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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

#21

Post by JumpCrisscross »

bombcar wrote: post #18

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 u…

> 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

This would have been blatant contempt of court. What they did was slightly less blatant.

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

#22

Post by pevey »

endisneigh wrote: post #8

How much money does meta even make from political ads? Why would they even want to deal with this?

The short answer is, a lot of money. Like, a lot a lot. See a recent article from the New York Times.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/03/us/politics/senate-republ...

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

#23

Post by whiteboardr »

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?

Maybe time to rethink the way fines are determined.

I’d be very much in favour of the “swiss model” for traffic fines - based on your income.

You did X wrong, here’s the set price from our catalogue vs. you did X wrong and based on your earnings, here’s what you owe.

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

#24

Post by JumpCrisscross »

numair wrote: post #15

Quoted post unavailable.

You're making two relatively-unrelated claims. One, that Facebook--a wildly profitable publicly-traded company--is run as a political machine. Two, that its employees bear moral culpability.

The first claim is extraordinary. Is Facebook's leadership powerful? Of course. Do they have undue influence in the U.S.? Probably not. If anything, their government affairs unit is laughably incapable of keeping its client from being a perennial political punching bag.

The second claim has more substance. It's becoming increasingly common, at least in regulatory and political circles, to hear calls for holding individual employees responsible for Facebook's actions.

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

#25

Post by colechristensen »

munk-a wrote: post #11
msbarnett wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

But it’s not even that hard for large organizations to comply with local rules like that. They just can’t be bothered apparently.

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

#26

Post by TechBro8615 »

endisneigh wrote: post #8

How much money does meta even make from political ads? Why would they even want to deal with this?

I wonder if Meta ever ran its own political ads, without a specific candidate paying for them. That might be one reason to obscure the advertiser. (I mean, they _definitely_ did this with generic "get out and vote" advertising, but of course that's not overtly favoring one candidate or the other.)

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

#27

Post by zh3 »

bombcar wrote: post #18

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 u…

Funnily enough, I was involved in a project that did dynamically generated real-time adverts (specifically updating betting odds in real time). It crashed and burned because Facebook insisted every advert has to be reviewed and approved beforehand.

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

#28

Post by hinkley »

whiteboardr wrote: post #23
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?

Maybe time to rethink the way fines are determined. I’d be very much in favour of the “swiss model” for traffic fines - based on your income. You did X wrong, here’s the set price from our catalogue vs. you did X wrong and based on your earnings, here’s what you owe.

That may go some way to handle the perverse incentives as well.

If I do something very illegal to double my revenue, I've also doubled my fines.

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

#29

Post by hedgehog »

munk-a wrote: post #11
msbarnett wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

100% agree.

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

#30

Post by diab0lic »

TechBro8615 wrote: post #26
endisneigh wrote: post #8

How much money does meta even make from political ads? Why would they even want to deal with this?

I wonder if Meta ever ran its own political ads, without a specific candidate paying for them. That might be one reason to obscure the advertiser. (I mean, they _definitely_ did this with generic "get out and vote" advertising, but of course that's not overtly favoring one candidate or the other.)

It could be favoring one over the other if they biased to display to specific demographics.
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