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Comment by personomas | Hacker News Reader

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Look, those apps can work without collecting any PII whatsoever. But if they make collecting PII part of their main revenue, then they should take the laws in their respective markets (countries) serious.

Since TikTok implemented the required changes and also (apparently) did not complain about the policies themselves (e.g. being to complicated/ambiguous to implement) it really looks like it is solely on them. They violated the law so they are to be punished accordingly.

It's like doing tax fraud in a year and then complaining that you were compliant in the following years. Penalties for this can be way beyond 2.6% of someones personal revenue. What would you say if someone complains here? Would you agree with them?

It's a social media platform, of course they need PII.

We need to relax all laws. Our laws are unbelievable cruel. Business are expected to follow so so so many bureaucratic laws. To fine them 2.6% every time they break one is insane. Imagine how many countries there are out there, how many business laws there are, how much they have to comply with.

A lot of these companies already operate on extremely thin margins. This can destroy companies. It doesn't make sense.

A business doesn't have an inherent right to exist. If the only way it can exist is to break the law, then maybe it deserves to be destroyed?

Why should we put up with an abusive business model so some randos can make money?

> It's a social media platform, of course they need PII.

No they don't. Remember MySpace? Worked perfectly without PII.

Of course MySpace had PII. People wrote all about themselves.

Did MySpace not work without providing it PII during e.g. account creation? I remember it did work without it, but I might remember wrong.

GDPR doesn't go far enough and I think courts need to hand out significantly more fines.

Yes, that fine is a lot. It's supposed to be high. That's the only way that fines work. If it doesn't hurt a company's bottom line, they don't learn.

> These fines are insane. Especially for a company who stopped it then a few years.

GDPR has been around since 2016, 5 years is a long enough period to comply to regulations (as you're complaining about 2021), even more given the size of these companies. They didn't comply, they get fined, as an EU citizen I appreciate that they have teeth to subjugate even behemoth corporations.

> But GDPR, Digital Markets Act, etc are f** insane and causing huge problems.

Why do you think they are fucking insane and causing huge problems? As an individual I'm very, very glad these regulations exist and are being enforced, corporations won't change behaviour without massive penalties to these practices, so punish them until they behave decently, that's the only way.

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