That fine is a joke. They make like 5x that amount every month.
FTC Imposes $5B Penalty and Sweeping New Privacy Restrictions on Facebook
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Re: FTC Imposes $5B Penalty and Sweeping New Privacy Restrictions on Facebook
#12If there isn't escalation in price for violations past this in the future, this may just be the new price to play ball.
This is not a sustainable amount to be fined. I think they made a net income around 20 billion last year, this a quarter of that. A couple more of these fines and that's a really dangerous situation - companies at Facebook's stage are valued on multiples of earnings with growth, not revenues, and 75 to 50 percent reduction in earnings wiped a lot of shareholder value off the table, meaning the shareholders (basically just zuck) would need to think twice before committing these violations again.
Re: FTC Imposes $5B Penalty and Sweeping New Privacy Restrictions on Facebook
#13Can anyone with a firmer understanding of the issue tell me if this is an appropriate penalty or not? Should we expect to see some of these prohibitions generalized to more companies? * Facebook is prohibited from using telephone numbers obtained to enable a security feature (e.g., two-factor authentication) for advertising * Facebook must encrypt user passwords and regularly scan to detect whether any passwords are…
Matt Levine provides a nice summary: https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-07-23/facebo...
Re: FTC Imposes $5B Penalty and Sweeping New Privacy Restrictions on Facebook
#14I get that fines don’t always offset the benefit gained from shady practice, but frankly I don’t think Facebook got $5B from this. That’s ~25% of last year’s net income. That’s a punch in the jaw.
Re: FTC Imposes $5B Penalty and Sweeping New Privacy Restrictions on Facebook
#15And here is the DOJ complaint: https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/documents/cases/182_3109_fa...
Re: FTC Imposes $5B Penalty and Sweeping New Privacy Restrictions on Facebook
#16And now that those regulations are in place generally Facebook is locked in at the top. And all it took was a $5 billion dollar single payment. The three gears locked together unable to turn iconography they use in the article represents this well.
I had a similar question: can't these regulations be generalized? Or are we going to have these same problems in 10 years with a company other than Facebook?
Re: FTC Imposes $5B Penalty and Sweeping New Privacy Restrictions on Facebook
#17That fine is a joke. They make like 5x that amount every month.
Do you know something that FTC does not? From the article itself:
> Facebook monetizes user information through targeted advertising, which generated most of the company’s $55.8 billion in revenues in 2018
Re: FTC Imposes $5B Penalty and Sweeping New Privacy Restrictions on Facebook
#18>Facebook must exercise greater oversight over third-party apps, including by terminating app developers that fail to certify that they are in compliance with Facebook’s platform policies or fail to justify their need for specific user data;
>Facebook is prohibited from using telephone numbers obtained to enable a security feature (e.g., two-factor authentication) for advertising;
>Facebook must provide clear and conspicuous notice of its use of facial recognition technology, and obtain affirmative express user consent prior to any use that materially exceeds its prior disclosures to users;
>Facebook must establish, implement, and maintain a comprehensive data security program;
>Facebook must encrypt user passwords and regularly scan to detect whether any passwords are stored in plaintext; and
>Facebook is prohibited from asking for email passwords to other services when consumers sign up for its services.
This is great! What do we need to do to get this to apply to other data harvesting companies like Google and Microsoft?
Re: FTC Imposes $5B Penalty and Sweeping New Privacy Restrictions on Facebook
#19I get that fines don’t always offset the benefit gained from shady practice, but frankly I don’t think Facebook got $5B from this. That’s ~25% of last year’s net income. That’s a punch in the jaw.
Considering their stock rose significantly after this fine was announced, I don't think the people making money from Facebook agree with you.
Re: FTC Imposes $5B Penalty and Sweeping New Privacy Restrictions on Facebook
#20If there isn't escalation in price for violations past this in the future, this may just be the new price to play ball.
This is not a sustainable amount to be fined. I think they made a net income around 20 billion last year, this a quarter of that. A couple more of these fines and that's a really dangerous situation - companies at Facebook's stage are valued on multiples of earnings with growth, not revenues, and 75 to 50 percent reduction in earnings wiped a lot of shareholder value off the table, meaning the shareholders (basically…
Except it didn't whipe a lot of shareholder value off the table, the stock rose by 5% after fines were announced. Zuck himself made a cool billion off the bump.