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Judge rules Facebook parent Meta intentionally violated campaign finance laws

atg.wa.gov

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Re: Judge rules Facebook parent Meta intentionally violated campaign finance laws

#11

Post by munk-a »

msbarnett wrote: post #7
hedgehog wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they had to comply with local law in every area they operate it would be extremely complicated and expensive to manage. I think they fear the precedent not the dollars in this specific case. Edit: To be clear my opinion is that FB should be forced to comply, by federal action if necessary. That their business depends on not taking responsibility for the messages they choose to amplify is their problem and they sho…

> If they had to comply with local law in every area they operate ...then they would be on a level playing field with everybody else. The alternative ("we don't care for some of these laws in some places we operate, so we decline to follow them") is what is generally referred to as a criminal enterprise.

Precisely this - not everything scales gracefully to "big data" levels - some things require lots of customization and edgecases - sometimes for dumb reasons sometimes not. Given the effect Facebook has had on radicalization I am not inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt here.

Re: Judge rules Facebook parent Meta intentionally violated campaign finance laws

#12

Post by munk-a »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #10
colechristensen wrote: post #3

With a fine per violation of $10,000 who cares? They say Meta did hundreds of them... so a few million dollars. What's that, two engineer years?

> With a fine per violation of $10,000 who cares? The AG identified 782 violations and requested treble damages [1]. That's $23mm right there, not including the state's legal costs (which are also trebled). [1] https://agportal-s3bucket.s3.amazonaws.com/174_StatesMSJ.PDF

To actually impact Facebook and spur positive change they'll need to impose a much higher penalty - perhaps this is out of the domain of what courts can reasonably enforce and we need the legislature to take action.

Re: Judge rules Facebook parent Meta intentionally violated campaign finance laws

#13

Post by bombcar »

_jal wrote: post #9
hedgehog wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they had to comply with local law in every area they operate it would be extremely complicated and expensive to manage. I think they fear the precedent not the dollars in this specific case. Edit: To be clear my opinion is that FB should be forced to comply, by federal action if necessary. That their business depends on not taking responsibility for the messages they choose to amplify is their problem and they sho…

"Compliance is hard" is not an excuse accepted anywhere. But just in case you actually believe this should be convincing, consider how many tax jurisdictions Facebook does business in. Do you think they just ignore all those local rules?

Facebook on one side "we can target your ads so specially that you can narrow down to a given city block" and to regulators "we can't narrow down closer than "United States" when complying with laws, sorry".

Re: Judge rules Facebook parent Meta intentionally violated campaign finance laws

#14

Post by ziddoap »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #10
colechristensen wrote: post #3

With a fine per violation of $10,000 who cares? They say Meta did hundreds of them... so a few million dollars. What's that, two engineer years?

> With a fine per violation of $10,000 who cares? The AG identified 782 violations and requested treble damages [1]. That's $23mm right there, not including the state's legal costs (which are also trebled). [1] https://agportal-s3bucket.s3.amazonaws.com/174_StatesMSJ.PDF

$23mm to Meta is the same as a few dollars is to me. Just a small operating expense.

Re: Judge rules Facebook parent Meta intentionally violated campaign finance laws

#16

Post by JumpCrisscross »

munk-a wrote: post #12
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> With a fine per violation of $10,000 who cares? The AG identified 782 violations and requested treble damages [1]. That's $23mm right there, not including the state's legal costs (which are also trebled). [1] https://agportal-s3bucket.s3.amazonaws.com/174_StatesMSJ.PDF

To actually impact Facebook and spur positive change they'll need to impose a much higher penalty - perhaps this is out of the domain of what courts can reasonably enforce and we need the legislature to take action.

> they'll need to impose a much higher penalty - perhaps this is out of the domain of what courts can reasonably enforce and we need the legislature to take action

Washington requested and received injunctive relief [1]. Next steps would involve documented ongoing willful violation, getting a contempt of court ruling and then getting nasty with Facebook's assets and employees.

[1] https://agportal-s3bucket.s3.amazonaws.com/174_StatesMSJ.PDF

Re: Judge rules Facebook parent Meta intentionally violated campaign finance laws

#18

Post by bombcar »

From that PR it seems partial compliance is what got them burned. They obviously knew what ads were political because they put some information about them up, but not all.

If they had simply not complied at all and tried to blame their customers for not classifying the ads correctly, it might have gone a bit better in their favor.

Related, it's still insane that companies can basically argue "this ad that thousands upon thousands will see cannot be reviewed by hand even once because that would be too hard".

Re: Judge rules Facebook parent Meta intentionally violated campaign finance laws

#20

Post by klyrs »

hedgehog wrote: post #4
colechristensen wrote: post #3

With a fine per violation of $10,000 who cares? They say Meta did hundreds of them... so a few million dollars. What's that, two engineer years?

If they had to comply with local law in every area they operate it would be extremely complicated and expensive to manage. I think they fear the precedent not the dollars in this specific case. Edit: To be clear my opinion is that FB should be forced to comply, by federal action if necessary. That their business depends on not taking responsibility for the messages they choose to amplify is their problem and they sho…

The law isn't written to bend its will to multinational corporations who are making the world's richest people yet, somehow, cannot afford to follow the law. Nor should it be. If it isn't profitable to follow the cornucopia of laws regarding campaign advertising, then don't serve them!
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