PieFed chez MarudThe European Union fines Apple 500 million euros and Meta 200 million in separate digital cases
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European Union watchdogs fined Apple and Meta hundreds of millions of euros Wednesday as they stepped up enforcement of the 27-nation bloc’s digital competition rules.
The European Commission imposed a 500 million euro ($571 million) fine on Apple for preventing app makers from pointing users to cheaper options outside its App Store.
The commission, which is the EU’s executive arm, also fined Meta Platforms 200 million euros because it forced Facebook and Instagram users to choose between seeing ads or paying to avoid them.
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AFAIK it's about paying for the lack of tracking, not ads per se. Untargeted ads in the free version are perfectly legal. It's paywalling the privacy options that isn't.
oyzmoNice to see that unfair actions have consequences for large tech companies 🥳
I think you may be more comfortable on reddit's r/europe
huppakeePocket money in this context. They should add at least two zeros to that number or it won't even show up in the weekly report.
Fuck Malus. Let them bleed. 500M should have been 4B. Those fuckers made 391B in revenue in 2024.
arakhis_According to Tipalti, Apple as a company makes over $157 Billion per day. I don't think these fines exist for the elite.
Didn't Microsoft just keep paying fines back in the day, as they could afford it or am I remembering some sort of fever dream?
156B per *day*? Wtf? That's 57 *trillion* per year. That doesn't seem possible. The EU alone has 17 trillion GDP.
Nah bro, they had 391B$ in worldwide revenue in 2024. That's ~1,1B/day in 2025, which means 500M fine would be half a day of revenue.
I don't mind fake news about these guys like "Malus pays cartels to force citizens to buy iPhones" or something, but putting numbers like this on stuff is too easy to verify. Make it something like "Malus has a budget to torture the children of workers in China who don't assemble phones fast enough". Or "Malus has a suicide budget for workers in Vietnam".
Aside from whether these fines are high enough, it does at least send a message. I'm glad the EU is able to enforce the laws they have.
EU fines generally have a bad track record when it comes to stopping companies from trying to get away with stuff, but they do have an excellent track record when it comes to making them stop.
Differently put: You won't see the EU levy another fine against Apple for this because Apple doesn't fancy getting slapped with a 40bn fine. If your main armament is big enough all you'll ever need is shots before the bow.
I like that metaphor. So you're saying the EU chooses to have low fines because the companies receiving them understand it could be way worse if they choose to continue?
Well, it's sufficient. Using larger calibres for the opening salvo would increase the risk of companies succeeding in fighting fines before court, and companies generally have some kind of creative interpretation of the law at the ready to justify what they're doing. Fining companies into bankruptcy or out of competition for a first offence is rather hard to justify, for repeat offenders, though? Companies continuing their behaviour after having received a warning fine have no excuse, now the gloves come off otherwise you're perceived as a paper tiger.
Cost of doing business
They should start skimming 20% from these companies war chests
The important part of these are the "do, don't" orders of business conduct. Then on top small fine. Hence it isn't merely cost of doing business. The real stinger is "you can't offer choice of tracking or pay up. You must offer free choice to decline for consent based operations".
If they ignore the "do's and dont's" compliance order, then the big fines come out.
Name one.
edit: that's what I thought, silence.
Too little
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I think it must be seen not in light of the monetary blow, but in light of the fact that the EU is pushing hard for these actors to change directions and to end some of their abusive behaviour.
Traffic fines are made to bankrupt drivers or to finance the state, but to encourage people to drive safely.
Yeah that really depends on location...in Denmark the minimum fine for speeding is 160€, and that's if you're just more than 3kmph above limit...it just increases from there and ends with something like a 1000€ fine and them withdrawing your drivers licence (a new licence is going to set you back 2000€). If you're above 100% speeding the take the car too.
Not huge, indeed. It is possible, and desirable, that the EU is playing strategy with them. Maybe they hit softly now, just to show they mean to go on this regulation-path they choose, and to give a "warning". Maybe they considered a too aggressive fine could make things worse. I'm not sure, just thinking.
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He was fined €240M? What had he done?
My bet would be tax evasion and money laundering. ;)
It's hard to wrap one's head around just how freaking rich the mega wealthy are. The 1% is not even the enemy at this point, they are closer to most of us than they are to the billionaire class.
I was more meaning "on what scale?". I assume he wasn't a few hundred short.
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Obviously. How much?
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Steal a little, and they put you in jail. Steal a lot, and they make you king.
Interesting that it's just a cost of doing business in China as well.
Fraud is punished in the free world too buddy.
Don’t worry once all the kickbacks and bribes are in place the actual sum should come down considerably 🫠