What bearing does their global revenue have on what Ireland has any jurisdiction to fine them? I'm not a fan or user of TikTok, but what they earn on other continents is none of Ireland's business.
The Irish regulator is acting on behalf of the EU as TikTok European head quarters are in Ireland.
And in terms of jurisdiction - it's a bit like you visiting Ireland on holiday and committing a crime - and then arguing they have no jurisdiction over you as you are only there for 2 weeks.
A more apt comparison is that you get a fine for speeding abroad, and argue that you don't have to pay it because you earned that money in your home country.
Sure, it's fine for Ireland to punish someone for a crime committed in Ireland, but my question was about what bearing revenue earned on other continents was any business of Ireland's.
A more accurate version of your analogy would be Ireland choosing to punish a tourist for littering with a dramatically higher penalty than native Irish would face based on their New York salary.
Because, like many other tech companies, Tiktok is funneling most of their global revenue through Ireland where the corporate tax rate is very low. I don't know the specifics of the mechanism used by Tiktok. But, most companies do this by registering all of their IP through their Irish company and then paying licensing fees to the Irish entity that just happen to be all of their profit abroad. This is why the Irish regulator punches way above its weight globally and is why it is often the entry point for EU regulation on foreign firms.
Maybe Alibaba is a better example. Why should Alibaba increasing its global revenue through growth in the Chinese market mean that Ireland should fine it more? If it's because earnings in Ireland or even maybe the entire EU went up, then I can see the justification. But if Alibaba's revenue is going up because of Alibaba improving logistics within China, why should Ireland get anything for that?
One of TikTok’s largest markets is Japan. Their shop revenues in particular, doubled in Japan last year. Those earnings are taxed locally and have nothing to do with Ireland.
Ireland's business is whatever Ireland wants it to be, if TikTok wants the pleasure of being allowed to operate in Ireland jurisdictions.
And yes, everything a multi-billion dollar company does is indeed the government's business - and the people's business. We have a right to regulate them as we see fit.
A fine is supposed to be a deterrent to illegal behaviour. Much like a fine of 100€ for speeding is unlikely to dissuade someone driving a Ferrari, a fine directed towards a company needs to be proportional to that company's revenue, or else it will just be factored as a cost of doing business.
How much value did tiktok derive from flaunting these privacy laws? It's not entirely unlikely that it was less than 530M€.
Absurd. Damages need to be inline with 'how to force corrective behaviour'. They are to be designed to FORCE the company to change how they are behaving.
If their global revenue was $1000, and the local revenue is $1, fining them $0.10 isn't going to help much.
If you do business in Europe, there's a bunch of (good!) privacy regulations you have to comply with. One of these is that you're not allowed to transfer the data to a jurisdiction that doesn't follow equivalent protections to the GDPR[0]. TikTok transferred European user data to their Chinese servers, which is a pretty obvious no-go, since the Chinese government is an authoritarian watchdog that inherently can't guarantee these protections (as the GDPR also applies to transferring data to the government.)
Ireland has jurisdiction because the EU offers something called the "one stop shop" concept, where a foreign company can declare that they have EU headquarters in a specific member state, and from that point on the only EU regulations they have to directly worry about are how they're implemented in that country in specific[1]. Every major tech company is therefore in Ireland because the country is small enough to essentially steamroll local politicians with lobby money, leading to very lax enforcement until the EU starts applying pressure.[2]
[0]: This also causes issues with data transfers to the US, and in the most extreme interpretation, makes it so that you probably can't do business with both Europe and the US at the same time in the first place. This is because of the CLOUD act, which goes across jurisdictions and is something the US government can use to compel any service provider to hand over data.
[1]: Of course, a country can still have it's own laws that a company can run afoul of on top of that.
[2]: Other countries with this issue are Luxembourg (Fintech companies love Luxembourg because they can just hire all the good lawyers, meaning you can't negotiate legal disputes there effectively) and the Netherlands (which is a EU-based tax haven for large corporations that aren't in either sector.)
"By 2018, Ireland had received the most U.S. § Corporate tax inversions in history, and Apple was over one–fifth of Irish GDP. Academics rank Ireland as the largest tax haven; larger than the Caribbean tax haven system."
Do you know if there is a reason they would not domicile in Malta? It's an EU Member State, English speaking, and if buying off politicians in Ireland is easy, it must be easier in Malta with a population of only 550,000 people.
Malta is simply too small to accommodate the European headquarters of a major tech company. It's not enough to just put a brass plaque on a door - you need to actually run your EU operations primarily in that country. Meta and Google have thousands of staff in Ireland.
Malta is (along with Gibraltar) a preferred destination for gambling operators.
My guess is just physical/lazy reasons. Before this, they were homed in the UK, whose special arrangements meant that they could avoid a lot of EU regulations that way.
Then Brexit happened and they just moved to the nearest available option.
Yeah, this is pretty ahistorical; most multinational tech companies already had their EU headquarters in Ireland before Brexit. A lot of companies _did_ move operations from the UK to Ireland (or sometimes the Netherlands) as a result of Brexit, but it was mostly financial and insurance companies (plus some pharma, medical devices etc), and those didn't generally move their headquarters if they weren't already in Ireland.
> Every major tech company is therefore in Ireland because the country is small enough to essentially steamroll local politicians with lobby money
It's more about taxes and an efficient well-understood legal system (similar to the Delaware advantage on the latter). While the DPC used to be kinda useless, it has somewhat gotten its act together, and today issues most of the big GDPR fines. If you were trying to specifically avoid GDPR scrutiny, you'd locate elsewhere.
Why not? A country can, for the most part, set whatever level of fines they want within law. You can make an argument about the practicality of any given punishment but that's separate from the morality (which, from the tone of your comment, I assume is where you're coming from).
At the base level, I suppose my point was about morality, but my intent was about rationality. A country can write laws that it can take all the money a company earns across the entire globe, but it's not a very reasonable position, IMO.
Why is it not reasonable? Because it outweighs the harm? Because it could shut down a company? Because it’s unenforceable? Because of some “it looks silly to me” standard?
I can tell you Russia’s “fine” is not reasonable because it’s not enforceable and exists to be purely performative. It’s not the same thing as Ireland putting a fine based on global revenue but still within their power to enforce.
These secrets are contained deep within the article, which of course it is highly improper to read on this here orange website:
> The Irish national watchdog serves as TikTok’s lead data privacy regulator in the 27-nation EU because the company’s European headquarters is based in Dublin.
This is likely under the GDPR, whose penalties are based on global revenue. If TikTok doesn't like it, it is of course free to cease activity in Europe (strictly speaking the GDPR also protects European citizens outside of Europe, but in practice if a company doesn't operate in Europe there is little that the EU can do).
