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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: 4, Interesting) by DannyB on Monday July 22 2019, @01:50PM
I don't like Facebook any more than I like Microsoft.
I find it amusing that Republicans were all upset about breaking up Microsoft. This was a company that clearly had become far too powerful and needed to be broken up. Further the court process had already happened. The judge could have kept his mouth shut better until the verdict had been officially published. But the bigger deal was that George W Bush came into office, and his AG, Asscroft, dropped the prosecution because it was "without merit".
But which party now thinks that all "big tech" is evil and should be broken up?
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