The problem is that doesn't work to produce desired behavior. If you slap them for the wrong stuff then one of two things happens.
The first is they conclude they're going to get slapped no matter what and then do whatever they want and write off the penalties as unavoidable because better behavior doesn't actually avoid them anyway.
The second is they conclude that the only way to avoid the penalties is to grease the right palms, you induce them to figure out how to do that, and then they still do whatever they want because once you force them to corrupt your institutions in order to not be treated unfairly, those institutions no longer threaten them even when they misbehave.
The only scenario that leads to behavior improvements is the one where all the penalties are assigned justly and proportionally, to behavior that could reasonably be predicted ahead of time as prohibited.
None of the FAANG is being slapped by the EU for the wrong stuff. They aren't being slapped for your specific example (yet) but that doesn't mean that forcing their self-serving choices onto powerless users deserves a pass.
> None of the FAANG is being slapped by the EU for the wrong stuff.
A lot of the other stuff is things like not putting links to another search engine's results page in their search engine's results page. It's pure nonsense.
> The first is they conclude they're going to get slapped no matter what and then do whatever they want and write off the penalties as unavoidable because better behavior doesn't actually avoid them anyway.
European Commission fines are no small matter. They may be small at first, and may even be zero (just a warning), but the policy is to increase fines on non-compliance up to the point where the target complies. They can't write off penalties as unavoidable.
And if the fines are being imposed on actions that it would be hard to predict ahead of time would result in a fine, that leaves them with the second option (use money to buy influence), which is probably the worst of all because it's stable.
Once you convince a company that paying whatever it takes to buy a government is the only way to avoid random multi-billion dollar fines, you've created a long-term structural problem, because it becomes the status quo and is hard to undo. And then the government can't even punish them when they're actually being bad.
The first is they conclude they're going to get slapped no matter what and then do whatever they want and write off the penalties as unavoidable because better behavior doesn't actually avoid them anyway.
The second is they conclude that the only way to avoid the penalties is to grease the right palms, you induce them to figure out how to do that, and then they still do whatever they want because once you force them to corrupt your institutions in order to not be treated unfairly, those institutions no longer threaten them even when they misbehave.
The only scenario that leads to behavior improvements is the one where all the penalties are assigned justly and proportionally, to behavior that could reasonably be predicted ahead of time as prohibited.