Є in the title of the HN submission is not the Euro symbol.
€ is.
There’s a lot of frustration and cynicism in this thread, but I suspect some misunderstandings might be fuelling it. First off, Ireland is part of the EU, and under GDPR’s 'one-stop-shop' system, the country where a company has its EU headquarters in Ireland, in the case of many tech giants it takes the lead on enforcement for the entire EU. So when Ireland’s regulator fines a company under GDPR, they’re essentially doing it on behalf of the whole EU, it’s not just Ireland acting alone.
GDPR fines can be very significant, the rules allow penalties either as a percentage of a company’s global revenue or as a large fixed amount whichever is higher. This ensures even the biggest companies feel the impact. Plus, these fines are public and transparent. Every big fine is announced and reported, which means there’s a reputational hit alongside the financial one. That publicity is intentional: it adds pressure on companies to improve, making the fines a real deterrent rather than just a quiet cost of doing business.
It’s also worth clarifying where the fine money goes. It doesn’t just line Ireland’s pockets. In practice, the money goes into the EU budget. If Ireland collects a hefty fine, that amount is basically offset against what Ireland would normally contribute to the EU budget. If people in other EU countries were affected by the violation, those countries can request a portion of the fine as well. In short, Ireland isn’t profiting solo from these fines, it’s just the point of collection because that’s where the companies are based.
Interestingly, some comments here call the fines 'insane' (too harsh) while others say they’re 'a slap on the wrist' (too lenient). That contradiction highlights the misconceptions around GDPR fines. In reality, these penalties are meant to be serious enough to matter, but proportionate to a company’s size and the offence. They’re not intended to destroy a business, but they’re definitely not nothing either, they serve as a real consequence to encourage companies to respect people’s privacy.
I’m sure they’re just acting within the law here, but I’m pretty sure the bigger threat isn’t the egress of data but rather the ingress of influence over the app’s algorithm, and therefore users
@dang Can you please put this in the title? €
Thank you for saving our eyes.
Two things I wonder about: first are these fines actually going to happen or is the sort of thing where it gets appealed indefinitely. And second, where do the fines go? It sounds a lot like since Ireland is where Tiktok is getting fined the fines go to the Irish government which would seem crazy. The fines are assessed in the context of the full EU, but only Ireland gets the revenue? This is broken.
100% of the money recovered from these fines should be spent on researching and publicising the privacy abuses of these companies. They should essentially be funding their own policing.
Who knows how this data they are harvesting at scale will be exploited by AI in the future. It is pretty scary.
Hope the use that money to improve things for the people there!
Slightly OT: how does the money from fines get used by the government that issued the fine?
e.g. does it go into funding data privacy related activities/work?
As long as we dont fine the people in charge, these fines are useless and have no impact.
> Grahn said TikTok has “has never received a request for European user data from the Chinese authorities, and has never provided European user data to them.”
lol, ok. Chinese intelligence services must be completely asleep at the wheel (doubtful)
Does this Irish privacy watchdog investigate Tik Tok data transfers to the Irish government, U.S etc? If not, it's a case of powerful institutions fighting over who has spying rights to their serfs.
Roughly €100 per Irish resident. Not bad.
Far better than the ban them idea tbh.
Although I suspect US regulators won't like this approach because they want to syphon EU users data up as much as China.
Lmao that's nothing to them. But we all knew that, happens all the time.
There's not countries. There's not borders. There's just wealth. Concentrated wealth.
kind of undercuts their whole narrative
Whoever cares about privacy would certainly stay away from TokTok. This is just absurd. Ban the app already
[dead]
Is that massive? Meh ... Probably not. Probably still within cost of business range, right?
Reminder: Meta was fined 1.2 billion euro by the Irish data protection authority. May 22, 2023 was the enforcement date.
Question: How many euro do you think have been paid as of today, 2nd May 2025?
The good old slap on the wrist
In the future, Europe's entire GDP will be made of privacy fines
Not enough. A fine is just a price for people's private data. Companies should never be allowed to transfer private data of citizens to authoritarian countries and should be de-registered and banned from accessing the free world in such case.
Now, I'm still waiting for those watchdogs to fine Facebook, Google, Apple, Microsoft, and bazillion other companies over data transfer to the USA.
Just kidding, I know it won't happen.
But at least paying some taxes in Ireland should be possible, shouldn't it?
'massive' -- by which standards?
It is high time we got used to companies being fined a reasonable fraction of their revenue. And TikTok's global revenue last year alone was estimated at $20 billion to $26 billion [1].
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/17/technology/tiktok-ban-byt...