Apple and Meta: Virtual Automatic Teller Machines for the EU
April 29, 2025
No AI, just a dinobaby watching the world respond to the tech bros.
I spotted this story in USA Today. You remember that newspaper, of course. The story “Apple Fined $570 Million and Meta $228 Million for Breaching European Union Law” reports:
Apple was fined 500 million euros ($570 million) on Wednesday and Meta 200 million euros, as European Union antitrust regulators handed out the first sanctions under landmark legislation aimed at curbing the power of Big Tech.
I have observed that to many regulators the brands Apple and Meta (Facebook) are converted to the sound of ka-ching. For those who don’t recognize the onomatopoeia for an old-fashioned cash register ringing up a sale. The modern metaphor might be an automatic teller machine emitting beeps and honks. That works. Punch the Apple and Meta logos and bonk, beep, out comes millions of euros. Bonk, beep.
The law which allows the behavior of what some Europeans view as “tech bros” to be converted first to a legal process and then to cash is the Digital Markets Act. The idea is that certain technology centric outfits based in the US operate without much regard for the rules, regulations, and laws of actual nation-states and their governing entities. I mean who pays attention to what the European Union says? Certainly not a geek à la sauce californienne.
The companies are likely to interpret these fines as some sort of deus ex machina, delivered by a third-rate vengeful god in a TikTok-type of video. Perhaps? But the legal process identified some actions by the fined American companies as illegal. Examples range from preventing an Apple store user from certain behaviors to Meta’s reluctance to conform to some privacy requirements. I am certainly not a lawyer, nor am I involved with either of the American companies. However, I can make several observations from my dinobaby point of view, of course:
- The ka-ching / bonk beep incentive is strong. Money talks in the US and elsewhere. It is not surprising that the fines are becoming larger with each go-round. How does one stop the cost creep? One thought is to change the behavior of the companies. Sorry, EU, that is not going to happen.
- The interpretation of the penalty as a reaction against America is definitely a factor. For those who have not lived and worked in other countries, the anti-American sentiment is not understood. I learned when people painted slurs on the walls of our home in Campinas, Brazil. I was about 13, and the anger extended beyond black paint on our pristine white, eight-foot high walls with glass embedded at the top of them. Inviting, right?
- The perception that a company is more powerful than a mere government entity has been growing as the concentration of eyeballs, money, and talented people has increased at certain firms. Once the regulators have worked through the others in this category, attention will turn to the second tier of companies. I won’t identify any entities but the increased scrutiny of Cloudflare by French authorities is a glimpse of what might be coming down the information highway.
Net net: Ka-ching, ka-ching, and ka-ching. Beep, bong, beep, bong.
Stephen E Arnold, April 29, 2025
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