Comment by jxjnskkzxxhx
3 days ago
You guys remember how 5+ years ago, an headline like this on HN would invariably prompt cries from the Americans that this was just the Europeans finding excuses to take advantage and steal from poor innocent American companies. How the mood has changed on this huh. I'm glad to see the European approach vindicated, even if at times not strong enough.
And not only are those cries wrong, reality is quite the opposite. The vast majority of fines are towards european businesses. Big Tech aren't the only ones who violate data privacy standards all the time. [0] You just don't read about those here, so people like to just assume those fines don't exist.
Additionally, it helps to actually learn how the current law developed - it primarily was modeled after the german Bundesdatenschutzgesetz, which was put into law in a modern form in the 90s, long before FAANG.
[0] see the tracker: https://www.enforcementtracker.com/
Worth noting the tracker does not track which fines are currently being contested (in an obvious manner). i.e. do not assume all the fines you see there have actually been paid
Though probably safe to assume the smaller fines against smaller companies with smaller lobbying^H^H^H^H^H^H legal teams most likely have :-)
I went to the site and sorted by fine - I needed to go to the bottom of second list to find a non US company ? By the time I get to pages that are mostly non US companies the fines are two orders of magnitude smaller and dropping fast - do you have any aggregate view to compare ? I would not be surprised at all that indeed most of the fines were towards US companies in total amount.
I saw TikTok at #3 and #5, Enel (Italian) at #15, Vodafone at #19 (British) and starting at around #21 the list is basically dominated by European companies.
Speaking from personal experience, American companies, especially the big ones, tend to treat everyone else as "Americans that they don't know they're American yet" or alternatively "slightly dumb Americans".
At least for one of them, yeah, they apply the legal laws, but the general decisions are taken in the US with little regard for local "non-impeding laws", I would call them. "Impeding laws" would be laws that would block the launch of something (for example they wouldn't attach an AR-15 to every product sold). "Non-impeding laws" would for example be, labor laws. They just assume that what works in the US sort of works everywhere else and deal with the consequences along the way.
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Its because American companies are much larger than most European companies in terms of revenue. And because the impact of their infringements are much larger due to the nature of their business. If Bumfuck LLC from Sweden with maybe a 1000 customers fucks up they arent impacting millions of users, unlike when Google or Meta does things.
IME as an American, US companies play much more fast and loose with laws. Especially tech, which has "disrupt first, ask questions later" approach to ethics.
I was surprised to see doctors and even a bakery on the list!
One of the earliest enforcement actions was against a mailing list. If I remember it was because it CCed all the participants instead of BCCing them.
5 years? I think it was last week.
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Then leave. Take your big, beautiful American business and walk it the fuck out of the European economic zone. It's that easy!
That said... it will be awfully hard for Americans to wriggle their way out of the $125 billion annual trade deficit they run with the EU. If the US stops trading to defend "principled" economic development, then the citizens will be paying down America's debt with their income taxes.
No biggie. It's only like ~$800/taxpayer/year when you run the numbers.
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As an American, my reservations about European privacy laws are related to jurisdiction, and none of them applies here. I welcome this decision.
No no, you misunderstand. Over here in America we have given up on fighting it and prefer to let mega-corps like Google and Meta own the advertising space. Smaller companies quickly moved to a subscription model, at least until the EU finds a way to make money illegal.
Americans are still asleep at 7GMT ;)
> cries from the Americans that this was just the Europeans finding excuses to take advantage and steal from poor innocent American companies
Spotify found in violation of EU data protection laws by Stockholm Court - https://www.investing.com/news/stock-market-news/spotify-fou...
Or what about Enel (Italian): https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/italy-regulator-fine...
Or Criteo (French): https://techcrunch.com/2023/06/22/adtech-giant-criteo-his-wi...
H&M (Swedish) fined for breaking GDPR over employee surveillance: https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-54418936
etc.
Probably people who own stock in those companies
Er... No, sorry, I don't remember anyone saying that at all.
Amazing. On like every thread of EU fining some US company for things such as privacy violations there's a stream of mor... er... users claiming that EU is only using that as a revenue stream to extract money from US companies because they have no homegrown businesses or similar bullshit (despite European companies being fines the same way).
Hell, you can find some of the same moronic arguments on this very thread still.
Trump also made the claim, back when he was justifying tariffs against the EU.
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I very clearly do. So that's weird.
It entirely saturates discussions about companies that rhyme with "Snapple" in my experience.
Oh, for Snapple, don't forget the Snapp Store discussions:
"My grandparents have a clean iPhone for 40 years because of the Snapp Store!! Nobody should be able to install things from 3rd party Snapp Stores, they might be harmful!!"
LOL there's people saying it in this thread.
>You guys remember how 5+ years ago, an headline like this on HN would invariably prompt cries from the Americans
I remember it. I'm pretty sure it's always just been the sellouts that work for anti-consumer tech companies (and the wannabes). Sometimes they're rationalizing their career to themselves and us, othertimes they're aware and just saying whatever they think will keep the con running for as long as possible.
One of the things HN serves as is a no-risk place for scrupleless software businesspeople to practice how to swindle nerds with specious arguments.
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Personally, as an American, I'd happily push our economy down the stairs to dissociate from people who espouse this sort of attitude.
The economy is also in tatters because Germans relied too much on US and Chinese markets.
All of these have the same root cause. American imperialism that has for too long been tolerated here. Thankfully, things are starting to change.
For the records, the root cause is compound interest.
Money and economy is an instrument, not a goal. If a person lives a rat life, being constantly spied, manipulated and sold, what's the point of being richer? To buy what? The most precious thing of freedom and independence is lost already then.
Without dignity it's better to die.
So in your eyes, a race to the moral and ethical bottom is the only way a society should function?
> Also a coincidence that Trump happens to be pushing the poor innocent Germans to contribute to their own defense.
Trump is literally supporting Russia.
>How the mood has changed on this huh.
has it? if anything, EU continues to fleece US companies with nonsensical, hastily-implemented laws and absurd fines.
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=EU+DSA+twitter
Those companies choose to operate in the EU, if they don't like the legal environment they can just pack up and leave. Why do you think they don't do that? Why do you feel the need to defend companies breaking the law?
lease an apartment
spend a lot of time and money moving your things there
live there for a decade
the landlord shows up and informs you that you are forbidden from using the toilet between 6 PM and 8 PM, effective immediately, punishable by a fine equal to your monthly income. why? fuck you, that's why. if you don't like the legal environment you can just pack up and leave
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It's funny how American always bring up data privacy violation fines as fleecing US companies, but never complain about the fines against car manufacturers in the US (which have been largely against non-US companies)[https://young-lawgroup.com/news/the-largest-auto-fines-in-u-... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_emissions_scandal].
Just to clarify I completely agree with the fines in both the US and EU, remember big corporations are not your "team" (for the vast majority of you).
I'm also reminded of the record-breaking fines against British Petroleum.
But the entire structure of US car design is an anti-competitive barrier! There's all sorts of special extra requirements and taxes to discourage overseas manufacturers or smaller cheaper cars, and Americans are proud of that! Not to mention the recent fad for tariffs.
Meta is very welcome to stop operating in EU to not be subject to their laws.
Or, you know, they could just respect the law. Like other companies that operate here. Novel concept I know.
And, to complement your lack of research, EU companies are subject to those laws and are frequently fined as well for those violations.
You can’t really express those opinions here anymore because of the overall political shift of the website, which is enforced (always has been) through the moderation system. It’s not specifically about this particular decision.
> How the mood has changed on this huh.
I don't think you're right on the timing, but a related essay:
https://www.imightbewrong.org/p/why-doesnt-hitler-mcfuckface...
I don't think the mood of Americans has really changed. It's just that right now only the Europeans are awake.