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FTC 'Failed Miserably' in Punishing Facebook With $5 Billion Fine, Democrats Say
The Federal Trade Commission, which has been investigating Facebook in the wake of its massive Cambridge Analytica scandal, has voted to approve levying a massive $5 billion fine against the social media giant, according to reporting in both the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post. It's the single largest fine against a tech company by the FTC to date, but its inadequacy to curtail future breaches of this sort already has progressive lawmakers furious
Facebook was aware of a fine of this magnitude potentially coming down the pike for some time, and braced for a hit between $3 billion and $5 billion. The approval vote—which reportedly split down party lines, with three Republicans voting in favor and two Democrats against—was on the higher end of the expected spectrum.
This is expected to cap the agency's investigation into the data-mining scandal that compromised up to 87 million Facebook users' personal data. The data was originally harvested using a seemingly benign quiz app on the platform but was later potentially used by Cambridge Analytica, a political consultancy, for the unrelated purpose of political ad targeting.
Both the FTC and Facebook declined to comment. [...]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Sunday July 21 2019, @09:00PM (11 children)
I'd say "not bad". That's enough money to get anyone's attention. It's enough money to get investor's attention. The richest people in the world don't just laugh off amounts of money that high. It may or may not be enough to hurt some of those richest people, but they're definitely going to take notice of it.
From a legal standpoint, I'm sure that they gave Facebook "first time offender" status.
If something similar happens next year, I would fully expect that huge-ass fine to be doubled, or even tripled. If it happens AGAIN in a couple more years, then we might consider "habitual offender" status, and increase the fine proportionately.
Let's not whine too much that the fine isn't big enough. Not unless we can agree that having your head chopped off for speeding 10 mph over is reasonable.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 21 2019, @09:10PM (7 children)
Who cares when the government gets the money not the victims?
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Sunday July 21 2019, @09:37PM (6 children)
Well - you should care. The objective here, is to discourage bad behaviour. Taking large sums of money away from any person, or group of persons, is likely to discourage that conduct that was found objectionable. That lost money, plus government oversight/supervision should help to keep everyone more honest. Unless, of course, your name is Jeffrey Epstein, and you can donate large sums of money to your jailer, in which case you can do whatever the hell you want to do.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 21 2019, @11:26PM
Take large amounts of money away from facebook and give it to the government? What have we gained?
All I see is that one of the worlds biggest manipulative and evil spying organizations just transferred funds to its boss...
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday July 22 2019, @12:11AM (4 children)
Unless the taking of large sums is more objectionable, which apparently was the case with AC's viewpoint.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 22 2019, @12:17AM (3 children)
How do you get that from what I said? I said give it to the victims instead of the government.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 22 2019, @12:44AM
This is khallow, he has no shame in pursuing his own agenda.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday July 22 2019, @12:59AM (1 child)
(Score: 1) by Acabatag on Monday July 22 2019, @03:00AM
Give it to 87,000 lawyers?
Hell no, that only encourages them.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 22 2019, @01:03PM
You can fine me 5 billion dollars any time. That is when you at the same time give me 5.01 billion dollars. That's how it works, dear.
(Score: 2) by ilsa on Monday July 22 2019, @03:21PM
While for a normal person that's an astounding amount of money, for Facebook it's nothing.
When a company plans for a fine like this, it's no longer a fine. It's not punative... It's just an expense. It's just a cost of doing business and won't do anything to alter their operations at all.
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Monday July 22 2019, @08:08PM
You have $100.00 in a rather heavy bag of change. You lose 87 cents. That would get your attention?
Facebook's market capitalization is $577 Billion dollars. $5 Billion is 0.87% of that. They have already recovered their capitalization shock from the news of it.
Their net income adding up every quarter for the last five years was in the neighborhood of $50 Billion. Not gross profit - net income.
The real question is: What are they doing to keep data private now? The answer is: THEY ARE NOT. THAT IS HOW THEY MAKE THEIR MONEY. How do they stop from aggregating data for users who are not aware that the data has gone to Facebook. Answer: You do not know when Facebook or a different third party is the beneficiary of your data.
The really-real question is what will this do to stop their behavior? Because to me this looks like something lighter than a slap on the wrist given their size. Did it get attention? Yes. Will it cause genuine change in their culture? That would be the real measure if it worked.
From TFA:
The market already absorbed the information, Facebook already knew it was coming, so everybody financial already accounted for it and Facebook is stronger than ever. So you were saying?
This sig for rent.