poorer outcomes for users
False
for advertisers
Fuck them
for platforms
Fuck you
this post was submitted on 04 Jul 2025
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Privacy
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"The law that has been made to keep our greed in check is unlawful! So unfair!!"
Did they use some LLM for this? How can a law be unlawful?
If the law goes against older law without having written it that it overwrites it, it can be unlawful. So, not really what happens here.
You are not wrong on that account, but it was still funny to me that they complained that the fine is unlawful... Like would that really fool anyone?
Meta said that "it is required to offer a free, reduced-ad service that leads to poorer outcomes for users, advertisers, and platforms."
Oh, fuck off. Targeted advertisements don't help users with anything other than spending money on things they don't need. They lived perfectly fine before seeing the ad, they don't need what it's trying to peddle.
The only poorer outcomes are for Meta and their advertisers. Don't try and frame this as though it would hurt actual people, Meta.
I hope the appeal ends up increasing the fine.
Or just, you know. Ban every meta product in the EU. That would be so wonderful. It would force people to stop using that shit and the world would be a better place. I see this as an absolute win.
That's an option but doesn't seem realistic. If a service is freely available on the Internet, it's hard to ban it in a specific country. China and Russia are doing it and that require massive Internet censorship apparatus, strict measures against VPN, Tor, and online privacy tools.
It's not unrealistic if you don't expect it to be watertight. They've already banned piracy and gambling sites here. It's a simple DNS block and so only for people using their ISP's DNS. It still works, way fewer people use the sites that are blocked.
Blocking of piracy websites are a good example of a decision to block escalating to rediculous levels, and becoming increasingly problematic.
Companies from the from music/cultural industry convinced a court to order ISP to block some websites, and they did by meddling with their own DNS servers.
Then those companies came back to request blocking by alternative DNS providers such as Google and OpenDNS, since people used them to workaround blocks.
And next of course these companies attacked VPN providers, asking for more blocking, again because those allow working around previous blocks.
These ISP, DNS and VPN providers are third parties with no involvment in piracy, but they're being forcully involed into that fight anyway. This is completely disproportionate. If they want to fight piracy those companies should only be allowed to attack those actually involved.
If they have their way, we'll end up the having the equivalent of the great firewall of china dedicated to tracking and blocking anything remotely looking like piracy or p2p.
The thing is. By Banning it you make it a lot harder for people to use it. Soms might start using VPNs sure, or even TOR. But most people don't even know what that is or don't care enough tongo through so much hassle.
Most people are already fed up with META but are just too lazy to switch, this will give them the final push. And privacy is never a reason to use meta. The entire reason they are being fined so much is because continuously break privacy laws and make privacy worse for everyone.
This would be great if implemented as a base rule. You want to appeal? Hope you are sure of it, the fine will increase on a given percentage for wasting time and resources for everyone else.
Especially because this is just fucking punitive to them. They have enough money that this wouldn't materially impact them.