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It seems beside the "the bug bounty is far less than it would have sold for in the dark market" another meme has taken hold of HN. No matter how significant the

It seems beside the "the bug bounty is far less than it would have sold for in the dark market" another meme has taken hold of HN. No matter how significant the fine is, there always be people clamoring how trivial it is compared to their revenues. It could have been $10B and you would hear the same thing. The only fine, then, worth slapping is one that bankrupts the entire company. Facebook made ~$7B net income in 2018. Am I supposed to believe that $5B fine isn't going to affect them at all?

monochromatic 8y ago
The fine should be high enough to nullify any profit they made from their malfeasance, plus some amount as punitive damages to discourage the behavior in the future.
cowpig 8y ago
Facebook earned about $172 billion since 2013. Do you think facebook would have earned $167 billion while behaving legally? What about ethically? How much do you think Facebook would have earned if it acted responsibly? Once you add punitive damages, I don't understand how you could possibly think $5 billion is anything less than an order of magnitude off.
- cjhopman 8y ago
  > Facebook earned about $172 billion since 2013. Do you think facebook would have earned $167 billion while behaving legally? Considering the fine seems to be primarily based on something they stopped doing in 2014, yeah, I think they'd have easily earned $167 billion without doing it.
- djakjxnanjak 8y ago
  This fine is not for everything unethical Facebook ever did. This fine is for Facebook giving data to Cambridge Analytica. I don’t think Facebook got paid for that at all. When trying to google around for what people paid CA for the use of the data, I found numbers in the hundreds of thousands. So in fact, Facebook is paying billions because they made a bad decision when choosing to grant access to data for research. That’s a lot of money. I think if you’d asked what a likely fine was when the story broke, people would have guessed a few million dollars.
  - traek 8y ago
    > Facebook is paying billions because they made a bad decision when choosing to grant access to data for research For clarity, Facebook didn't "choose to grant access to data" specifically to Cambridge Analytica. It used to be the case that Facebook's API would let the client app see all the information a FB user could see once they authorized it, including information about their friends. That's what CA exploited.
- likpok 8y ago
  The relevant privacy issues (Cambridge Analytica) did almost nothing for facebook. The core product, sharing information with apps so they could be social, was a bad idea and never took off. It was shuttered in 2014 (a little bit after Kogan made his app and extracted a bunch of data). So of that 172B in revenue, basically none of it came about as a result of the product that Cambridge Analytica (and others) used.
- traek 8y ago
  > Facebook earned about $172 billion since 2013. No, they didn't, it's around $56.3 billion [0]. [0] https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/FB/facebook/net-income https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/FB/facebook/net-in...
- Macross8299 8y ago
  >Facebook earned about $172 billion since 2013. Do you think facebook would have earned $167 billion while behaving legally? >5 billion is ... an order of the magnitude off So you're saying a 30% of their income came as the result of illegal activity? That's a pretty strong statement to make. What proof do you have of that? Do you want to punish Facebook for doing things that are legal (but arguably not ethical) or do you want to punish them for doing things that are illegal? The former means you're essentially advocating for an ex post facto law and it's easy to understand why some people would see that as not fair.

monochromatic 8y ago

The fine should be high enough to nullify any profit they made from their malfeasance, plus some amount as punitive damages to discourage the behavior in the future.

cowpig 8y ago

Facebook earned about $172 billion since 2013. Do you think facebook would have earned $167 billion while behaving legally? What about ethically? How much do you think Facebook would have earned if it acted responsibly? Once you add punitive damages, I don't understand how you could possibly think $5 billion is anything less than an order of magnitude off.

cjhopman 8y ago
> Facebook earned about $172 billion since 2013. Do you think facebook would have earned $167 billion while behaving legally? Considering the fine seems to be primarily based on something they stopped doing in 2014, yeah, I think they'd have easily earned $167 billion without doing it.
djakjxnanjak 8y ago
This fine is not for everything unethical Facebook ever did. This fine is for Facebook giving data to Cambridge Analytica. I don’t think Facebook got paid for that at all. When trying to google around for what people paid CA for the use of the data, I found numbers in the hundreds of thousands. So in fact, Facebook is paying billions because they made a bad decision when choosing to grant access to data for research. That’s a lot of money. I think if you’d asked what a likely fine was when the story broke, people would have guessed a few million dollars.
- traek 8y ago
  > Facebook is paying billions because they made a bad decision when choosing to grant access to data for research For clarity, Facebook didn't "choose to grant access to data" specifically to Cambridge Analytica. It used to be the case that Facebook's API would let the client app see all the information a FB user could see once they authorized it, including information about their friends. That's what CA exploited.
likpok 8y ago
The relevant privacy issues (Cambridge Analytica) did almost nothing for facebook. The core product, sharing information with apps so they could be social, was a bad idea and never took off. It was shuttered in 2014 (a little bit after Kogan made his app and extracted a bunch of data). So of that 172B in revenue, basically none of it came about as a result of the product that Cambridge Analytica (and others) used.
traek 8y ago
> Facebook earned about $172 billion since 2013. No, they didn't, it's around $56.3 billion [0]. [0] https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/FB/facebook/net-income https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/FB/facebook/net-in...
Macross8299 8y ago
>Facebook earned about $172 billion since 2013. Do you think facebook would have earned $167 billion while behaving legally? >5 billion is ... an order of the magnitude off So you're saying a 30% of their income came as the result of illegal activity? That's a pretty strong statement to make. What proof do you have of that? Do you want to punish Facebook for doing things that are legal (but arguably not ethical) or do you want to punish them for doing things that are illegal? The former means you're essentially advocating for an ex post facto law and it's easy to understand why some people would see that as not fair.