US Regulators Have Met To Discuss Imposing a Record-Setting Fine Against Facebook For Some of Its Privacy Violations: Report (washingtonpost.com) 61
U.S. regulators have met to discuss imposing a record-setting fine against Facebook for violating a legally binding agreement with the government to protect the privacy of its users' personal data, The Washington Post reported Friday [Editor's note: the link may be paywalled; alternative source], citing three people familiar with the deliberations. From the report: The fine under consideration at the Federal Trade Commission, a privacy and security watchdog that began probing Facebook last year, would mark the first major punishment levied against Facebook in the United States since reports emerged in March that Cambridge Analytica, a political consultancy, accessed personal information on about 87 million Facebook users without their knowledge. The penalty is expected to be much larger than the $22.5 million fine the agency imposed on Google in 2012. That fine set a record for the greatest penalty for violating an agreement with the FTC to improve its privacy practices.
Probably wont be enough (Score:3)
They are one of the biggest companies in the world. I am sure $100,000,000 fine would suck somewhat, but its not enough.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
They'll really feel this one. It's almost 0.17% of their quarterly revenue!
No, not 17%, seventeen hundredths of a percent.
https://investor.fb.com/investor-news/press-release-details/2018/Facebook-Reports-Third-Quarter-2018-Results/default.aspx
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He doesn't even read briefings.
If it wasn't on Fox News, he doesn't even know it is happening. And even if it was, he knows as much about what happened as any other viewer.
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LOL when the war comes, just look for the Americans fighting for everybody's rights and you'll find me right there shooting the brownshirt to your left or right.
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A billion per lie to congress, sounds adequate?
b..bu..bu..but... (Score:2, Interesting)
facebook's greed and ignorance are significant contributors to brexit and, even more spectacular (and not in a good way), the entire shitshow that is the trump presidency.
had they not sold out to russian trolls (and perhaps chinese and/or saudi..) and spooks and republican campaign and its vendors (cambridge analytics, et al) and major donors (koch, nra, etc).. the uk would not be trying to leave the e.u. and trump would in jail instead of the white house.
i can't see trump-friendly government officials goin
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Trump needs Twitter, not Facebook. As long as Twitter continues to work, you can shutdown everything else, including government, Facebook, the world...
It's time to fine Facebook USERS (Score:4, Insightful)
Facebook would not be the behemoth it is without the legions of stupid people who sign up, give it access to their phones, their contacts, their GPS logs, their messages, their web browsing history... and along the way drag the NON-Facebook users into "shadow profiles" from the scraped contact lists and texting data.
There was literally no reason to ever use Facebook or sign up for it. It was made by a creep to stalk girls at his university.
It succeeds because people MAKE it succeed. It's time to start fining its users, too, for enabling behaviors.
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Without *killing* the users, who's to say some other copycat website won't come along and lure them into making the same dumb mistake of trying to communicate with others?
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The people in power have the money and power, and they want to keep it.,
They wouldn't allow this.
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If we hang Obama, can we chop the annoying orange too?
I mean, it's a small price to pay, really... especially since I don't care about either of them too much. If you want to, add Hillary's head as a goof.
Fines don't stop the rich (Score:2)
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Don't worry, these jobs are quiet attractive, you'll find people to fill them.
And if you don't, don't fret. The quality of the average CEO decisions can easily be matched by a magic 8 ball.
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Why waste taxpayer money? A bullet is cheap and very efficient.
And the good thing is, you only have to cap one of the bastards, the rest will quickly understand. They're smart.
Facebook stock will probably go up... (Score:2)
When investors see how great the ROI is on privacy violations. Billions and billions in illicit earnins and millions in fines--seems like a great racket.
Why not treat this as a copyright violation (Score:2)
of each person affected? 87 million counts, which seems like a willful violation.
Civil and criminal penalties should be applied, instead of a slap on the wrist, which would amount to a rounding error in BookFaces bottom line.
Will They Even Notice It? (Score:3)
Facebook revenue is $142 million per day (with a 37.5% profit margin). The "large" fine will be a small footnote in their annual report.
Toilet (Score:2)
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We tried that, it didn't work so well. Got any other suggestions?
joke fines. (Score:2)
Record setting? (Score:2)
Hahahahaah (Score:2)
The penalty is expected to be much larger than the $22.5 million fine the agency imposed on Google in 2012.
And this is why US Regulators are an international joke.
Facebook can build the wall! (Score:1)
I think the government should solve two problems at the same time.
Make facebook build the wall.
Everyone back to work for Monday!
Why do I picture Dr. Evil? (Score:2)
With his pinky at his mouth, when announcing the "record" fine...
22.5 Millions. Wow. That's a LOT! Well, at least until you realize that Facebook's annual income was 40 Billions in 2017. In other words, the record breaking sum they're about to fine them (maybe, probably, it's not quite through yet) is about 0.05 of a percent of their annual income. 0.05 percent. Not 0.05 of their income, but actually 0.0005.
To put that into perspective, let's assume you earn 100,000 a year. Then this fine would be about 50