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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

#71

Post by giantg2 »

dwighttk wrote: post #59
endisneigh wrote: post #8

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

Bloomberg spent enough money to give every US citizen $1000000 on his last presidential run! (Not really… there were just some newscasters that were really bad at math) But he did spend like $1B as just one candidate in the primaries.

We need an Ammendment to provide a common media/site for all candidates, with caps on outside advertising, even for PACs etc. The spending is so wasteful. If they care so much about the problems they're campaigning on, they could use the money to work on fixing them.

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

#72

Post by zeruch »

jboynyc wrote: post #46
worldsayshi wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It once again makes me wonder what they want to do with all that money. Meta is one of the most powerful companies. They get all this money to sell some of that money. What really is the end game here? The whole point of money or power would be to use it to do something you care about? What use is money and power for the sake of itself? Why have it if all you want is more of it? At least some rich people seem to want…

Perhaps a Walter White quote is fitting here: "I'm in the empire business."

That's likely as accurate as one could be here.

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

#73

Post by whimsicalism »

zh3 wrote: post #27
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.

Yeah I think that would only really work as an in-house feature.

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

#74

Post by reidjs »

TechBro8615 wrote: post #32
numair wrote: post #15

Quoted post unavailable.

This guy has a decade plus vendetta against Facebook [0] and posts in all these threads. While I respect that, I wouldn't read too much into this comment. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3029872

If more people do what he’s doing (rally against evil corps) the world might be a better place

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

#75

Post by whimsicalism »

hazeii wrote: post #66
TremendousJudge wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They need to argue that, because otherwise it would eat into their bottom line to the point of unprofitability. You can't run a service for billions of people with less than 100k employees that also has an editor review everything.

How do they charge per advert? If I was paying someone hundreds - or thousands - of dollars, I'd certainly expect some degree of personal service.

The "personal service" is that they have created an entire social media platform just to serve your ads.

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

#76

Post by whiteboardr »

jboynyc wrote: post #57
whiteboardr wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Fines for GDPR violations work that way too. A severe violation can be penalized with "a fine of up to €20 million, or 4% of the firm’s worldwide annual revenue from the preceding financial year, whichever amount is higher." https://gdpr.eu/fines/

“up to” is the problem at hands here.

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

#77

Post by hedgehog »

sophacles wrote: post #50
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 that were true, why we do we see global oil companies, global retailers, global restaurant chains, or global media conglomerates? Do you think Walmart doesn't have to deal with varying employment and product laws at the country, state, and local level for each of its stores?

Do you think compliance in the industries you listed is not extremely costly? In every case you see companies doing what they can to shed cost and risk, local compliance being one of them. FB should follow the law but the government will have to make the cost of noncompliance higher than compliance for it to happen.

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

#78

Post by whimsicalism »

reidjs wrote: post #74
TechBro8615 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This guy has a decade plus vendetta against Facebook [0] and posts in all these threads. While I respect that, I wouldn't read too much into this comment. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3029872

If more people do what he’s doing (rally against evil corps) the world might be a better place

It's funny that so much ire is directed at tech companies when I think there are a number of other companies that could be critiqued for much worse behavior.

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

#79

Post by ejb999 »

dwighttk wrote: post #59
endisneigh wrote: post #8

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

Bloomberg spent enough money to give every US citizen $1000000 on his last presidential run! (Not really… there were just some newscasters that were really bad at math) But he did spend like $1B as just one candidate in the primaries.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=krHkjdnniDE

is what you are referring to.

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