[jxjnskkzxxhx]

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.

[lompad]

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/

[octo888]

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 :-)

[rafaelmn]

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.

[oblio]

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.

[rafaelmn]

I count TikTok as big tech non-EU so I automatically put it in to that bucket but you are right it is not a US company. Still fits the theme that EU is using GDPR to shake down big tech it does not own. I missed Enel (did not know about them) and yeah Vodafone was bottom page 2 first EU brand I recognized from the list, but OK middle of page 2 for non-EU.

Again just a rough feeling from the list but I would speculate that over 50 percent of fines in total were towards US or non-EU based companies.

[vampirical]

Please re-read what you’ve written in these two comments with a critical eye. You’re speaking from a lack of knowledge without very much care and reaching incorrect conclusions that agree with your initial bias. When someone else does the work of helping nudge you towards reality you seem to be doing a poor job correcting. Sorry if this comes across as rude, it’s said with the kindest of intentions.

[rafaelmn]

So I did quick excel math - I took just the US companies from top 100, sumed them and then I summed everything else (the entire list, not just top 100) - including tiktok - and the ratio is almost 3 to one against US companies in total.

In fact Meta alone is fined more than everyone else combined.

What exactly am I missing ?

[noirscape]

> big tech it does not own

If a company does business in the EU, it's dealing with EU citizens, giving the EU jurisdiction over how that business is conducted.

The EU absolutely has full legal standing for this; if big tech doesn't want to abide by it, they can always leave the EU.

American companies get fined more often for the simple reason that they break the GDPR more often since the US lacks the same legal privacy framework, which means they don't have the same incentive to comply with it and instead try to rules lawyer around it.

[piva00]

> Still fits the theme that EU is using GDPR to shake down big tech it does not own.

It's not a shake down, it's the fucking law which they don't follow and have to pay fines accordingly. Every single business in the EU has to follow these laws, if the US-based ones are not taking proper measures to not act illegally that's on them, not on the legislation, this shake down narrative is quite tired by now.

> Again just a rough feeling from the list but I would speculate that over 50 percent of fines in total were towards US or non-EU based companies.

Perhaps because the US companies are more eager in breaking laws and figuring it out later? Isn't that the whole take on EU vs US business approach, the US ones are big risk takers (including in acting illegally) vs EU ones being risk-averse?

I feel disheartened that this narrative is still spewed on HN, it's just vitriol, the US companies are breaking the law of EU members, if they do business here they need to follow the law, it's absurdly simple.

[rafaelmn]

This isn't something I really care to argue - OP was pretending like the fines were spread out equally in the EU and somehow the US complaints are baseless - when its obvious that the fines are heavily weighted towards US companies.

Whatever this is based on - OP was misrepresenting the data.

[VikingTechGuy]

It's not fines, its damages for 1 visitor.

[burnerthrow008]

> It's not a shake down, it's the fucking law which they don't follow and have to pay fines accordingly. Every single business in the EU has to follow these laws,

That’s a lie, and you know it.

Spotify is not a “gatekeeper” according to the DMA. Why? Because there is a specific carve out for streaming businesses. German newspapers do not have to comply with the GDPR. Why? Again, because there is a specific carve out for newspapers.

These laws are specifically written so that they only apply to businesses that by an unbelievably amazing series of coincidences just happen to be those not based in the EU.

Also known as a shakedown.

[cess11]

"Still fits the theme that EU is using GDPR to shake down big tech it does not own."

No, the EU is trying to protect the rights of its citizens.

If they wanted to "shake down big tech" they'd just do a Turkey or India and pressure them to do their bidding in terms of censorship and information exchange.

[rafaelmn]

>If they wanted to "shake down big tech" they'd just do a Turkey or India and pressure them to do their bidding in terms of censorship and information exchange.

We are already leaning on US intelligence agencies for data and every audit finds no problem in how the US handles EU data... get real - the EU is just not in the position to pull the same move because it is not the same kind of entity or legal structure, they do tariffs and regulations/collecting fines.

[FranzFerdiNaN]

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.

[const_cast]

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.

[Raed667]

I was surprised to see doctors and even a bakery on the list!

[delusional]

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.

[riffraff]

5 years? I think it was last week.

[detaro]

[flagged]

[gdwatson]

As an American, my reservations about European privacy laws are related to jurisdiction, and none of them applies here. I welcome this decision.

[phendrenad2]

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.

[apples_oranges]

Americans are still asleep at 7GMT ;)

[andsoitis]

> 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.

[jokoon]

Probably people who own stock in those companies

[samplatt]

Er... No, sorry, I don't remember anyone saying that at all.

[surgical_fire]

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.

[Symbiote]

Trump also made the claim, back when he was justifying tariffs against the EU.

[surgical_fire]

I hope EU cranks up the pressure against US because of that, using the EU Anti- Coercion Instrument as designed.

[snickerdoodle12]

I very clearly do. So that's weird.

[bigyabai]

It entirely saturates discussions about companies that rhyme with "Snapple" in my experience.

[oblio]

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!!"

[jxjnskkzxxhx]

LOL there's people saying it in this thread.

[dogleash]

>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.

[123yawaworht456]

>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

[piva00]

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?

[123yawaworht456]

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

[piva00]

I don't think it's a suitable analogy but you do you to try to justify companies breaking the law :)

As far as I hear from the HN crowd if the company feels it's not profitable anymore they will just pack up and leave (hence why many here defend not taxing corporations), this is exactly that case: there's money to be made, they will stick around, perhaps realising that paying fines is eating into their profits and change behaviour. If they don't like it, just pack up and leave, corporations are only interested in making profits, housing is not an analogous to that as much as you might want to play that card.

[subscribed]

These companies (notably Google, apple, twitter) have bo problem bending to the law in China but _somehow_ they have problems with Europe? I guess fines aren't high enough)

[const_cast]

The difference is the toilet is pretty important. Hard to live without a toilet...

But these privacy-violating actions are completely optional, so optional in fact you need to go very far out of the way to implement them. Most of them rely on shady pseudo-vulnerabilities, which may be patched at any point. And they sometimes are - I mean, entire businesses have been killed by this sort of thing.

It's risky. You're relying on the legislator, yes, but you're also relying on platforms. If your revenue rides on some rare, convoluted "feature" in Chrome, for instance, Google can fix that at any point and you're fucked.

So just stop doing that. It's a bad idea. These companies need to find more reliable and ethical revenue streams. If you do volatile shit then yeah, it's volatile.

[fireflash38]

Yeah, makes sense. Landlords do super shitty things to people and will push them as hard as they can to make money. And if you signed a lease that let them do that that's on you right? And you can leave if you don't like it?

[subscribed]

Lease an apartment.

Pretend you're a normal person.

Secretly snoop on all the phone calls, conversations, documents in the whole house.

Take creepy pictures and upload them "for later"

Monitor all the internet traffic in the house, for all the other inhabitants.

Throw a hissy fit when you're fined for knowingly, blatantly breaking the law for years (and sometimes lying about that).

https://wire.com/en/blog/metas-stealth-tracking-another-eu-w...

[cycomanic]

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).

[pjc50]

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.

[surgical_fire]

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.

[thaumasiotes]

> 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...

[saubeidl]

I don't think the mood of Americans has really changed. It's just that right now only the Europeans are awake.