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Re:Record €225m fine for WhatsApp Ireland over data protecti... by jillesvangurp on Thursday September 02, 2021 @12:26PM (#28394051)
Ireland only has about 5M inhabitants. Not all of them use whatsapp. So that's a sweet 15/20 euro per user. On a service that remains ad free and free as in beer, that's a pretty steep user cost. Not a problem if it's an isolated case of a country doing this but it starts adding up if this becomes a recurring cost across the EU and wherever else governments are waking up to getting their taxes this way. It adds up to death by a thousand cuts.

Really sucks for the shareholders that Facebook is giving away their profit for no good reason other than arrogance. I'm sure they'd rather see dividends than this drain on their profits. That's the one job shareholders have: worry about stuff like that.

Re:Record €225m fine for WhatsApp Ireland over data protecti... by detaro on Thursday September 02, 2021 @12:28PM (#28394069)
It's for the entire EU, not just Ireland.
Re:Record €225m fine for WhatsApp Ireland over data protecti... by toyg on Thursday September 02, 2021 @12:42PM (#28394265)
I believe technically it will be Ireland collecting, since the case was started by the local authority (DPC) against a local company (WhatsApp Ireland). European authorities were only brought in to determine what the scale of the fine should be, since there was no clear consensus (initial suggestions were around E50m, which is why WA put aside a safer E77m). But yes, the fine was determined looking at the entire EU userbase, which makes it still peanuts in the great scheme of things.
Re:Record €225m fine for WhatsApp Ireland over data protecti... by detaro on Thursday September 02, 2021 @12:45PM (#28394289)
Who is collecting isn't relevant to what the per-user cost to Facebook is though? The other EU countries won't fine for the same thing (as the poster suggested they would) is the point, so doesn't make much sense to relate it to the number of inhabitants of Ireland.