From The Verge: France’s competition watchdog (Autorité de la concurrence) ordered Apple to pay €150 million (~$162.4 million) after finding that its App Tracking Transparency system allows the company to abuse its dominance in the mobile app market. In its decision, the authority says the initiative — which Apple pitches as a way to give users more control of their privacy — harms small publishers and “is neither necessary for nor proportionate with” Apple’s goal of protecting personal data.
Launched in 2021, Apple’s App Tracking Transparency initiative forces developers to show two pop-ups asking for permission to track users’ data across other apps and websites. Meanwhile, approving location tracking with Apple’s own apps requires only a single tap — and so does opting out of location services on third-party apps.
Many companies criticized the move at the time, saying the requirement would harm publishers by making it more difficult to track users for targeted advertising, which is one of the primary ways apps — especially free ones — make money. A report from the Financial Times found that Snapchat, Facebook, and X (then called Twitter) lost nearly $10 billion in revenue as a result.
France’s competition doesn’t take issue with the potential benefits that App Tracking Transparency has on user privacy. But it argues that the initiative makes using third-party apps on iOS “excessively complex” compared to Apple’s first-party ones.
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