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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: 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.