361–370 of 579 posts
They had to pay about $375 million. That's a lot of money, but I suspect that Facebook has made considerably more than that on targeting children. I'm hardly the first person to use this logic, but if they make more money breaking the law than they have to pay in fines, then it's not a fine, it's a business expense.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's a $3 million verdict in compensatory damages. Even if reduced on appeal, that's a lot of money. This is really bad for Meta.
how many minutes of revenue is that? they did $200 billion in revenue and $60 billion in net income last year. a $3 billion fine would be barely more than a slap on the wrist.
$3m is nothing. 10% of global revenues (not profits) for each year in which this occurred would be something that might actually make them think twice about breaking the law and harming people for money.
They had to pay about $375 million. That's a lot of money, but I suspect that Facebook has made considerably more than that on targeting children. I'm hardly the first person to use this logic, but if they make more money breaking the law than they have to pay in fines, then it's not a fine, it's a business expense.
Proportionally, it's as if an individual who makes $60K/yr got a speeding fine of $375. Kind of a drop in the bucket.
I haven't read this article, but I can tell you for certain that no verdict was handed down that will punish them in any way that matters. They have and generate more money than they could ever spend and they're functionally above the law because of the money and lawyers they can afford. The law itself is broken in this country and when you get big enough you can literally get away with murder.
By "erasure," I'm not referring to the death of the involved; I'm referring to the elimination of the individual's social capital.
When the privileged lose their ability to influence others, they tend to get rather distressed.
Now I'm afraid they've screwed everyone over and the idea of an anonymous open internet is now dead- we're gonna see age (read, real ID) verification gating on every site and app soon....
The dumb thing is to look back and see how umimportant it is that Facebook feed algorithm be this addictive. They already had the network effects and no real competitors. They could have just left it alone.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I really wish this take was more prominent. I really don't buy that mass-surveillance should be required for age verification. There are plenty of very smart people who have created much more complicated things than a digital age verification that doesn't track every time you use it. This also isn't helpful, but I think the sudden push of urgency isn't helping. The internet has existed without any kind of age verific…
You don't even need to go all high-tech with it: Children, by nature of being children, aren't going out and buying their own smartphones and computers. When Mom and Dad buy the device for their kid, just punch in the kid's age before handing it to them. That's the flow that California's age verification system uses. Personally, I'm opposed to any age verification beyond the current "pinky promise you're 18" type dea…
Doing this doesn't accomplish anything in terms of protecting children from the harms of the internet. In fact it feeds your child's age to marketers and child predators.
Every website will get to decide how to handle the age data our devices will now be supplying them. In the case of facebook, it's not as if they had no idea the children endlessly posting selfies and posting "six seven" on their service weren't adults. Facebook was 100% aware that the children using their service were children. They knew what schools those kids went to, who their parents were, which other kids they hung out with. Facebook knew they were children and they took advantage of that fact.
The law California (and other states) passed doesn't define what content has to be blocked for which ages and doesn't give parents any ability to decide what content their children should or shouldn't be allowed to see. It takes control away from parents. As a parent, I might think that my 16 year old should be allowed to look up information on STDs but the websites that collect my child's age could decide they can't and I'll have no say in it.
As part of the ongoing enshittification of the internet, tragedy of the commons etc., these big centralized internet platforms decided that instead of being responsible and making their products *slightly* less terrible it was better to maximize short term engagement metrics, and that, egotistically, the chance of there being real consequences for their actions was near zero. (Or, even more cynically, that their year…
You start slow, then push it the limits
Netflix, never ads to some ads, then eventually its just Adflix, after 20 years.
Each new manager wants that comp up. So ads up by 5% every year.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
how many minutes of revenue is that? they did $200 billion in revenue and $60 billion in net income last year. a $3 billion fine would be barely more than a slap on the wrist.
Until we start to penalize companies by percentage of global revenue rather than some arbitrary dollar amount that pales in comparison to their revenues this sort of stuff is going to keep happening. $3m is nothing. 10% of global revenues (not profits) for each year in which this occurred would be something that might actually make them think twice about breaking the law and harming people for money.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
how many minutes of revenue is that? they did $200 billion in revenue and $60 billion in net income last year. a $3 billion fine would be barely more than a slap on the wrist.
Until we start to penalize companies by percentage of global revenue rather than some arbitrary dollar amount that pales in comparison to their revenues this sort of stuff is going to keep happening. $3m is nothing. 10% of global revenues (not profits) for each year in which this occurred would be something that might actually make them think twice about breaking the law and harming people for money.