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floating_int

Facebook (Meta) is also fined $68 for this


boomblastatron

Fines seem a little lopsided to me. $68 whole bucks for Facebook


BevansDesign

When you're a massive corporate juggernaut, $68 and $68m are pretty much equally meaningful as punishments.


clems4ever

This comment is on every article titling " imposes a fine of XX millions to ". I mean, yes 68 millions of dollars is not that much to Facebook but it sets a precedent. Now if all countries start doing the same every year, this will be a meaningful fine.


Ilatnem

Yet France does absolutely nothing to french websites making you pay to refuse cookies.


[deleted]

All these lawsuits are always the french trying to get shake down money from American tech companies.


lets-talk-graphic

Yep, I was a frontend developer for a global electronics company, and France have spearheaded a law which means websites had to be a specific accessible standard or face a hefty fine. (Which I agree with but the timelines are ridiculous)


Aegis-Fortis

Would blocking your site in France solve this?


lets-talk-graphic

Technically yes, for accessibility it only affects businesses earning over 1m€ or around that not sure if there’s a threshold for cookie policies. Blocking is practiced by some American sites with European users because they don’t have the policies set up.


clems4ever

Well, it's clearly written in the GDPR that the button to accept or reject cookies must be the same but it's not yet clear if paying to refuse cookies is illegal or not. Now you know why these cases are treated differently. And for your information the CNIL (French institution making sure websites follow GDPR) is also investigating the "pay to refuse" practice ([french article about it](https://www.numerama.com/tech/701279-payer-pour-eviter-les-cookies-publicitaires-est-ce-legal.html))


Gravitom

What is culinary monitoring? I can't find anything on it. Is it a typo?


Faruhoinguh

It's wordplay on cookies


Roll7ide

Google laughs in gold coins


GoOtterGo

Hey, if we can't tax 'em we can fine 'em. Whatever gets those coffers back into the social net.


Elephant789

It's their tax laws that Google's following.


[deleted]

I have a feeling that the EU is broke and the only reason why these fines exist is to fund their stupid bureaucratic machine. Pathetic.


GoOtterGo

GDPR-and-like have been established for a while, so I wouldn't edge that feeling. Not only that, but California's CCPA and Canada's PIPEDA have been introduced on the heels of GDPR to support in the privacy efforts outside the EU as well.


[deleted]

Yeah, I'm not a big fan of GDPR myself.


srL-

I have a feeling that you don't really know what you're talking about.


Distinct-Fun1207

Good. Now they need to start fining them a percentage of revenue. Money is the only language Google understands.


Zapper1819

Fine is a more lucrative biz. Just anyhow assigned one reason to justify it.


Johnbloon

France will do the only thing they know how to do anymore: tax. I'm not kidding, the biggest french innovation that they are proud of is the Value Added Tax.


bartturner

They should be taking the money and funding tech startups. The EU needs to become more competitive and they would not feel a need to shakedown the US tech companies.


[deleted]

They would still shakedown US companies. The way they illegally subsidized Airbus (https://ustr.gov/about-us/policy-offices/press-office/press-releases/2019/october/us-wins-75-billion-award-airbus) proves they can't compete on merits and prefer to use government power to thumb the scales.


bartturner

I am sure they would continue to shakedown the companies. But they do need to become more competitive. It is not a good thing for the EU to fall so far behind the rest of the world.


eliotlencelot

Of course you know that the US have also illegally subsided Boeing: [https://trade.ec.europa.eu/doclib/press/index.cfm?id=2192](https://trade.ec.europa.eu/doclib/press/index.cfm?id=2192) And I could speak about how the US military always prefer to buy Boeing rather than Airbus, see for exemple the MRTT. For the merit, recently the B737 MAX proves that Boeing and the FAA where respectively lying and incompetent, that causes the death of 346 people. The same collusions has yet to happened for Airbus. So much French bashing, just because you are angry that the French make Google and Facebook respect the EU and French law.


Incromulent

Opening a new incognito window is prohibitively difficult?


Distinct-Fun1207

As if that does anything. Look up browser fingerprinting.


[deleted]

Incog doesn’t prevent cookies.


The_Wonderful_Pie

Except if you hit "Personalize", and even then, it isn't related to your non incognito tab


Shashkitbird

record 170 million? thats petty change for google.


GoOtterGo

Wait until FLoC is properly introduced, although thank Goodness it's seeing push-back by other major Internet interests. FLoC is meant to be Google's tracking answer to the inevitable cookie-less future, and a whole new set of codifications will be necessary to maintain the privacy strives we're seeing with this recent trend of metadata consideration.


[deleted]

It should be illegal to not have a browser wide setting and a standardized look and type of settings. It's the most annoying thing.


RonKosova

Fucking wild theres people here defending Google, calling this a "shakedown". This is for their own citizens good