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Judge approves Facebook's settlement with FTC over ‘stunning’ privacy violations

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Re: Judge approves Facebook's settlement with FTC over ‘stunning’ privacy violations

#51

Post by vezycash »

wnoise wrote: post #10
droffel wrote: post #4

In the absense of capital punishment for corporations, fines can and will be seen as merely the cost of doing business. It feels like the only way to address this is by holding the decision makers (executives) responsible, but that would require piercing the corporate veil[1], which has disappointingly low precedent in the US [1]Edit: piercing the veil refers to holding shareholders responsible, which is a different…

Piercing the corporate veil is a different thing, connecting the corporation to its owners (e.g. stockholders for public corporations, or the conglomerate for subsidiaries.)

It means holding employees, directors, CEO... Responsible for their actions instead of the company.

The shareholders only come into play in they work for the company.

Re: Judge approves Facebook's settlement with FTC over ‘stunning’ privacy violations

#52

Post by paulryanrogers »

crazygringo wrote: post #41
droffel wrote: post #4

In the absense of capital punishment for corporations, fines can and will be seen as merely the cost of doing business. It feels like the only way to address this is by holding the decision makers (executives) responsible, but that would require piercing the corporate veil[1], which has disappointingly low precedent in the US [1]Edit: piercing the veil refers to holding shareholders responsible, which is a different…

> fines can and will be seen as merely the cost of doing business There's nothing inherently wrong with that. The answer, of course, is that fines can be increased to the point where businesses change. Just recently, Amazon was forced to completely shut down in France because the level of fines made it impossible to run their business at all. Businesses respond to incentives. Fines are an incentive. They can be set a…

This sounds pathological. Why have different C suites if none takes responsibility for anything that happens on their watch?

If this is really an inevitable state then perhaps the only solution is to limit the size of companies: by head count and market power.

Re: Judge approves Facebook's settlement with FTC over ‘stunning’ privacy violations

#53

Post by dang »

markdown wrote: post #22
dang wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personal attacks will get you banned here. Maybe you don't feel you owe a person better, but you owe this community better if you're posting to it. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

The odd thing about your comment is that most of the other comments in this thread (at the time I'm typing this) call for personally holding Facebook office-bearers to account, the implication being that Zuckerberg is a criminal who should be thrown in jail.

Maybe not so odd, as no other comments existed when I looked at the thread and we don't have a time machine.

Re: Judge approves Facebook's settlement with FTC over ‘stunning’ privacy violations

#54

Post by x3blah »

Compare HN title with actual titles given by the author/publisher:

"og:title" content="Federal Judge Stunned by Facebook's `Unscrupulous' Violation of the Law, Warns of Much Deeper Problems"

Judge Timothy Kelly Stunned by Facebook's Violation of Law

One could argue the HN title suggests the important point of the news story is that the settlement was accepted despite "stunning" privacy violations.

One could argue the author's titles suggest the important point of the news story is that a federal judge was "stunned" by Facebook's violations when approving the FTC settlement.

Re: Judge approves Facebook's settlement with FTC over ‘stunning’ privacy violations

#55

Post by refurb »

droffel wrote: post #4

In the absense of capital punishment for corporations, fines can and will be seen as merely the cost of doing business. It feels like the only way to address this is by holding the decision makers (executives) responsible, but that would require piercing the corporate veil[1], which has disappointingly low precedent in the US [1]Edit: piercing the veil refers to holding shareholders responsible, which is a different…

I think even if we had a corporate “death penalty”, companies would find a way around it with help from the government.

A great example is Pfizer’s punishment for off-label marketing. In addition to fines, the gov’t can ban a company from doing business with Medicare and Medicaid. That’s a death knell for a company as those public insurers typically pay for half of all drugs.

So what did the gov’t do? They did ban the manufacturer! But which one? Oh yeah, the empty shell company called Pharmacia and Upjohn (which Pfizer has acquired years earlier and stripped of products).[1]

So everyone is happy! Government mets out a ban and the company can pay the fine and go back to business as usual.

[1]http://narpa.org/reference/pharma_too_big_to_nail

Re: Judge approves Facebook's settlement with FTC over ‘stunning’ privacy violations

#56

Post by dang »

x3blah wrote: post #54

Compare HN title with actual titles given by the author/publisher: "og:title" content="Federal Judge Stunned by Facebook's `Unscrupulous' Violation of the Law, Warns of Much Deeper Problems" Judge Timothy Kelly Stunned by Facebook's Violation of Law One could argue the HN title suggests the important point of the news story is that the settlement was accepted despite "stunning" privacy violations. One could argue the…

The article and especially the title seem a bit tendentious to me, so I googled to try to find another story that quoted the same judge's remarks. I found https://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/350552/facebo... and almost changed the URL to that, but decided in the end to adapt that title instead. Clearly the news here is not just what the judge said during a ruling, but the ruling itself.

Re: Judge approves Facebook's settlement with FTC over ‘stunning’ privacy violations

#57

Post by x3blah »

tsimionescu wrote: post #37

It's interesting that the site presenting this story has, by their own declaration, 382 different marketing-related cookies, which you are required to accept with no alternatives if you want to browse the site. I'm not trying to say that they are not entitled to report on FB's privacy violations or something, they are reporters and it is very good that they are doing so. It's just amazing to what extent journalism si…

"Old newspapers could only dream of the kind of advertising revenue that sites like this probably have."

Actually they are struggling for ad revenue hence all the third party crud in their web pages.

Many of them allege that companies like Facebook and Google have "stolen" their ad revenue. Some complained of Craigslist taking away their classified ads business.

Old newspapers, particularly local ones, are going out of business thanks to competition from ad-supported websites that operate as middlemen for news delivered via internet, not to mention the impact of Covid-19.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decline_of_newspapers

https://www.poynter.org/business-work/2020/here-are-the-news...

Re: Judge approves Facebook's settlement with FTC over ‘stunning’ privacy violations

#58

Post by x3blah »

dang wrote: post #56
x3blah wrote: post #54

Compare HN title with actual titles given by the author/publisher: "og:title" content="Federal Judge Stunned by Facebook's `Unscrupulous' Violation of the Law, Warns of Much Deeper Problems" Judge Timothy Kelly Stunned by Facebook's Violation of Law One could argue the HN title suggests the important point of the news story is that the settlement was accepted despite "stunning" privacy violations. One could argue the…

The article and especially the title seem a bit tendentious to me, so I googled to try to find another story that quoted the same judge's remarks. I found https://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/350552/facebo... and almost changed the URL to that, but decided in the end to adapt that title instead. Clearly the news here is not just what the judge said during a ruling, but the ruling itself.

The ideal post then might be a link to the ruling itself:

https://epic.org/privacy/facebook/epic2019-challenge/US-v-Fa...

Through an FOIA request, EPIC found there were over 29,000 outstanding complaints to the FTC against Facebook since the 2012 Consent Order.

https://epic.org/privacy/facebook/epic2019-challenge/

Re: Judge approves Facebook's settlement with FTC over ‘stunning’ privacy violations

#59

Post by bobthepanda »

x3blah wrote: post #57
tsimionescu wrote: post #37

It's interesting that the site presenting this story has, by their own declaration, 382 different marketing-related cookies, which you are required to accept with no alternatives if you want to browse the site. I'm not trying to say that they are not entitled to report on FB's privacy violations or something, they are reporters and it is very good that they are doing so. It's just amazing to what extent journalism si…

"Old newspapers could only dream of the kind of advertising revenue that sites like this probably have." Actually they are struggling for ad revenue hence all the third party crud in their web pages. Many of them allege that companies like Facebook and Google have "stolen" their ad revenue. Some complained of Craigslist taking away their classified ads business. Old newspapers, particularly local ones, are going out…

> Old newspapers are going out of business thanks to competition from ad-supported websites that operate as middlemen for news delivered via internet.

And when the newspaper goes out of business, will the aggregators just sprout newsrooms to replace their free sources of information? I doubt it.

Aggregation of news only works if there's news to aggregate. We have already seen local and hyperlocal news wither on the vine, and Google hasn't exactly expressed interest in sending someone down to the local courthouse or county meeting.

Re: Judge approves Facebook's settlement with FTC over ‘stunning’ privacy violations

#60

Post by thebean11 »

paulryanrogers wrote: post #52
crazygringo wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> fines can and will be seen as merely the cost of doing business There's nothing inherently wrong with that. The answer, of course, is that fines can be increased to the point where businesses change. Just recently, Amazon was forced to completely shut down in France because the level of fines made it impossible to run their business at all. Businesses respond to incentives. Fines are an incentive. They can be set a…

This sounds pathological. Why have different C suites if none takes responsibility for anything that happens on their watch? If this is really an inevitable state then perhaps the only solution is to limit the size of companies: by head count and market power.

So cripple American companies, making it impossible to compete with countries that don't have the same restriction?

The only issue with the fines in this country is that they are too low to actually affect behavior. There is definitely a number that would be effective.

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