> While the full amount of the penalty against Meta, based on thousands of violations of state law, was calculated as $219bn, Judge Mathew reduced the penalty to the $25bn fine.
umm when a thief steals and gets caught, we don't just punish them. We also recover what was stolen.
They should also be made to delete all user data collected during the period, and pause similar data collection for x months/years even the ones that fall under their service terms. The price of wrong doing should be high, and for meta deleting historical user data is the highest form of punishment .
Previously when the EU has ordered US companies to pay penalties of a "few billion EUR" for trade abuse there has typically been a lot of jingoistic outrage here. This one will be interesting to watch.
The Cambridge Analytica "scandal" is basically an advertising campaign for Meta itself. Their ad platform worked exactly as designed: it allowed creepy, microtargeted advertisements. Instead of dish soap, peptides, and dropshipped garbage, it sold a political candidate.
Much worse is how Meta enabled a genocide in Myanmar.
>Their ad platform worked exactly as designed: it allowed creepy, microtargeted advertisements. Instead of dish soap, peptides, and dropshipped garbage, it sold a political candidate.
No? The scandal was that random "apps" (eg. quizzes) were able to scrape user and their friends' profile data. The expansion of that into ad targeting as a whole is just a retcon you're doing.
> In the 2010s, personal data belonging to millions of Facebook users was collected by British consulting firm Cambridge Analytica for political advertising without informed consent.
We need tort reform in the US. These nuclear verdicts are causing insurance prices to go up. I forget the statistics, but I'm pretty sure every American citizen is paying a $500 to multi-thousand dollar tax because of giant lawsuits like this. Nowhere else in the world has this problem. Lawyers have too much power with politicians.
Yea, that's the problem here, not the (illegal) wanton abuse and manipulation of user data and privacy by Meta and other companies.
Original reward was 200+ billion, lawyered down to 25, on appeal I imagine much less. Cost of doing business for Meta and nothing changes. In cases like this, it should cost the company serious financial harm. Even $25 billion is nothing to Meta.
If Meta is able to insure themselves from the cost of their illegal business practices that, so they have no incentive not to do this, and end up costing everyone money on their insurance... yes that is a problem, not to say what meta is being punished for isn't a problem.
Surely you realise that no insurance company will continually indemnify a company which knowingly and repeatedly breaks the law, resulting in losses to the insurance company? Surely you understand that this isn't how insurance works?
Why would American taxpayers be paying more because of a settlement against a private company? Shouldn't this contribute to the tax take, causing taxpayers to pay LESS?
We need to hold shareholders responsible for the actions of the companies they own. I get why there is a certain level of immunity, especially historically. We wanted people to be able to invest money and not have to be experts on the politics and workings of the companies they were investing in. In the modern era of having detailed information about the board members, other major shareholders, executives, shareholder reports, etc all at your finger tips, you should have to weigh how ethical and responsible a company is before investing. It needs to be "priced-in". A $25 Billion dollar judgement against Meta might hurt profits a bit, but if that $25 Billion was paid in dividend claw backs or liens against stock...
Same goes for any business venture including private equity. No more corporate veil. Every dollar or stake in ownership needs to be attributable back to an individual that can be held financially responsible. Each individual can have some amount of assets protected from claw backs, liens, judgements, etc. Enough to cover a functional used vehicle, 3 bed two bath house in their zip code, 50k in cash, and their retirement account. This gives most normal people the freedom to invest with less worry. Still, if you want to make money, it will behoove you to not take on risk by investing in organizations that flout the law, cause environmental damage, or harm others.
Licensing isn't the problem; simply prosecuting white collar crime is. No one wants to do it, especially the federal government, because they don't want to drive away companies to other countries.
Other countries don't have this problem because they enable and expect regulators to proactively enforce compliance. In the US this is largely considered anti-business, so we let companies do whatever they want and don't take action until after they do something wrong.
And breaking the law usually doesn't result in a hit to next quarter's earnings, so this is what we optimize for: kicking the can down the road until it becomes a bigger problem.
Please note, those aren't my words but a response to the strongest plausible interpretation of the comment I'm responding to.
Privacy law in the US is largely toothless and has vanishingly few proactive regulatory requirements. This case is a perfect example of this -- Facebook's blatant disregard for privacy wasn't what was found illegal here, it was only the fact they lied about it.
All the states that participated in the class action settlement got $725 million combined.
New Mexico decided to go it alone and gets $25 billion.
Great timing for the AG who’s up for reelection on November 3 (even though it was the previous AG who made the call).
>New Mexico decided to go it alone and gets $25 billion.
No because that's still subject to appeal, unlike the settlement. "a bird in hand is worth two in the bush", etc.
What are the grounds for the appeal? How does NM law look on that issue? It's a significantly reduced judgment too.
Like, yeah, you have a point in the abstract, but barring any actual supportive facts, it doesn't seem like a good point.
That’s all framing. If they use the win for their reelection campaign…they just won’t mention the appeals process.
> While the full amount of the penalty against Meta, based on thousands of violations of state law, was calculated as $219bn, Judge Mathew reduced the penalty to the $25bn fine.
umm when a thief steals and gets caught, we don't just punish them. We also recover what was stolen.
They should also be made to delete all user data collected during the period, and pause similar data collection for x months/years even the ones that fall under their service terms. The price of wrong doing should be high, and for meta deleting historical user data is the highest form of punishment .
Otherwise it's just cost of business.
How much is Cambridge Analytica going to have to pay? I'm all for ramming Meta, but I feel like they should be forced to pay the same amount.
Diseconomies of scale.
Not enough.
Previously when the EU has ordered US companies to pay penalties of a "few billion EUR" for trade abuse there has typically been a lot of jingoistic outrage here. This one will be interesting to watch.
America fines their companies left and right but won't allow other countries to do for the same wrongdoings.
Its very easy to understand the motives but other countries lack back bone to ban these companies
The Cambridge Analytica "scandal" is basically an advertising campaign for Meta itself. Their ad platform worked exactly as designed: it allowed creepy, microtargeted advertisements. Instead of dish soap, peptides, and dropshipped garbage, it sold a political candidate.
Much worse is how Meta enabled a genocide in Myanmar.
>Their ad platform worked exactly as designed: it allowed creepy, microtargeted advertisements. Instead of dish soap, peptides, and dropshipped garbage, it sold a political candidate.
No? The scandal was that random "apps" (eg. quizzes) were able to scrape user and their friends' profile data. The expansion of that into ad targeting as a whole is just a retcon you're doing.
> In the 2010s, personal data belonging to millions of Facebook users was collected by British consulting firm Cambridge Analytica for political advertising without informed consent.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook%E2%80%93Cambridge_Ana...
> Much worse is how Meta enabled a genocide in Myanmar.
True, and considering the gravity of this situation, you'd think they're would've been more legal consequences for FB/Meta
I see similar dynamics happening on X, where it is just being used to spread hate and division.
Perhaps it's high time we had an international criminal justice system for social media companies.
Ad campaign? We are lucky they didn’t make the settlement in “Meta Quest Cash” or “Ad Buy Credit”
The original fine was much higher. This is closer to Meta’s hopes than the peoples.
i hate that zuck has his ad empire funding all sort of stupid shit. Nothing can even touch him as long as ad dollars keep flowing.
why are ads so so sucessful on meta platform. i hate it so much.
So apropos of nothing remember when Zuck bought a castle rather than spend that money on any sort of Facebook account support?
We need tort reform in the US. These nuclear verdicts are causing insurance prices to go up. I forget the statistics, but I'm pretty sure every American citizen is paying a $500 to multi-thousand dollar tax because of giant lawsuits like this. Nowhere else in the world has this problem. Lawyers have too much power with politicians.
Yea, that's the problem here, not the (illegal) wanton abuse and manipulation of user data and privacy by Meta and other companies.
Original reward was 200+ billion, lawyered down to 25, on appeal I imagine much less. Cost of doing business for Meta and nothing changes. In cases like this, it should cost the company serious financial harm. Even $25 billion is nothing to Meta.
If Meta is able to insure themselves from the cost of their illegal business practices that, so they have no incentive not to do this, and end up costing everyone money on their insurance... yes that is a problem, not to say what meta is being punished for isn't a problem.
Surely you realise that no insurance company will continually indemnify a company which knowingly and repeatedly breaks the law, resulting in losses to the insurance company? Surely you understand that this isn't how insurance works?
Why would American taxpayers be paying more because of a settlement against a private company? Shouldn't this contribute to the tax take, causing taxpayers to pay LESS?
The penalty was not damages, it was a statutory per-count penalty. This was not a tort case at all, and tort reform has nothing to do with it.
Or Meta could not break the law. It's just that easy.
I support the death penalty for corporations.
We need to hold shareholders responsible for the actions of the companies they own. I get why there is a certain level of immunity, especially historically. We wanted people to be able to invest money and not have to be experts on the politics and workings of the companies they were investing in. In the modern era of having detailed information about the board members, other major shareholders, executives, shareholder reports, etc all at your finger tips, you should have to weigh how ethical and responsible a company is before investing. It needs to be "priced-in". A $25 Billion dollar judgement against Meta might hurt profits a bit, but if that $25 Billion was paid in dividend claw backs or liens against stock...
Same goes for any business venture including private equity. No more corporate veil. Every dollar or stake in ownership needs to be attributable back to an individual that can be held financially responsible. Each individual can have some amount of assets protected from claw backs, liens, judgements, etc. Enough to cover a functional used vehicle, 3 bed two bath house in their zip code, 50k in cash, and their retirement account. This gives most normal people the freedom to invest with less worry. Still, if you want to make money, it will behoove you to not take on risk by investing in organizations that flout the law, cause environmental damage, or harm others.
I support the licensure of boards of directors and CEO types, and enforcement of laws against the people who control companies.
If the CFO commits a crime, they can't get a license anymore. Start getting the bad actors out of positions of power.
Licensing isn't the problem; simply prosecuting white collar crime is. No one wants to do it, especially the federal government, because they don't want to drive away companies to other countries.
'capitalist punishment'
But tort law makes it easy and profitable for them to do so.
Change the law, it just that easy.
That's because 47% of the Senate are attorneys/former practicing attorneys. Need more ex-Scientists in office. :)
No one is stopping them. There's no requirement that you be a lawyer. And lol, what a crazy idea... a lawmaker studying lawyering?! What a scam!
Other countries don't have this problem because they enable and expect regulators to proactively enforce compliance. In the US this is largely considered anti-business, so we let companies do whatever they want and don't take action until after they do something wrong.
And breaking the law usually doesn't result in a hit to next quarter's earnings, so this is what we optimize for: kicking the can down the road until it becomes a bigger problem.
Other countries don't have this problem
Guess how we know you've never lived, worked, or read a newspaper in any other country.
Please note, those aren't my words but a response to the strongest plausible interpretation of the comment I'm responding to.
Privacy law in the US is largely toothless and has vanishingly few proactive regulatory requirements. This case is a perfect example of this -- Facebook's blatant disregard for privacy wasn't what was found illegal here, it was only the fact they lied about it.
Jury based punitive damages are constantly overturned because they are not legal experts and don't understand anything.
Anyone who thinks Meta will actually pay this amount have no clue what they're talking about.
The article says this was a statutory $5k per infringement * 43M counts, then reduced by the court. This was not a jury award.
They are also not punitive damages, and Meta was also found to be willful.