There was a lot of noise a few years back about Meta getting billion-euro fines over GDPR violations.
I looked it up: they paid almost none of the fines.
If you get a ticket from a speed camera, the government will garnish your wages if you don’t pay the fine. For trillion dollar organisations payment is apparently optional.
They just need to ban these companies from operating in their countries. They are fundamentally burdens on society run by bad people.
Your best case scenario with fines is getting them into the narrow definition of compliance just until a new "innovation" gives them a different way to conduct the same abuse while evading the letter of previous judgments.
This works best when you've got the ability to opt out of using those companies. If there's no meaningful replacement for a company's services or the entire internet is infested by it to the point where it's unavoidable a ban isn't going to do much good.
What would a ban on Google look like if people still want to email others using gmail accounts, watch youtube, or use android devices? What would a ban on cloudflare look like when all of your nation's traffic passes through them? One way or another these companies will end up with vast amounts of your people's data and the EU should be able to hold them accountable somehow for holding, selling, or using it in ways that violate their laws. Fines are pretty much the only lever they have to pull.
They should multiple by 100 and then by another 100 with each violation. The real solution is to lock executives behind bars, but if the CEO is a citizen of another country you're kind of stuck with fines and bans
Oh no, a pop-up! Tragically in 2026 much like people lacking data protections, it's impossible to block those in any way shape or form. No such means exist.
I'm truly sorry. I think we can all agree that your mild and self-inflicted inconvenience is well worth the GDPR being scrapped. Working for something like a modicum of boundaries from rapacious data hogs, who feed into ad-tech and AI systems, is clearly worthless when balanced against some pop-ups.
Seriously are people still making that joke? Is that the best gotcha possible for a serious issue? These fines are proof that despite the law changing these companies still flaunt it... maybe that should concern you more even if your own data is trivial to you.
A European-only, or even one that only primarily serves Europeans, likely won't make it to the front page as easily on the moderately American-centric HN - which further makes it seem like the only companies getting sued in the EU are American
The EU seems to live in a world all on its own. They can’t fine enough to actually change the behavior of big companies, but they can fine enough to kill their own startup culture.
I don’t feel bad for them anymore. Their voters seem to be fine with this status quo. And I get why other countries see these fines as trying to raise taxes by other means because it hasn’t and won’t change anything.
> They can’t fine enough to actually change the behavior of big companies
Of course they can fine enough. They just don't, which is why you see companies get fined again and again profiting from each violation.
The real issue is that fines are hard to set against companies with more money than they could ever need. What we need is for more CEOs to go to prison, but that's hard to do when the company's CEO is a citizen of another country.
That % should increase substantially with each violation too. It's hard to make fines hurt when the corporation you want to punish has more money than most countries.
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[ 2.1 ms ] story [ 32.0 ms ] threadI looked it up: they paid almost none of the fines.
If you get a ticket from a speed camera, the government will garnish your wages if you don’t pay the fine. For trillion dollar organisations payment is apparently optional.
Source?
Your best case scenario with fines is getting them into the narrow definition of compliance just until a new "innovation" gives them a different way to conduct the same abuse while evading the letter of previous judgments.
What would a ban on Google look like if people still want to email others using gmail accounts, watch youtube, or use android devices? What would a ban on cloudflare look like when all of your nation's traffic passes through them? One way or another these companies will end up with vast amounts of your people's data and the EU should be able to hold them accountable somehow for holding, selling, or using it in ways that violate their laws. Fines are pretty much the only lever they have to pull.
I'm truly sorry. I think we can all agree that your mild and self-inflicted inconvenience is well worth the GDPR being scrapped. Working for something like a modicum of boundaries from rapacious data hogs, who feed into ad-tech and AI systems, is clearly worthless when balanced against some pop-ups.
Seriously are people still making that joke? Is that the best gotcha possible for a serious issue? These fines are proof that despite the law changing these companies still flaunt it... maybe that should concern you more even if your own data is trivial to you.
https://www.enforcementtracker.com/ETid-3171 Yangoo. UAE.
https://www.enforcementtracker.com/ETid-1912 Criteo. French.
https://www.enforcementtracker.com/ETid-3162 Intesa Sanpaolo. Italian.
https://www.enforcementtracker.com/ETid-2864 Shein. Chinese.
https://www.enforcementtracker.com/ETid-2306 Enel Energia. Italian.
American companies fines tend to be highest since they are biggest and revenue affects the fine amount.
I don’t feel bad for them anymore. Their voters seem to be fine with this status quo. And I get why other countries see these fines as trying to raise taxes by other means because it hasn’t and won’t change anything.
Of course they can fine enough. They just don't, which is why you see companies get fined again and again profiting from each violation.
The real issue is that fines are hard to set against companies with more money than they could ever need. What we need is for more CEOs to go to prison, but that's hard to do when the company's CEO is a citizen of another country.
But they don't.
I can't think of a single one. It barely registers as a risk.
Although I can think of several US startups that bankrupted themselves with fines for fraud etc....
About 1% of FB's market cap. And their sins get washed away.
Everybody wins.
At this rate, fining tech-cos will be the main source of revenue for governments. Everybody wins.
Maybe start adding zeroes until it sinks in…