them.
It's telling that Gruber is pretty staunchly against EU/DMA interferance in Apple, and broadly thinks they're wrong. But this is the one thing he agrees on
> If Apple wants to insist on a cut of in-app purchased subscription revenue, that’s their prerogative. What gets me, though, are the rules that prevent apps that eschew in-app purchases from telling users in plain language how to actually pay. Not only is Netflix not allowed to link to their website, they can’t even tell the user they need to go to netflix.com to sign up
https://daringfireball.net/2019/01/netflix_itunes_billing
https://daringfireball.net/2020/07/parsing_cooks_opening_sta...
(I think Apple now has their 'reader app' carveout for apps like Netflix, but it's still pretty obtuse and inconsistent)
Also, https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_25_...
> The Commission takes the preliminary view that Apple failed to comply with this obligation [to allow third party app stores] in view of the conditions it imposes on app (and app store) developers. Developers wanting to use alternative app distribution channels on iOS are disincentivised from doing so as this requires them to opt for business terms which include a new fee (Apple's Core Technology Fee). Apple also introduced overly strict eligibility requirements, hampering developers' ability to distribute their apps through alternative channels. Finally, Apple makes it overly burdensome and confusing for end users to install apps when using such alternative app distribution channels.
This is great to hear. It sounds like they've just found Apple non-compliant in making alternate app stores as discouraging for both developers and user as possible. I guess it'll take another 12 months for any fines or changes from Apple.
The two companies have two months to comply, or there will be daily fines.
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>the most easily agreeable part of what the EU has been after
It's also probably the most dangerous for Apple. It creates a cash incentive to push people outside of Apple's walled garden and show them what's outside.
I really really hope Apple gets its act together, they are the greatest "the user experience comes first" company and they actually have great hard tech but they show signs of rent seeking behavior which can destroy them.
If Apple just play nice with EU, open up and focus on bringing the greatest experience possible they will keep winning. If not, they will have blunders and they will lose Europe since people are willing to look for alternatives as USA gets increasingly unpopular among the Europeans due to politics.
The Apple's AI blunder is mostly a blunder only because they insist to do it all by themselves so to have higher margins on the services revenues. IMHO those blunders will be more damaging as the Americans no longer have the higher moral grounds than Koreans or Chinese.
I hope Apple is treading carefully.
"Show signs of rent seeking behaviour" seems like an extremely generous position. Forbidding your customers from even mentioning The Outside is full-on rent seeking behaviour, since its inception.
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> show signs of rent seeking
They've been hard rent-seeking since iTunes and iPod. They aggressively eliminated and made inconvenient other ways for getting music onto iPods. Hardware was great, but hard dependence on iTunes killed it for me.
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> If not, they will have blunders and they will lose Europe since people are willing to look for alternatives as USA gets increasingly unpopular among the Europeans due to politics.
But what alternative? There is no European smartphone OS. Windows and Steam OS and XBox are US-american, too.
I suppose Linux, Playstation, and Nintendo, then?
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I know it would leave a lot of money on the table, but if Apple had set the app store fee at 5% (enough to cover credit card fees and running the service) and been content with a 50% margin on hardware, it never would have been in this mess.
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I would imagine that getting the user out of the in-app purchase payment screen and attempt to redirect them at the website for payment, have them figure out how to enter credit card details etc would result in a drastically decreased conversion rate though.
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The money comes first (:
Apple has its act together. Those, who are not Apple, do not in comparison. They are Big Mad that Apple does.
You don't understand the term "rent seeking". Because in this case, it's Apple's competitors that are rent seeking by utilizing the force of the government to make Apple give competitors access to its private but non-monopolistic ecosystem.
I think that Apple should call that bluff and leave the EU.
Which in turn will increase public pressure on the EU, but not as functionally as it would in a democratic system.
All hollow talk. It will lose all of its aggression the moment that Apple leaves the EU, and EU citizens are left with the remaining options.
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> It's telling that Gruber is pretty staunchly against EU/DMA interferance in Apple, and broadly thinks they're wrong. But this is the one thing he agree on
I’ve stopped seeing Gruber as any sort of authority on Apple for a while now. He’s just a single guy with an opinion like everyone else, and it’s, more times than not, clearly biased in favor of Apple.
Some of his analysis of objective data is informative, but when he gets into subjective material, I tune out. I don’t really care any more about what he says than most others sharing their opinion on the internet — it’s just one more data point to consider collectively alongside everyone else’s.
I agree with your overall comment, but I think this is basically what OP was getting at: it's not surprising that Gruber is against EU/DMA interference, yet even he has issues with this particular point.
I liked his piece on the Apple AI debacle, I figure if he is criticising Apple for that then there is something to the complaints.
What I really dislike and the reason I don't subscribe to his feed is the politics.
Aren't Americans always going on about free speech?
Technically, the first amendment applies only to state actors, not private entities. See Manhattan Community Access Corp. v. Halleck, Hudgens v. NLRB, and many other cases that upheld this interpretation. Private companies like Apple can restrict free speech on their platforms legally (at least as far as the first amendment is concerned).
That said, I believe in the principle of free speech, especially as envisioned by Tim Berners Lee for the Web. I wish more Americans could adhere to those principles even when the speech is not to their taste. Certainly feels like a lot of cultural backsliding happening.
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As an American who thinks free speech is one of the most important rights we have, I wish the answer to your question would be a collective "yes" but unfortunately it is not.
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If you extend "speech" to "any kind of action an individual or company can do", then no. There's plenty of laws regulations that restrict what you can do in USA.
There is also the freedom to engage in a contact.
The freedom of speech isn't restricted, apple just isn't providing a platform to speak on.
This is an anti trust issue balance against two parties ability to be bound by contract.
Most people who go on about free speech are the ones who clamp down the most on it and are massive snowflakes when people decide not to buy their stuff because of their speech.
Sorry, Fox News changed its mind in January. Come back in 2 years and they'll be back to "pro free speech" (to mock minorities).
Every American is pro free speech for the kind of speech they like.
Just never in a logically consistent manner.
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Usually the user should heavily penalize such behavior, but Apple has users and apostles. To a degree that some believe Daddy Apple should shield them from temptation by evil Netflix.
It ridiculous and also comes with costs for other customers of that ecosystem. I believe brands really make some people stupid.
Elon was very vocal about this, he asked subscribers to directly buy from the website. There’s a 30% discount.
And to the products that need the carveouts the most, small fledgling apps where the margin matters intensely, it’s not available.
US officials and businessmen keep on repeating the same thing:
> The European Commission is attempting to handicap successful American businesses while allowing Chinese and European companies to operate under different standards.
But this is wildly untrue. The EU isn't hand-picking individual organisations and fining them because they're American, they're fining them because they're in breach of existing legislation. The same legislation applies to local companies.
Ironically, it's the US who takes stances like the one they claim the EU is taken. E.g.: The US required that TikTok be sold, without actually proving that TikTok was in breach of any actual law.
But repeating the same claims gets those claims out into the media, and that's what people hear. So we see a dissonance between what the media says (and many people believe) and what's really happening.
Agreed with your first point. Regarding TikTok though the argument was never (AFAIK) that they were actively breaking the law but rather that their structure and ownership posed a threat to US interests. That's pretty reasonable and largely mirrors China's stance against the US.
If anything the surprising thing is how lenient western governments tend to be towards foreign corporations. They seem to prioritize free trade above all else.
The US is lying about tiktok, the only reason is to mirror China's strategy towards American app. After watching the tit-for-tat video of Veritasum[1] I agree with America's strategy of banning Chinese apps until China allows American apps. That being said, I wish the US was more transparent about why they're doing this instead of lying.
I'm guessing the reason why they're lying is that they don't want to scare ALL Chinese companies.
[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mScpHTIi-kM
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> that their structure and ownership posed a threat to US interests.
This is pretty much as vague as it gets "they're doing _something_ wrong".
The exact behaviour that is prohibited needs to be codified into law. Then you can go after organisations what break such law.
In this case, they've just been found guilty of an unwritten crime.
> If anything the surprising thing is how lenient western governments tend to be towards foreign corporations
Corporations in general rather. I do agree that we should be stricter of foreign corporations, and on non-foreign ones equally so.
I find this so confusing. Rupert Murdoch and Elon Musk are foreigners who are both demonstrably influencing American politics through media they control. What makes Tiktok different?
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Well... Though I agree with you in principle, the DMA does target specific gatekeeper companies and the criteria for these were set conveniently to ensure no EU company is regulated by it. So I can see their point a little
Isn't the question whether they were set because they were US companies, or because they are dominant gatekeepers on the Internet?
5/7 designated gatekeepers are US companies: https://digital-markets-act.ec.europa.eu/gatekeepers_en
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I'd argue this style of concentrating power under a single giant company is mostly American style.
EU companies tend to keep group entities separate instead of running for absolute synergies. For instance the AOL-Time-Warner-Direct-Dish kind of merger is pretty much unheard of.
thats only kinda right. The DMA does include booking.com as a gatekeeper, which is european. But most gatekeepers (except booking and tiktok) are US-based
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US corporations are too used to breaking laws as they see fit and getting away with a slap on the wrist, so being asked to follow the rules feels like an attack to them.
They're also very used to lobbying to get what they want, as soon as that's not possible, they have a tantrum.
That is not my experience. Every US company I have worked in spent a lot of time training employees to follow the relevant laws. I have even been on teams which had to do work to comply with the European GDPR. The message I have always received is follow the law and don’t break it.
I think you make many good points. Slight tangent: Why isn't EU more concerned about TikTok? While it is very difficult to prove, various studies have demonstrated that TikTok pushes more content favoring the Chinese Government (CCP).
In my anecdotal experience of one, American platforms are way faster in pushing far-right content on me even though it has to be clear to the algorithm that I don't want such content.
TikTok never does that.
If the EU were to worry about foreign propaganda then that would hit the US far harder than China
> TikTok pushes more content favoring the Chinese Government (CCP).
Does that violate EU law? (Serious question, I really don't know)
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Actually, the problem the US had with Tiktok that was it did not censor people from talking about Palestine
https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/us-tiktok-ban-linked-isra...
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it's not difficult to prove. In the wake of the tarrifs, everyone in the US got Chinese manufacturing videos pushed to their feed so customers can buy direct from factories and avoid huge markups by a middleman.
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> But this is wildly untrue. The EU isn't hand-picking individual organisations and fining them because they're American, they're fining them because they're in breach of existing legislation. The same legislation applies to local companies.
The iPhone App store existed before this legislation, and I suspect the rest of the targetted things did too.
This legislation only applies to companies that have a certain marketshare, which includes no European companies unless you count one that's a subsidiary of a US company.
Maybe it's the case that it is reasonable to handicap successful businesses, but this is a handicap that only applies to some businesses, most of which are US (but one is Chinese).
Which EU company do you feel should be included in the list? Considering that one of the main criteria is the ability to abuse monopolies.
Another irony is that the biggest (business) beneficiaries of applied DMA would be other US-based digital services companies like Netflix or Epic.
> The same legislation applies to local companies.
It doesn't matter what applies, only what's enforced matters.
Laws being selectively enforced for an agenda is a tale as old as the existence of laws.
This is a side note but I don't understand why you called out the media when your quote wasn't from them but reporting a person's opinion
That's called gaslighting, and it's a hostile act. Truth is the first casualty of war. If someone is trying to deceive you (or deceive others and ruin your reputation), they are actively exposing you to some kind of risk, usually for their own benefit, which is a hostile act. Recommend you act accordingly.
There is no irony. The EU is targeting US companies. The US is targeting Chinese companies. The US is or soon will be targeting EU companies. China is targeting US companies. China will probably soon be targeting EU companies if they aren't already, which is probably already debatable. And this is not a complete list, it's not even a complete list of the highlights.
If they're doing it by legislation, well, the EU has been passing "legislation clearly designed for US companies to be in infringement of" for a while. Maybe you like that. Maybe it's a good thing; after all, the things they're passing laws about are basically just actions only US companies are capable of taking right now. Nevertheless it is clearly targeting. It's just targeting you like. The US has passed such legislation. China does it both with formal legislation and with de facto rules.
Free trade is a dead letter. Whether you like that or not is not very relevant to whether or not it is dead. It's dead. Maybe it'll swing back around in a few decades but right now even that is a distant prospect, we're not even done accelerating into the current merchantalist phase of the cycle, let alone decelerating, let alone heading back.
(Note "whataboutism" would be an inappropriate response to my point here; that's about "it's ok for us because they do it". My observation is not normative, merely descriptive... everyone is doing it, and they're doing it more rather than less right now.)
>The US is or soon will be targeting EU companies.
They already do, lookup how many European banks have been fined by the US and by how much then compare that to US banks.
Everybody plays these games.
I mean I understand they are doing, but also why aren't they fining European and Chinese companies for the same thing?
Because the only non-US app/marketplace big enough to be affected by the DMA is tiktok.
>So we see a dissonance between what the media says (and many people believe) and what's really happening.
This thing right here terrifies me. The entertainment-information media oligopoly has a tight grasp on public conversations. It feels like a hydra that can't be defeated.
It can be defeated by talking to people about things. If you are known to be an expert in topic X, and you are saying something different to what the media says about topic X (and which makes more sense), people (who know you and your reputation) are inclined to believe you over the media.
This only has a local impact, but global is made of local.
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Ah, they said the T-word, presumably to invoke some political fire support from across the Atlantic. I wonder how that will go. Of course, this is not a tariff, for two reasons: firstly, it does not involve money (the UK's digital services tax does, but that's not this), and secondly, the same rules would apply to EU native competitors .. if there were any. It's what's knows as a "non tariff trade barrier". Of course those are all over the place, and many of them are there to protect consumer and public interests.
> The EU regulator also dropped Meta's Marketplace's designation as a DMA gatekeeper because the number of users fell below the threshold.
Now that's interesting. I think the threshold is 45 million? Falling EU userbase?
"the same rules would apply to EU maybe competitors... if there were any."
That can actually be an example of a tariff, though. Basically every country specializes in something, and imports things they're not good at making. For example: cheese, or luxury watches, or GPUs. If you have a special law that charges companies money only for the categories you import and you carve out exceptions for "small" (aka domestic) markets, a la the DMA, you have effectively created a tariff.
I wonder if eBay's free listings is taking marketshare back?
eBay's listings are no longer free. They are now extorting their pound of flesh via a so-called "Buyer Protection Fee" which forces buyers, rather than sellers, to pay extra when purchasing items from private sellers.
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I'm a bit surprised usage was ever that high; that would imply that almost 10% of the population was using _Facebook Marketplace_!
I think I've looked at it maybe twice since it launched, to admire all the weird scams. Maybe it's gotten better since? It used to be sub-ebay levels of complete nonsense.
Remember that you're probably in a bubble. Marketplace was incredibly popular back in the days when I was at FB, and I'd have expected it to get more popular based on the people I see around me (kids stuff is all over it).
Maybe the gatekeeper thing is a reflection of less people in the EU using FB at all, rather than specifically Marketplace.
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Facebook Marketplace is extremely popular depending on the city you’re in.
It has taken the place of Craigslist for younger generations.
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> the same rules would apply to EU native competitors .. if there were any.
By this same logic, I guess we can say that the EU isn't trying to build a trade barrier favoring local competitors. So, while, as you say,
> It's what's knows as a "non tariff trade barrier".
...It's also not that, since the goal isn't prevent them from competing equally in the market, where they have no competition.
[dead]
> 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 ?)
> 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...
[flagged]
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> "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?
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.
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No, the EU has made it illegal to extort payment before allowing people to opt-out of data collection or profiling.
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Under the GDPR, it’s illegal to treat PII like currency. You can’t gate a service behind PII consent.
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No. They just made it illegal for Meta specifically to do it, and they’re reserving judgment for anyone else on their hit list covered by the DMA. The DMA is not neutral laws on neutral principles despite the PR and the extra layers of indirection, it targets American and Chinese companies specifically because that’s what it was designed to do.
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> somehow deducted from subsidies
Do you think the EU subsidizes Meta/Apple.
Not necessarily Meta, but it's very much possible that a large company is the recipient of both EU subsidies and EU fines :)
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This is a result of the severe neglect to enforce anti trust in the US. Now other countries need to kick in with diplomatic adverse effects... sigh.
> "This isn't just about a fine; the Commission forcing us to change our business model effectively imposes a multi-billion-dollar tariff on Meta while requiring us to offer an inferior service."
Meta complaining about getting tariff'd is objectively hilarious.
> the Commission forcing us to change our business model
This is total, utter, complete 100% grade A organic nonsense.
I worked at FB (but the same is true of basically all action driven advertising systems). Only a tiny proportion of users ever click, but they are incredibly lucrative for online advertising platforms.
The whole subscription was a really transparent attempt to get people to accept the tracking and it's honestly profoundly depressing that this is what they're reduced to.
Ads work even if nobody clicks.
At least, old school ads. Sensible ads. Like Coca-Cola. I have no idea how these ridiculous online gaming things stay in business but I'm sure it's much stupider.
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No, like the rest of these power games it should be worrying. It's not about whether it's actually a tariff or not - it's not about objective truth. It's about getting the orange guy to do things that are beneficial for Mr Sugarhill's money pile. It might or might not work in this particular instance, but it should be very concerning that this sort of thing is the way to get money now.
Mr Sugarhill's ploy is presumably to get Mr Mango enraged about the tariffs so he tariffs them back 200%, and they back down to avoid the 200% tariffs.
Press release: https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_25_...
Huh, so Facebook Marketplace is no longer designated as a Gatekeeper because it has not enough business users.
--
Other related PR: https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_25_...
This rules that the "Core Technology Fee" is de facto illegal.
I don't understand meta's statement that this handicaps american businesses while allows European and Chinese companies to operate under different standards.
It's not completely unwarranted. According to the article, Facebook was fined for their model of asking for pay or accept tracking. Which is exactly what almost all publishers do, e.g. all big German newspapers. It's absolutely clear that this is against the law - they could show ads, but can't invade the users privacy for that, so no tracking ads - but they do it anyway and got away with it in various decisions. And now Facebook gets a huge fine for the same behaviour.
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.
Big German newspapers do not need to comply under DMA.
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)
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I agree, except the DMA specifically only applies to companies over a specific size. I think if the German newspapers were at FB/Apple scale, in terms of number of users, then the DMA would apply (i.e. they would be designated gatekeepers or similar) and they could also be fined. Although I think pay for no ads is also a violation of GDPR maybe?
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The measures apply by size, not by country of origin. It happens that the companies over the threshold are American. So their statement is basically untrue, but that's politics these days.
There are a couple of companies in the list[1] (of seven) that aren’t US-based. ByteDance are Chinese and Booking are EU (NL).
[1] https://digital-markets-act.ec.europa.eu/gatekeepers_en
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Spotify conveniently falls outside of the scope of this law when any artist would tell you it should absolutely be covered.
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).
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A good start, but far from enough regarding the societal damage (anti-competitive, anti-user, psychological harm especially of minors, proliferation of radicalisation) they did.
*insert Mike Myers One Million Dollars meme
they made more than the fine, so it's just reduced profit a little. mere higher cost of business and continue as usual.
The EU made a serious point that these are the first time they are issuing those fines as as such have capped them as a signal to show that they are serious but also that they aren’t taking the maximalist approach some in the US are accusing them of.
They can legally go for 10% of global revenue if I’m not mistaken as the top level of fines and both Apple and Meta would be wise to not find themselves as repeat offenders as a result.
The DMA fines are not supposed to be punitive damages, they're a tool to correct behavior, like the GDPR.
If Apple & co don't comply there are higher amounts that can be imposed, but the idea is that the companies will comply before that.
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.
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.
> 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.
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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".
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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?
Generally, as a society, we hold that a contract cannot be modified without both parties’ agreement. When you bought that phone, it was with the completely clear, overt, and in no way uncertain understanding that it does specifically X Y Z, and does not do A B C. Now, without additional payment to the counterparty, you’re demanding your phone do A B C. What am I missing? According to accepted understandings of contracts, how are you possibly in the right? How are you possibly in a position to demand government use force to modify a contract you accepted before to somehow benefit you more at a cost to your counterparty?
You are of the opinion that it is reasonable for a company to expect you to read, understand and fully agree with a contract that consists of countless pages of opaque legalese and that you have no say in whatsoever, just in order to use a service that's arguably a necessity to participate in public life?
The EU does not seem to share that opinion, and puts some restrictions on these types of 'contracts'. Are you really concerned that this is somehow unfair towards these companies? Companies that retain whole teams of lawyers to create a contract that hardly any of its billion counter parties (individual consumers) can fully comprehend, let alone push back on?
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Parts of the contract can be illegal, this is completely within the power of the EU to enforce a crackdown on illegal contracts.
I'm not sure what society you are referring to but contracts have to adhere to laws in the EU.
This is also about software that is being updated. So the transaction is not completed yet. Apple could probably go the route of not providing the update to phones that were sold before the law was voted on/in place. I would guess that would lead to other legal battles.
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There's a range of anti-competitive behavior which can subvert that ideal, and as such there's regulation aimed to prevent it. Apple used to forbid apps from telling users about Apple's 30% cut or cheaper places to buy the app, for instance, hindering users from making an informed choice.
Many of the policies in question are intentionally not publicized to end-users, often requiring first paying to be part of the developer program before you can even see what you need to agree to to publish an app.
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The EU is using populist claims to introduce laws with ideological bias (big corp bad, America bad, America corp super bad). Everyone knows the digital act was never meant to be a fair set of rules, it was introduced to punish US companies at will.
At the same time, most governments, public offices, agencies and businesses in Europe would not be able to operate normally without access to American software.
The problem is that it is way easier to (over)regulate and tax, than to create a strong environment for business and innovation to thrive, in order to grow your own tech giants.
That's a lot of emotional words without a single bit of context from the actual article. Your comment is better suited to FOX news' website.
I don't see how your comment is adding value to the discussion besides claiming emotionality and an absurd reference to FOX news, which implies that my opinions are not welcome here and I should go elsewhere with them.
My post is my opinion, offering an entry point for a discussion to those who might have a different opinion from mine.
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The very idea of this regulation is that Tech Giants are not desirable, since they're mono- or oligopolies.
Any average EU politician would be far left in the US.
"Over regulate and tax"? What? Have you done any reading on how almost all US tech companies go to extreme lengths to avoid paying tax?
Most companies in the world do exactly that. Prove me wrong.
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Can't deny that some EU politicians (mostly conservative ones, surprise, surprise) have a hidden agenda behind it.
The statement that gov & businesses in Europe would not be able to operate normally without American software is easy to disprove. Just look at how easy the Chinese or the Russians could shed or avoid their dependency on crappy Microsoft or expensive US cloud providers. The problem is just that many European politicians are so technically inept they believe it themselves.
The real problem was that Silicon Valley was flooded with capital and bought out all competitors. Or undercut with free. Or all kinds of other Microsoftlike practices. So nobody was left in the EU to advocate for better rules.
If that is true, how come new competitors spring up all the time in Silicon Valley and other places in the US while the European sector lies dormant?
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The EU Comission press release: https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_25_...
It’s funny to see a “share this page on Facebook” option at the bottom of the press release.
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 :)
Which shows that they're not discriminating. TikTok is missing, though.
EU comission has been fined for breaching GDPR they designed themselves
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/first-eu-court-fines-eu...
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It shouldn't be funny, social media isn't doing the world any favor, they gotta behave
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> 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?
Pay or have your information harvested and sold. Its extortion.
You’re missing a third option there, which makes it not extortion.
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Nobody was holding a gun up to my head forcing me to open Facebook or give them money
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You must be either broke and/or paranoid. If it matters to you, pay up. If it doesn't, you get to use a service for free.
Who does Facebook sell data to?
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YouTube allows you to disable personalized ads.
https://www.youtube.com/intl/en_us/howyoutubeworks/user-sett...
They are saying that there should be the option where you don't get your data harvested and are shown ads without your privacy being violated.
> 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.
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.
Thanks for clarifying, it was confusing to figure that out from the article
From the article:
> The EU regulator also dropped Meta's Marketplace's designation as a DMA gatekeeper because the number of users fell below the required threshold.
The EU government explains this in their press release: https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_25_...
> Today, the Commission also found that Meta's online intermediation service Facebook Marketplace should no longer be designated under the DMA. The decision follows a request submitted by Meta on 5 March 2024 to reconsider the designation of Marketplace. Following a careful assessment of Meta's arguments and as a result of Meta's additional enforcement and continued monitoring measures to counteract the business-to-consumer use of Marketplace, the Commission found that Marketplace had less than 10,000 business users in 2024. Meta therefore no longer meets the relevant threshold giving rise to a presumption that Marketplace is an important gateway for business users to reach end users.
Just once, I'd like to see one of these companies stand up for themselves and say, "Fine, we'll be withdrawing completely from your market." Ok, that's nonsensical, but it sure would be fun to see the politicians scramble.
Millions is nothing for these companies. Just a cost of doing business.
Starting somewhere. The US ain't even doing that.
Not really. If citizens see "fines" and think "whew, they got their just deserts", it's almost worse than no fines.
But the EU is frequently performative, so it doesn't surprise me. It wouldn't surprise me if they agreed in advance with the EU the fines, behind some closed doors.
Nothing less than a billion these days even registers
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Is this a fine the companies can appeal, or is this a final decision?
They can appeal.
They will appeal to Court so that they win another 2 years.
The "EU over-regulation" argument is pathetic. The exact opposite is true, 2-3 decades of zero regulation has led to Big Tech empires that can get away with anything.
It harms the free market, harms the freedom to compute, creates an asymmetrical extractive relation between mega-corp and average internet user, and omnipresent surveillance. It's anti-American if "American" still means a love of freedom, personal privacy and fair competition.
But I do understand the "new" American perspective. These companies are money printers some of which produce as much as $30B of pure profit in a single quarter. If such companies are to exist, they best be American I guess.
> The "EU over-regulation" argument is pathetic ... It's anti-American ... I do understand the "new" American perspective.
"American" means being able to make your own decisions without government overreach in every aspect of your life.
"American" means being able to decide if you want to engage with a business or not, without getting the government involved.
"American" means being able to reach the highest highs or risk the lowest lows on the power of your tenacity and skill alone, without having the government shoot you down when you succeed, or put meaningless performative roadblocks in your way.
"American" means understanding that the government is not your friend and it doesn't need to replace your own decision making capability or ability to make choices.
From your dismissive sneering tone you do not understand the American perspective. Honestly, I am not sure the typical European even could. You have not grown up in our culture, so ideas like personal responsibility, self-reliance, and the American spirit are foreign to you - or at least heavily deprioritized.
You simply sneer and scoff at these concepts. You do you - this is why the EU is three decades behind and totally, utterly dependent on foreign tech - yet still somehow convinced it could catch up "if it really wanted to."
> You do not understand the American perspective.
Honestly, understanding the USA is a pretty high bar in this day and age.
The context is is Big Tech regulation. Of which there is barely any, allowing these monopolies to exist in the first place.
Everything you claim to be American, responsibility and choice, is harmed by having monopolies. You're so anti-government that you miss that monopolies remove even more choice.
As for dependencies, the US is the biggest importer in the world.
You're not that special. While the American special snowflake syndrome has been useful in giving its citizens a sense of purpose, freeing them of apprehension and bringing it where it is, it's ultimately baseless. Things get dangerous when people start believing in their own bullshit. The same is true for Europeans as well. There's a lot of navel gazing going on and I'm very annoyed at European leaders sweeping increasing authoritarian behaviour under the rug or proclaiming with great confidence, as did von der Leyen, that we don't have oligarchs.
> The EU fines could stoke tensions with U.S President Donald Trump who has threatened to levy tariffs against countries that penalise U.S. companies.
Mark Zuckerberg, in his appearance on Joe Rogan's podcast, specifically noted this as his goal for falling in behind Trump. That Trump would be the big-stick man that would protect Meta and other cos from foreign interference. Where "interference" is anything restricting that American exceptionalism "do anything we want, however we want".
Only then Trump started a trade war with quite literally the entire world -- aside from, predictably, Russia -- and now he holds, as he likes to say, no cards. The EU and anyone else can do whatever they want and Zuck and co can cry about the millions they wasted trying to buy a protection racket.
Of course Meta could just withdrawn from the EU. I wish they would withdraw from Canada. Their garbage misinformation platform is a massive net negative for humanity and has offered nothing but harm for the planet.
Someone here hazarded the hypothesis that Trump's tariffs are a stick aimed not towards other countries, but towards American corporations, who have to pledge fealty (and resources) to Trump in exchange for relief. I think it makes a lot of sense, if any of this is rational, which I'm not entirely sold on.
It's always funny when shit happens and everyone jumps over themselves to figure out what "5D chess" the people in charge are playing. There's never any chess. They are just incompetent.
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You gotta kick back to the big guy.
Look at 47's truth social some time. In between the posts 'destroying' liberals and lionising the worst actors in his party, he posts up a disturbing amount of 'settlements' with Law Firms that previously displeased him.
They were basically forced at gunpoint to make deals to provide pro bono services to the Trump administration, in return for regulators dropping investigations into their diversity practices.
The firms - including Kirkland & Ellis, Latham & Watkins, Allen Overy Shearman Sterling, Simpson Thacher & Bartlett, and Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft – are among the most prestigious and recognized firms in the US.
Cadwalader is the former firm of Todd Blanche, who resigned his partnership there to represent Trump in criminal cases when the firm would not take on Trump as a client. Blanche is now the deputy attorney general – the number two official at the Department of Justice.
Overall the MAGA cabinet has now secured more than $900m in pro bono pledges from law firms threatened with either executive orders or investigations from the equal opportunity commission. How this isn't seen as a straight up RICO case or old-fashioned criminal shakedown is beyond me.
> Of course Meta could just withdrawn from the EU.
I mean, probably not without being sued by their shareholders. As a public company, you cannot simply abandon 40bn revenue/year because you feel aggrieved.
But yeah, the "you'd better be nice to us, EC, or Trump might be angry" tactic is kinda shot at this point.
> I mean, probably not without being sued by their shareholders. As a public company, you cannot simply abandon 40bn revenue/year because you feel aggrieved.
What are the laws that Meta would be violating?
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Most Canadian small businesses rely on Meta to get customers.
If you think these companies don't add value, you are totally oblivious to the millions of small businesses that rely on these platforms to reach customers and niche audiences around the world.
They need a platform, but it doesn't have to be Meta.
Yeah, because small businesses didn't exist before Facebook arrived.
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The EU has zero innovation and zero new big businesses because of crazy regulatory overreach and harassment that is solely driven by greedy politicians.
Would looove to distribute an app without it having to be in the App Store, and not paying the App Store fee (direct download of signed binary). Happy to pay a yearly fee or fee per update to cover code review if it’s crucial. But 30% of revenue for doing bugger all… cmon, they’re squeezing the lemon a bit too hard.
Personally I wouldn’t install software unless it were from a really trusted person doing something extremely unique and useful that doesn’t have an alternative on the Apple Store (think UTM with JIT for iPad).
Please don’t take that as a negative comment but I suspect most people source their software from conveniently centralized repos whether it be App Store, Steam or even the main package manager on a Linux distribution.
Great, and you are free to do so and will continue to be free to do so.
The point is that the OP is not free to do so.
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Most and mostly.
But I'd still like to be able to install whatever the fuck I want on my iPhone, should I decide to based on my own criteria, without going through Apple or even a fucking "alternative app store" that is still Apple censored.
The point is that it becomes your choice. For example some people might choose to use a different web browser instead of Safari on their Apple device so they can use some web apps fully and not have to install similar local apps at all.
You mentioned linux package managers, these existing are proof enough that a 30% cut isn't required for ensuring the safety of what you install. In fact, I'd wager there is that much more dangerous garbage in the app store than in pacman's database.
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> cmon, they’re squeezing the lemon a bit too hard
They got hooked on the lemon juice. Nobody at Apple making millions a year to write emails and sit in meetings wants to be out on the street for putting up their hand and saying "hey lets just take 10% and have a healthy ecosystem long term, which will let us continue to sell phones to people every year with a profit margin of $500".
Phil Schiller has actually made some comments about being less greedy, like possibly ratcheting down the 30% cut once the App Store started making serious revenue or not shaking down developers if they use external payment methods. Not that Schiller has actually made any changes at Apple to do any of the less greedy things.
https://www.theverge.com/2021/5/4/22418828/apple-app-store-c...
https://www.macrumors.com/2025/02/25/apples-phil-schiller-co...
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The barrier of entry for me is having to pay $99/year just to notarize and sign my macOS applications that me and maybe three other people use. Just a lot easier to link to instructions on how to bypass Gatekeeper or make them compile it themselves from source.
Although I think my go-to instructions at https://disable-gatekeeper.github.io/ are not being kept up to date?
No, the barrier is to pay above 1m downloads. $99/yr is a o(everything your have to do to publish a safe app online and maintain it safe).
From what I hear, users are tired of installing apps. You can make a website and not face any gatekeepers or restrictions.
What if your app needs to send notifications and/or use bluetooth, for instance ?
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Meanwhile on Hacker News: "Web apps suck. Native apps are so much better. Why can't everything be a native app?"
Web apps offer a subpar experience.
These fines make sense. The EU is driving a pro-competition capitalist model. American companies will have to compete, and not just entrap users.
Breach. Get sued. Pay Fine. Rinse. Repeat.
At this point it looks like governments want the money and companies are gleefully willing to pay.
Damned if you do, damned if you don't. I get it that millions isn't much but it's something, and at least it sends a signal.
Frankly, the whole "it's pointless, so this is stupid" response to some things is more tiring to me than anything. What exactly is the end-game for these people? All or nothing? That is just delusional. It is simply not how progress is made. So let's be appreciative of what little is done, and push for more?
Not to mention the amount of people in here just focusing on the fine - by the way, I don't know how people can square the belief that these companies are endlessly greedy and will do anything for more money, with the belief that half a billion euros lost profit will just sit well with them - while completely ignoring the bit where these companies either comply or face even more fines.
All in agreement behind closed doors with the EU bureaucrats
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US companies are free to not operate in Europe.
There's nothing special about US software engineering vs. software engineering made elsewhere from a purely technical and know-how point of view.
The key difference is availability of capital and appetite for risk that make US exceptional by enabling a speed of scaling and execution not possible anywhere else (well, other than China).
If US companies that can't be bothered to follow EU laws leave the +500M people market that is the EU, I'm positive some other equally competent alternative (local or otherwise) would appear sooner or later to fill in the gap.
Perhaps the same regulations that US companies keep running afoul of are the regulations that prevent European investors from putting money behind European startup competitors.
The EU has some extremely strong consumer protection laws, which is excellent for consumers, but it comes with downsides too.
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> If you want to sideload, just get an Android device. There is no monopoly here.
The Digital Markets Act is not about a user's right to sideload. It's about 100s of thousands of businesses' right to reach billions of users without Apple in the middle. That's why it's called the Digital Markets Act, not the Phone User Rights Act
They could equally make the whole thing subscription-only, but they're not going to do that.
> gerrymandered
This word doesn't simply mean 'I don't like this', you know.
Facebook is under no obligation to operate in Europe. Of course, they make about 40 billion revenue in Europe annually, so they will be inclined to want to stay in Europe. And they can do this! They just have to follow the rules.
I'll be generous and assume you're being disingenuous by accident: This isn't about the ads, it's about the tracking. Meta is free to put ads wherever it wants, but it's not free to track people who don't want to be tracked.
In the end, a population has the right to govern itself how it wants. There's absolutely NOTHING wrong with that - Meta is free to simply not operate in the EU.
Why shouldn't you allowed to track people across your own services if users consent? If they don't consent, they are free to simply not use your services. Problem solved.
There is no actual need for this law. No rights are being infringed on. Just don't use the website.
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Blaming Europe for "rent-seeking" when enforcing basic consumer protections rules on those massive foreign-propaganda disinformation and wealth extraction engines really takes the cake. Fuck Meta, if it was up to me Facebook, Instagram and X would have been long gone from European soil. We gain nothing from them.
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Because the fine is exactly about giving people a more fair chance to vote with their wallets.
This is from the Yahoo article:
"The EU competition watchdog said Apple must remove technical and commercial restrictions that prevent app developers from steering users to cheaper deals outside the App Store."
You can buy an android or huawei phone. Just because the ecosystem you like to use doesn't have certain features doesn't make it a monopoly.
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The irony is that smaller American companies stand the most to benefit from EU DMA, including startups. Stripe could offer deeper payment integration without the Apple cut. You could start an indie game store. And Garmin can make better sport watches with better integration.
The first beneficiary is likely to be Epic, since this is basically what they were asking for in the Fortnite lawsuit.
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Because in a case of monopoly, the people can not vote with their wallet.
Except the smartphone market isn't a monopoly.
20 years ago Europe had a thriving phone industry. Now it's just gone, and they want to blame everyone else for this, and fail to reflect on why it happened.
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If Apple don’t like the EU regulations, they’re free to vote with their wallets and stop selling their products there.
The problem is if you go for a free market "vote with their wallets" approach, you end up with a problem like the US did with Microsoft having too high of a market share and control on browsers, media players and operating systems.
Customers can only really vote with their wallets when there is choice and no de facto standard. On top of that, many consumers don't really understand that things like their privacy and and choice has been taken away from them.
I do not agree with all parts of the DMA and I think it's overbearing in some areas but also lacklustre in others but I do think it's important that we don't let monopolies control our lives.
> if Europe actually produced a company with the innovation and scale of Apple.
Except a functional society does not need companies "the scale of Apple" to work.
In fact it's probably the opposite : nobody can beat Apple or Google because they already have too much power worldwide.
Even in the US, where is the free market ? Nobody can create a company that will compete with Apple or Google. Sure, there was an open window for new competitors in the capitalism game in the 90-2010 era with the rise of the home computing but now everything is locked up again.
A functionnal society doesn't need huge actors, it only needs an environment where companies that win the capitalism game don't become trusts and where small companies can shine.
I don't want an european alternative to Apple, I want an ecosystem of companies that specializes in what they are good at and that are forced to work together to be interoperable.
It's hard to make informed choices and vote with your wallet when you're unaware of alternatives. Apple's ban on even mentioning competing options tries to preserve this information gap to the detriment of its customers.
Do you realize that the smartphone revolution started here with Nokia?
Well.. ish. But really it started with iPhone. I've used those Nokia "smartphones". They were less the start of the smartphone revolution than PalmPilot or the IBM PC.
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Apple should remove privacy from their vocabolary.
They keep doing that to try to paint this as a loss for users. Users have much to win with this, as it will give some real competition to the Apple ecosystem, and potentially saving users money. So it's only natural Apple will pull all the cards like saying it threatens users privacy.
They called it on themselves. Were so greedy with access to unlimited capital, bought everything out or undercut with free. And now there are no EU competitors left to lobby for more favorable regulations.
Genuine question for debate: iPhone app store is a private club to which businesses can choose to belong, if they want to sell their product to certain customers. Membership in the club comes with the condition that you not talk about alternative ways to buy the same product, while selling via the club. Membership in the club is not a monopoly; there are many other channels through which to sell a company's products.
Why is is against the law?
The EU's regulatory stance on antitrust does not require a monopoly, it requires a dominant position in a market meeting use of certain criteria marked as abuse. https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CEL... From there when they tell a company they are breaching criteria for abuse and the company doesn't change the EU issues according fines.
As for "why" this is against the law, I assume that more to mean "why did the EU make this against the law" (since the other answer is simply "because the EU law was written as so". The arguments are largely the same as for why monopolies should not be allowed to operate: to ensure free market competition by preventing a few dominating companies from unduly pressuring the market. There are, of course, some who feel the freest market is one with no governmental regulations at all but they are not the majority (at least in the EU).
But Apple doesn't have a dominant position in the EU.
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Because EU law says they have let others into their club.
Apple has always allowed anyone into their club. You have to pay dues and follow some strict (but non-discriminatory) rules, but the result was a place which people liked going to.
Analogies aside, the REAL question is whether Apple is entitled to charge money for access to their developer APIs. Or whether Apple is entitled to place software license terms upon use of their intellectual property, e.g. when you link against Apple libraries which are then compiled into your binary.
We get up in arms about GPL violations, but also want Apple to suck shit. I don't think it's right to want it both ways.
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