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posted by FatPhil on Sunday July 21 2019, @08:19PM   Printer-friendly
from the throw-the-facebook-at-them dept.

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. [...]


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  • (Score: 2) by ilsa on Monday July 22 2019, @03:21PM

    by ilsa (6082) Subscriber Badge on Monday July 22 2019, @03:21PM (#869978)

    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.

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