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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

#4

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 should be paying the cost of that.

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

#7
post #4

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…

> 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.

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

#9
post #4

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…

"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?

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

#10

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

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