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Postedabout 2 months ago
Key Takeaways
The judgement requires Meta to change their platforms within 2 weeks so that the user's choice is persistent. If not implemented in 2 weeks, there is a daily penalty of €100'000, up to a maximum of €5 million.
If Meta can provide a reasonable time frame for compliance, the judge may also choose to let the existing limit on reparations stand rather than increase it, despite them not complying the day they hit the 5 million euro mark.
It's all up to what the judge deems reasonable to make Meta comply with the court's orders.
> 5.3. orders Meta Ireland to pay BoE a penalty of €100,000.00 for each day or part thereof that it does not, or does not fully, comply with the orders under 5.1 and/or 5.2, up to a maximum total of €5,000,000.00.
Original:
> 5.3. veroordeelt Meta Ierland om aan BoE een dangsom te betalen van € 100.000.00 oor iedere dag of gedeelte daarvan dat zij niet of niet volledig aan de beelen onder 5.1 en/of 5.2 oldoet. tot een maximum an in totaal € 5.000.000.00 is bereikt.
It seems like usually they start with smaller fines, and if the offense is repeated, they ramp it up. Kind of makes sense.
I am willing to pay 0.01$ out of my pocket to not comply with some regulations in my country. I can even pay annually
It’s an intentional slap on the wrist because they don’t actually want to fine them, they just want them to change their behaviour. The general MO of European courts is to get people to comply, not to punish non compliance. There’s a subtle difference. If Meta change their tact in the next two weeks then they got what they wanted. If they don’t, fine increases and they’ll escalate responses.
Though, practically speaking, America has been threatening to make the trade war they started much worse for the EU if it tried to enforce things like DSA and GDPR fines. We'll have to see how enforceable these laws really are.
Perhaps this case doesn't warrant it, but generally speaking I'd like to see allocating jailtime across the top shareholders as an option.
If my dog bites somebody, I'm on the hook, it should be no different with a company.
Shareholders don’t control day to day operations of a company. Top shareholders rarely have enough shares by themselves to control anything about the company. Remember the VW emissions cheating scandal where people were jailed? It would be completely unreasonable to jail top shareholders because some manager somewhere concocted a scheme to cheat on emissions.
Jailing top shareholders for decisions made by the company would be a weird misdirected use of the justice system. If someone is to be jailed, it should be people responsible for the decision.
That said, I can’t believe anyone would be watching the news about the current U.S. administration threatening companies with spurious and often nonsensical demands and think that we should be normalizing the process of letting the government jail individuals if the company does something the government doesn’t like that would have previously been a small fine. You can’t think of any way this power might be abused by elected officials?
If the cheating had gone unnoticed, the shareholders would've been rewarded, so they should bear some risk whether or not they sold after the crime was committed.
As it is, we've got incentives set up to encourage investment in bad behavior so long as you get out before your people get caught.
As for the government abusing the justice system... What rules would create justice is sort of orthogonal to the circumstances under which the rules are broken.
It is obviously known how to get corporations to comply, and the mechanism is used when governments really want to. In this case and others like it, probably they don't care enough.
~Robert Reich
Now, go away, or I shall taunt you a second time-a!
That is the implication. The point of the first fine isn't to actually hurt Meta. It's to signal that there will be consequences, that the excuse of "but we thought it was legal" is gone now and give them one final chance to get their act together.
It's to pre-emptively clear away any possibility for Meta to appeal to either higher courts or the court of public opinion that they're being treated unfairly. Which they would do if you immediately hit them with a say, €5 billion fine.
So not entirely useless.
I think courts are generally swayed by many lawyer-hours and many legal-sounding-documents, because the judges are law professionals too, and naturally they think the profession is admirable, and so is doing so much legal analysis.
Maybe the judges in NL are better than that, what do I know.
In Dutch this is called a "last onder dwangsom": an injuctive order enforced by a conditional fine.
Their annual report is online at https://2024.bitsoffreedom.nl/en/ for people who want to learn more.
Meta: lol
This comment is akin to asking farmers cut off from repairing their equipment "why don't you buy tractors from a different company instead of fighting to fix your existing ones?"
The investment in the case of social media is the network you've built. In my country most local events are announced primarily on facebook for example.
In the first step, you get everyone to invest into your platform. You provide some valuable services to people, and they sign an implicit contract as a result.
In the second step, you reap what you sow. You switch the platform entirely and change its core nature and functionality. It's hard to stop using Facebook when everyone else is using Facebook, and this fact means you can do things which would normally have people leave your platform in droves.
This ruling limits the extent to which you can run such a bait and switch campaign. It's somewhat remarkable, because it extends some basic consumer rights to tech companies, even if there's no direct product nor a subscription in place. Personally, I think it's long overdue.
I should also say that it's more general than Meta. Google are also notorious for doing stuff like this. About time we start legislating against it.
You can opt to not use facebook yourself to protect your own data, that is more or less fine. (Though we can talk about Facebook's collection of non-user data another time)
You can't individually opt out of the election influence.
Of course, there is something to be said about the dangers, effectiveness, and societal impact of social media. But companies should have the right to decide how they conduct their business. They should also have the incentive to innovate and improve- without being threatened by overly strict or poorly designed laws.
The election choices are between some-one is clearly senile, or somebody who clearly has no substance and, well, Trump.
Other recent candidates include sons of previous presidents, or wives of previous presidents.
And you are worried about Europe.
Europe is worried about Europe - but in the context of catching what the US has via dark money flowing through tech platforms driving politics.
this is even worse in smaller and in less developed countries. they are most certainly being conquered.
and i don't get what you are trying to say. i am terminally coddled because i view google and facebook as conquerors? what does that even mean?
In this case we're talking about social media 'innovation' though. The science and art of getting a population highly addicted to doom scrolling. I'm not sure if that will help said population outcompete the other guys.
Fixed it for you.
FYI, the big players today are the US and China. Nobody has the heart to call and tell Europeans that they aren't really part of the future, they're still away on their 8th week long holiday of the year.
Not staying economically relevant is far (far) more harmful to society than forgoing social media.
Europe decided to vacation for the last 30 years rather than go to work. The fruit of the post-war era was bountiful, and bank accounts were healthy, so why not take time off? Stone age is not a good way to describe Europe today, but over the next 10-20 years it very well may become more appropriate. European leaders are keenly aware of this, but man is it hard to convince the kids that they need to end their vacation, especially when it is all they have ever known.
Who designed the chip in your phone? Is it more likely to be Intel (US) or is it more likely to be ARM (UK)?
Where does Linux ( which pretty much runs the entire internet from routers to servers ) originate from?
> Industry running on American energy
Eh? While EU imports of US gas are on the rise due to the Ukraine war ( and the blowing up of Russian pipelines which, BTW, the US is implicated in ) - it's a fraction of total energy.
> protection totally reliant on American defense
So the US bases on British islands in the Indian Ocean, or in Japan ( put there after the end of the war with ... Japan ) are purely for the benefit of others and not in anyway part of US global interests?
You guys keep working 80% harder! We will keep 99% of the profits, but don’t worry it will eventually trickle down to you. Hey, maybe one day there will be enough cash left over to fix our healthcare and education systems. Those Europeans are asleep on the wheel. Always protesting and striking and vacationing. Those fools.
on the contrary, companies leaving will allow and force us to develop european alternatives that can actually compete in europe. they don't need to compete on the global market.
When it comes to Meta or any other dopamine-driven platform, European society would only gain from their absence. Anyone would do really.
I guess they're writing the paperwork to cut off that particular subdivision as we speak.
The Dutch subsidiary has been acquitted, as it only managed advertisement income, not the app design.
Meta Platforms Inc. has been acquitted, as it itself doesn't directly provide apps or services in Europe (nor the Netherlands) - legally that's managed by Meta Platforms Ireland and so not Inc.'s responsibility.
Meta Platforms Ireland has been ordered to implement these changes, enforced by the up to 5 million euro fine (see pages 20 and 21 in the verdict)
If your "technological progress" is dependent on algorithmic feeds and pervasive tracking, good riddance.
What Meta does is the equivalent of dumping nuclear waste in the middle of your city. I'm sure you don't think companies have the right to do the latter.
I'm very sceptical of the origin of comments like these. I don't know any actual Europeans who share these concerns because they know that the status quo is that the entire EU market is captured by US tech. And that this has been done through anticompetitive tactics as well as offloading trillions in negative externalities onto societies.
If you're truly a concerned European, you're incredibly naive, and need to read much more about how banally evil Meta is.
Zuckerberg: Yeah so if you ever need info about anyone at Harvard Zuckerberg: Just ask Zuckerberg: I have over 4,000 emails, pictures, addresses, SNS [Redacted Friend's Name]: What? How'd you manage that one? Zuckerberg: People just submitted it. Zuckerberg: I don't know why. Zuckerberg: They "trust me" Zuckerberg: Dumb fucks
Nope - not if it is to the detriment to society ( as decided by society via democratic means ).
In the UK - when radio and TV came along, society recognized the power of these platforms and the danger of how they could amplify single voices with money in an anti-democratic way. As such political advertising on such platforms very tightly controlled.
In addition there are overall limits on campaign spending.
Then along comes companies like Facebook and money powering political ad campaigns comes in through the back door, and in addition a lack of transparency on the overall spend as it's now much easier to hide.
Moves to curb this is simply society re-asserting it's existing rules, not some new imposition.
Now, one must also say that Instagram wasn't the incumbent messaging platform in any place in the world. It's just that newer generations always cannot tolerate to do things like their parents did, so if their parents primarily used Whatsapp or Facebook Messenger (oh, wait, all of them owned by Meta!) to communicate, they ought to find a new platform to get locked in.
Those people are in the app because of the social features and the feed in the first place. The messaging features were built on top of the platform.
Requiring companies to make and maintain a separate app entirely if their product has messaging features is an unreasonable requirement. If someone has such a strong self-control problem that they can’t message someone without becoming addicted to the feed, they shouldn’t be involved with the platform at all.
Just exchange emails, phone numbers for SMS, or any other type of communication. I seriously doubt that your friends are only able to communicate through exactly one communication channel and it happens to be Instagram.
Well, I suppose that's one take on it.
I would argue that people are in the app because Facebook gave out Facebook Messenger. Then Facebook changed how Facebook Messenger works. You could call it a rugpull, I would call it US business practices.
It's the correct take. Facebook had 800M users on the day Messenger was released.
> I would argue that people are in the app because Facebook gave out Facebook Messenger
Why would you argue a nonsense point? Literally all you have to do is Google "when was messenger released" and "number of facebook users in August 2011"
Unless you think those 800M users were just waiting for a shitty messenger?
Messenger was never the primary draw of Facebook. It came long after Facebook was popular.
I should have known better than to step into a conversation about Facebook on HN. Doing anything other than blindly agreeing with anti-Facebook comments, even if they’re factually incorrect or illogical, attracts downvotes and more illogical arguments.
I didn't say it was. Remember, my statement was: ... that people are in the app because Facebook gave out Facebook Messenger
Indeed, I remember using Facebook just for messages. So when Facebook Messenger came out, I used that exclusively.
Now, I've long since moved off of Facebook and Facebook Messenger. Some of my family still use it though, and I've seen it. It's not what it used to be. So, I then expanded on that to say: Then Facebook changed how Facebook Messenger works
> they’re factually incorrect or illogical
So, where's the factually incorrect or illogical argument?
The final straw for me to move off of Facebook was Cambridge Analytica. Once I realized how terrible not just Facebook was for not only permitting that kind of shit, but practically inviting it as a feature... that was very telling. And I've since stopped using nearly all social media, present website excluded.
the better alternative is to require interoperability with other messenger apps, so can use the app of my choice. this is a proposal under discussion since years ago.
I seriously doubt that your friends are only able to communicate through exactly one communication channel
some people do exactly that. they refuse to communicate on anything but their messenger of choice. and sometimes keeping in touch with that person is more important than my preferences. oh, and for many people i do not want to share my phone number, which limits the available messaging platforms we can still use. we'll be lucky if there is one.
I’m sure there are some number of people out there who only use Facebook Messenger, do not check their email, refuse to use any other messenger, for whom you do not want to share your phone number with for SMS texting, and for whom one of their friends cannot self-control enough to scroll a Facebook feed when they use the Facebook Messenger app. I agree this scenario is plausible for some very small percentage of users with eccentric habits and specific demands who are unwilling to compromise.
I do not agree that we need to start using the force of government to regulate that companies cater to this exact edge case situation where both parties refuse to bend their messaging habits or exchange SMS contact information but want companies to create an entirely separate app for them to communicate on their platform.
I don’t know how old you are or where you live, but I’m in my mid 40s and don’t live in a tech city. A good quarter of everyone I know in my age range uses Facebook Messenger as their primary form of texting. Most of them don’t even use Facebook itself anymore, they just have a lot of momentum on Messenger.
https://umatechnology.org/eu-could-force-whatsapp-messenger-...
I disagree. I think it's more than reasonable. Facebook designs its features with dark UX to cause addiction, it's not about self control, it's about Facebook engaging in anti-human behavior.
It's reasonable to use the State to force a corporation that makes tens of billions of dollars of profit a year to behave in a way that's beneficial to people. The corporation will be fine, it's air conditioned and listening to its favorite music.
In this case Meta already has such an app (Messenger), and it has at times supported instagram messaging. I'm not sure why they broke that association a little while ago, but it's not unreasonable that they could reconnect it.
I don't think it's unreasonable and I'll take it further - messaging should be forced to use an open protocol. No more iMessage or Facebook messenger. If you want those, great, then open them.
Now everything works with everything and the world is a utopia and also we cured cancer. Downside: Meta will make slightly less money. I can live with that.
Lack of a messaging app is harming people? Let's be serious here.
Having messaging feature inside an app is harming people? Have we lost all perspective?
Why stop at this? Why dont we have a dedicated device just for messaging because if you really think about it, iPhones are actively harming people.
Even if the government agency makes the worse decision possible, which they probably will, that's still an improvement, because we're completely maxed out on shit levels. That's how bad many products are today.
Best positioned as in, make the most money? No, of course not.
Best positioned as in, not completely and totally fuck their users up the ass? Yes!
Look at Meta, Google, OpenAI, you fucking name it. These companies are a cancer onto humanity. They are actively making everyone's lives worse, on purpose, for the pursuit of advertiser revenue and new and innovative addiction mechanisms.
It's sort of like asking, who would you rather make your food? The government, or R.J. Reynolds?
Shockingly, the answer is the government!
Please for the love of god do not make legal requirements about how to build an app and what features can be included.
> We need to be able to message our friends without seeing a feed without having to convert all of our friends to a new platform.
lol, you have no legal right to how a chat dialog must be presented.
Why don't you try innovating instead of suing?
Anyone can make any social app work the way they want to. But that doesn't mean the same rules and laws applies - or should apply - to one with 1B users as one with 100 users.
Absolutely nothing stopping you from starting a social network
> But that ship sailed LONG ago.
I'm pretty sure there are hundreds? thousands? of startups ready to launch that all do some variant of FB.
Why are you on YC if you think free market tech is dead?
> But that doesn't mean the same rules and laws applies - or should apply - to one with 1B users as one with 100 users.
lol, what? We have different laws depending on how popular you are? What are the thresholds for when new laws apply? Is it strictly user count? Engagement time? Revenue?
Innovation may be dead in Europe but don't try to bring this nonsense elsewhere.
I have been visiting this forum for 12 years. It took probably 5 years before I _heard_ about the "other" part of ycombinator - the startup thing. But I never really cared about that bit, it's just an online tech forum that happens to share domain with the startup incubator.
> lol, what? We have different laws depending on how popular you are?
Absolutely. I think that is pretty universal already. For example laws preventing monopolies (government approvals of mergers, for example).
Can you show me the federal code that includes number of customers?
Do you think monopoly rules are about size or behavior? Do you think a small mom and pop store couldn't act in monopolistic practices?
Do you think a small mom and pop store in a rural captured market couldn't price fix?
Hint: It's not size :)
I never mentioned ”number of customers”. The relevant law surrounding monopolies is the Clayton antitrust act of 1914
https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/15/18
What is and isn’t a monopoly is of course decided on a case by case basis - as it should. There is no law saying that 80% market share is necesssarily a monopoly or that 20% is so low it can’t be blocked.
> Do you think a small mom and pop store in a rural captured market couldn't price fix?
Not sure how it’s relevant but they can of course haves local monopoly - but afaik in the US such local monopolies aren’t subject to regulation.
That's what platforms are. They're markets. Its not like making a couch or something.
That's why those other apps are literally worthless.
It doesn't matter if the other apps are super amazing and they walk your dog and suck your dick and make you live forever. Literally does not matter.
The app, itself, does not matter. Which is why Facebook is allowed to be as shit as humanly possible.
What matters is what the app proxies, which is a market. Those other apps will always fail, forever, because they can't compete with facebooks market because they're not even allowed into that market.
It is a market that exists in the free market.
> And an unfree one ruled by a dictatorship that you can't vote on.
Ok, so don't use that market. You're not entitled to Facebook, or being able to dictate anything.
> That's what platforms are. They're markets. Its not like making a couch or something.
Bud, I am begging you to close your Facebook account and see it is exactly like a couch you don't have to buy.
> It doesn't matter if the other apps are super amazing and they walk your dog and suck your dick and make you live forever. Literally does not matter.
You heard it here. YC is dead. Close up shop. All these investors just wasting their money because you can't vote Zuck out.
> The app, itself, does not matter. Which is why Facebook is allowed to be as shit as humanly possible.
This is just nonsense. You're trying to sound smart by taking an extreme position. Nuance is smart.
Yes, this is actually true.
You want nuance? Here's the nuance.
Nobody, and I mean nobody, is actually competing with facebook. They're not trying to.
So what is YC funding? What are these companies doing? They're attacking different markets and making different products. When was the last time you saw a startup make a general purpose social media platform? It doesn't happen. Nobody does it. Because they know they'll lose.
If you look at the hot new kids on the block, none of them are actually competing with facebook. TikTok? TikTok is not facebook, it's a completely different product. Twitter? They're incumbent too, but completely different product. Youtube? Disney Plus? Pintrest? Linkedin? Just think about it.
You could, TRIVIALLY, make a better facebook. I, right now, in the course of a few weeks, could make a better facebook. But I'm not. And you're not. And nobody is. And nobody is even trying to.
Search your feelings, and you will know it to be true.
2. SMS is probably the most insecure protocol created for anything, ever.
3. The experience is as close to as shit as it can get.
4. Most modern messaging features aren't supported.
5. Most devices don't support SMS.
6. You can't sync SMS across devices.
IIRC, around 2008-2009, "most recent" was the only kind of feed, and within the span of a couple years, they added their "personalized" feed but would let you switch between the two freely (and the setting would persist), and not much later, the setting would no longer persist.
The moral panic over feed ranking models will seem to history as quaint as the moral panic over the telegraph and the train.
If your new technology isn't attracting a swarm of moral gnats buzzing about it corrupting the youth, are you even making something impactful?
How does it hurt you by requiring social media to offer a working chronological sort?
I think even casual users understand the appeal of having both options and wouldn't want to lose it, assuming they discover it.
I agree with the judge. We are not obligated to suffer the degeneracy of the hyper-optimized algorithm with no alternative.
Just because you have never experienced the utility of working chronological sort doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
That’s pretty much what I do. Discoverability happens off-site, which might be a hindrance for you, but I don’t necessarily want more stuff to watch for the sake of more stuff to watch.
It would be nice if youtube could include some of these handy features in the settings, but it is not something they want to do it seems.
(it also lets you disable Shorts and suggestions and so on, pretty fantastic actually)
I don't think people understand how the economics of these apps (and websites) work, and it's been so long now that their incorrect assumptions (the feeds are free and the greedy providers shove ads in them) have turned into bedrock beliefs.
You pay for instagram with your personal data, which is used to target you with high value ads. Which covers the cost of your continued usage. If you don't like it, don't use instagram. If you really don't like it, lobby for the law to make it illegal, but get your credit card ready for another monthly subscription.
I am not arguing for this model, my feed is getting more useless every day, but the only other model is subscription based like you say. And for Facebook, Meta and the like, I don’t think the subscription revenue will be anywhere close due to economies of scale on the free model.
I like the hybrid approach of being able to be ad-supported or paid with no ads. I would like to see more of it.
What I don't like is a paid service like Amazon Prime that also includes ads. They include ads in their search results and they include tons of ads in their video library.
FWIW: Hulu offers paid access to content with ads but offers an upgrade to get rid of most of the ads, so there seems to be a whole lot of testing what works in this area going on right now, which I see as a good thing, I just hope that once everything settles the predominant model will be fair and respect user privacy.
The “price” includes giving your data to the data vampires and is thereby incredibly unreasonable.
Or to put it another way, most of the content on the internet is already unpaid with the creator not receiving any compensation. What's left is the hosting/distribution and we can find many different ways to (collectively) pay for that besides ads and user subscriptions.
actually i forgot about youtube
But I think every web designer knows that putting even the slightest barrier between the user and the content drives away vast numbers of people. Making them enter a credit card -- even if you told them it would never be charged -- would send enormous numbers away.
Many won't even create a free account. Tracking tech is so sneaky because just the effort of logging in is too much.
Maybe the world would be a better place if we bit the bullet, nuked the vast majority of web sites, and built a better web on what's left. But it's not going to be an instant, ad-free privacy paradise.
Really? It took me until like 2012-2013 to realize Google searches stalked me to other websites.
Then again much critics at that time of big tech was disregarded as lunatic crackpots. And nowadays your are a crackpot if you claim they are not spying on you. I guess that matters.
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