Comment by onli
5 days ago
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)
What’s another example of different rules depending on size? “Content Moderation” I think? Anything outside the DMA? I think small companies get some exceptions for documentation requirements?
It is a derivative of what is called the "Risk Based Approach" in compliance, and is widely adopted.
As for companies and accounting you can look into the directive 2013/34/EU that established micro, small, and medium sized companies based on their size. These types of companies have different reporting requirements.
In the US, some laws specifically exclude small companies. For example, the Equal Employment Opportunity Act of 1972 requires 15 employees, and the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 requires 4 employees.
in my part of Europe there are tons: companies over a certain size might have different rules for layoffs, have to have union representatives, must pay for safety courses for the employees, must employ a certain percentage of people with disabilities...
You could try to find some analogies but you probably won't succeed since this is clearly just targeting American big Tech
G-SIB banks for example
In practice it means that only American companies end up paying large fees to the EU.
It also means that not all US companies have to comply, and that the ones that do are the most competitive companies in the market, making their claim that they have trouble competing moot.
There are no fees.
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?
Pay for no tracking / Personal Information trade is illegal. Pay for no advertising is legal. That's what Youtube is doing.
It's meta's "pay or allow us to sell your personal informations that is the issue, not advertising by itself.
Exactly. While DMA does not apply, GDPR does. But it gets ignored and weakened by decision against the letter and the spirit of the law - which does not surprise if you realize how much power those legacy publishers hold. Not so FB, not here at least.
So it's not exactly the same regulation but pretty much the same situation. I'd also be pissed.
GDPR does not purport to outlaw targeted advertising. It just purports to require that the target consent.
In pretty much every other area of law in most of the world (including Europe) consent can be bought--the party requesting consent gives the consenter something in exchange for consent, and will not give that thing unless consent is given.
But under the rulings from some regulators that doesn't work for GDPR. Consent is apparently only considered to be freely given if withholding it would not result in any detriment such as not getting the same level of service or having to pay money for service.
If regulators want to outlaw targeted advertising it would be a lot better if they just did that, instead of making consent in GDPR work differently from how it has worked for pretty much everything else pretty much everywhere for centuries.
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