11 ms·

Two senators say a $5B fine isn’t enough to punish Facebook

184 points by enraged_camel 8y ago

randyrand 8y ago
can governments force people to be fired? That might bring things closer to home.
- save_ferris 8y ago
  Only if a criminal investigation turns up chargeable offenses, sure. The government can't just tell Zuckerberg to pack up and go home, but felony charges are about the only way he can be forced out at this point.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
- i_am_proteus 8y ago
  Governments can bring criminal charges against individuals if they have evidence that those individuals have committed a crime.
- mises 8y ago
  The easiest way would be for the SEC to get involved. They can bar people from being officers of public companies. Of course, it would be a major abuse of power and certainly unconstitutional.
RcouF1uZ4gsC 8y ago
>While the Republicans could push through a relatively lenient offer along partisan lines, doing so could come with heavy political costs for the agency, since it would expose them to attacks that the Republican majority is soft on misbehaving technology companies. One thing that has changed recently in politics is that a significant portion of Republican base now considers Silicon Valley tech companies as foes. I would guess that there would actually be a lot of grassroots support for a massive fine on Facebook. In the past, tech companies could assume that the Republican affinity for big business would shield them. Now that has gone.
- Applejinx 8y ago
  >a significant portion of Republican base now considers Silicon Valley tech companies as foes Which is hilarious, as Facebook at least is happy to take Russian money to aid Republicans. Silicon Valley is party-less, stateless. They serve only money, nothing else.
  - commandlinefan 8y ago
    > party-less I think that’s a stretch. Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, Jack Dorsey (Twitter), Mark Benioff (Salesforce), Tim Cook and Reed Hastings (Netflix) have all come out as rabidly pro-Democrat and have in many cases admitted to adjusting their platforms to shift public sentiment in favor of liberal politicians and liberal political causes.
    - Implicated 8y ago
      > and have in many cases admitted to adjusting their platforms to shift public sentiment in favor of liberal politicians and liberal political causes. Can you cite some sources on this? I'm curious as to how these admissions came about.
      - commandlinefan 8y ago
        Well, I'm referring to the Facebook/Twitter/YouTube conservative purge - they're pretty open about it.
        Avshalom 8y ago
        If they're doing it they aren't 'open' about it unless you think there's no difference whatever Alex Jones or Richard Spencer are and conservatives.
    - BrainlingPdx 8y ago
      Silicon Valley is a haven of meritocratic fake libertarianism. Most of the people on your list that are supposedly "rabidly pro-Democrat" have given as much, more more, to Republican pro business candidates as Democrats. I guess to you anyone who isn't sucking at the teet of Fox and Breitbart is "rabidly pro-Democrat"? You need some pretty serious citations before I'm going to believe anything out of that last line. It sounds like an easily re-packaged and regurgitated Fox sound bite more than reality.
fyoving 8y ago
These two are former state AGs and IMHO their kind should be barred from being part of any important deliberative body, they are prosecutors with strictly punitive mindset in a legislative body that is also supposed to encourage entrepreneurship and look after national interests, and at any rate everyone should be wary of grandstanding and populist pronouncements by elected officials. P.S State AG should not be an elected position.
- gist 8y ago
  > their kind should be barred from being part of any important deliberative body It is hard for me to not agree with that (at least emotionally) but I would then argue further to also limit the number of attorneys that are legislatures since as a very general rule they are trained to think a certain way. Of course this idea (your idea and my idea) is not practical and will never happen. But the truth is like with any profession if you are in it long enough you tend to think in a certain way. I remember Obama (a trained Harvard Lawyer) thinking he could just sit down the two parties in the middle east conflict and just have them talk things out. Like it was going to be some kind of binding arbitration where both sides were reasonable and not impacted by past biases (or other influences). A totally ridiculous idea. (Not saying by the way that had anything to do with the fact that he was trained as an attorney but more that to your point a person's past can determine greatly how they think things should be handled). Prosecutors are reinforced by winning even in the face of evidence of innocence to the contrary just like sports teams win that is the name of the game not being nice to your opponents.
- tzakrajs 8y ago
  Nice ad hominem fallacy you got there
Sutanreyu 8y ago
I've always wondered in cases like these what they actually DO with the money after they fine huge companies like this... As in, how would they remedy the damage? Would they use it to go after companies that made money off of people's personal data or make them develop better privacy features or what else?
- CharlesColeman 8y ago
  > I've always wondered in cases like these what they actually DO with the money after they fine huge companies like this... As in, how would they remedy the damage? Would they use it to go after companies that made money off of people's personal data or make them develop better privacy features or what else? The answer is but a Google away: except for the CFPB, the money goes to the same place your tax checks go: into "the U.S. Treasury for general use." https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/Where-Do-Those-Huge-Federal-Fines-Go-412751133.html https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/Where-Do-Those-Huge-Fe...:
- laythea 8y ago
  Given that the money is a fiat system, without the backing of actual gold, this money effectively goes back into "the ether".
  - chki 8y ago
    I don't think that's true. The money is not destroyed, it is instead transferred to the government and can be used for various purposes. Of course you could argue that the government could theoretically decide to arbitraly print money so any money that goes to the government is actually not worth anything but since the fed operates independently this is just not true.
    - yeahitslikethat 8y ago
      The US treasury loans the cash at zero interest to the Fed (which is actually a coalition of corporate banks, not a federal government entity). The Fed then loans that money out with interest and backed by the good faith in the us government. This means the banks which as major holders of stock in Facebook, most of whom want Zuckerberg out as ceo, are also incentivized to pursue a bigger fine.
salimmadjd 8y ago
my cynical side says there is more to this. I think FB is a major threat to the distribution of news that is mostly owned and controlled by the mainstream media owners. I think this is all part of forcing FB to come to the negotiation table, and negotiate banning more independent information sources to make these fines go away.
- pteredactyl 8y ago
  Good take. It's a shakedown of epic proportions. Government wants to pierce their 'corporate veil'. I'm not a Facebook fan, but I hope they don't.
- Angostura 8y ago
  I don't think Fox News really cares about Facebook
  - hulahoof 8y ago
    Why would you think that ?
  - int_19h 8y ago
    I think that of all the news companies, Fox is probably the one that would care most, since they have the largest proportion of the audience that's only there for the daily outrage.
- deckar01 8y ago
  I would leave the thinking to journalists who dedicate their careers to uncovering the truth. Stating you believe in a conspiracy without having any evidence undermines your entire point.
- muckrakerz 8y ago
  FB has largely colluded with major media outlets in determining who would be "real" news. It has given the stamp of approval to most large media corporations. Which is nonsense, I don't want it screening things. I want my family pictures and my friends thoughts and I don't care where they come from.
cfitz 8y ago
Original letter from the senators to the FTC chairman here [PDF]: https://www.blumenthal.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/5.6.19_Letter%20to%20FTC%20re%20Facebook.pdf https://www.blumenthal.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/5.6.19_Lette...
kevin_thibedeau 8y ago
Meanwhile Boeing actively subverted government regulation leading to mass casualties. What should their punishment be?
- mtgx 8y ago
  Banning the 737 Max from flying in the U.S. forever would be a good start, I'm thinking. It could be a decent lesson for airplane makers (and self-driving car makers) at least.
  - tptacek 8y ago
    Why not just ban all of Boeing's planes from flying? That would teach Boeing an even greater lesson.
    - etaioinshrdlu 8y ago
      The knee-jerk is strong with this one. Sometimes glad we don't have direct democracy or mob rule.
      - rcar 8y ago
        I believe that you missed the /s implied at the end.
        etaioinshrdlu 8y ago
        Yeah, I actually thought it was meant literally...
    - mindslight 8y ago
      Presumably only the 737 MAX is the result of a bad-faith design process.
    - yeahitslikethat 8y ago
      Do that until all the 737max's are fixed and I bet they are fixed in a hurry. But I'm sure your sarcasm means you think the economic impact will be worse than the lives lost in the pursuit of financial preservation. Money is worth more than lives right?
tasubotadas 8y ago
The government is building a case against itself for the time when they are going to fk up with all the data they have been collecting about the citizens. $5B for FB for the leaked emails and likes? How about $50B for the leaked tax records. [1] https://www.atr.org/irs-data-breach-allows-hackers-steal-30-million-taxpayers https://www.atr.org/irs-data-breach-allows-hackers-steal-30-...
tptacek 8y ago
This is kind of alarming to me. A fine should scale with the the greater of the harm done and the amount needed to deter the behavior. But that's not what's happening here; instead, people are proposing that the fine scale with Facebook's total revenue. Even Facebook's most ardent critics probably don't believe they derive a majority (or really even a significant amount) of revenue from the lax API controls companies like Cambridge Analytica relied on. The fine should be sufficient to ensure that nobody at Facebook thinks that being lazy about access to user profiles in their APIs is a good business decision. It should not, in effect, be a litigation of whether Facebook is on the whole a good idea. I don't think Facebook (as constituted) is a good idea! But that doesn't mean I think the FTC should be able to fine it existentially, unless an existential fine is really what it takes to defer the specific thing they did that was unlawful. There's no evidence that $5B --- a record high fine equivalent to the entire cost of several well-known startups Facebook could have otherwise acquired rather than lighting that money on fire --- is insufficient to the task.
- jdoliner 8y ago
  Agreed, it's hard to believe that if $5B isn't enough some larger amount will be, unless it's enough to completely wipe out Facebook. This has become a litigation of whether or not Facebook is a good idea, and these Senators are out for blood. Because I think they perceive that their constituency just wants to see Facebook get it, and I think their perception is correct. While I certainly don't think this is fair, or the way these regulations should be enforced, I do think that Facebook has brought this upon themselves, they've peddled their wares as the solution to so many of societies ills and people eventually woke up and realized not only were they not solving these problems, they were making them worse. Furthermore Facebook seems to have gotten stuck in a rhetorical loop wherein their response to every scandal is more of the same rhetoric about how they're building this hopefully new world, people are just sick of it, and want to see Facebook punished. I don't think these Senators are going to get what they want in this case, what they will get though is that Facebook is going to pay $5B and people are going to look back on it and think, astonishingly, that Facebook "got off easy."
- TAForObvReasons 8y ago
  > the amount needed to deter the behavior What's happening here is that $5B is believed to be insufficient, and the market cap reaction to the announcement is proof of that. I'd be willing to believe that the fine deters future behavior if the market cap reacted negatively to the settlement, but celebration probably means it isn't enough
OrgNet 8y ago
$5B is enough if you also fine them $5B for all other infractions... it should add up to at least $100B.
oliwarner 8y ago
When we first heard that Facebook was putting $5bn aside for this, wasn't it clearly a deliberate tactic to steer the inevitable fine, to suggest a range? $5bn isn't pocket money, but it's hardly a serious expense for Facebook. They've [clearly] already accounted for it. It's not punitive. Add a couple of zeros. Facebook is repeatedly at the bleeding edge of privacy invasion, acting too late to obvious evils, letting advertisers [essentially] identify people by offering such exact filters, illegally siphoning off data... Any action needs to hit Facebook hard enough that their engineers feel it and start to consider things in what they should be doing, not what they're technically able to do to churn out more cash.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
KorematsuFred 8y ago
Not sure why the fine must go to government. It creates perverse incentives here.
3xblah 8y ago
Here is the letter. https://www.blumenthal.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/5.6.19_Letter%20to%20FTC%20re%20Facebook.pdf https://www.blumenthal.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/5.6.19_Lette... The proposal from these two senators seems reasonable: "The FTC should propose long-term limits on Facebook's collection and use of personal information. It should consider setting rules of the road on what Facebook can do with consumers' private information, such as requiring the deletion of tracking data, restricting the collection of certain types of information, curbing advertising practices, and imposing a firewall on sharing private data between different products, including Facebook's ad platform." Placing hard limits on data collection and usage seems clearer and more workable than requiring "user consent" as we saw in the last consent decree. Sen. Blumenthal's office seems to be one of the few that is willing to call BS on the type of shenanigans often discussed here on HN. https://www.blumenthal.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/01.31.2018%20Letter%20to%20FTC%20re%20Devumi%20and%20Fake%20Followers.pdf https://www.blumenthal.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/01.31.2018%2...
jmpman 8y ago
Why not require all their profit for the next 10 years be put into an escrow account, such that any violations in those 10 years would result in a forfeiture of those funds? Seems to be a reasonable deterrent and it drives the action in the public’s best interest.
- tehlike 8y ago
  You will see them distributing dividends, or spending money on new initiatives. It is relatively easier for a corporation to show no profit. And i dislike the idea personally, punishing a company to inexistence is very unamerican.
trey-jones 8y ago
Talk about throwing stones in a glass house...

184 points by enraged_camel 8y ago

randyrand 8y ago

can governments force people to be fired? That might bring things closer to home.

save_ferris 8y ago
Only if a criminal investigation turns up chargeable offenses, sure. The government can't just tell Zuckerberg to pack up and go home, but felony charges are about the only way he can be forced out at this point.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
i_am_proteus 8y ago
Governments can bring criminal charges against individuals if they have evidence that those individuals have committed a crime.
mises 8y ago
The easiest way would be for the SEC to get involved. They can bar people from being officers of public companies. Of course, it would be a major abuse of power and certainly unconstitutional.

RcouF1uZ4gsC 8y ago

>While the Republicans could push through a relatively lenient offer along partisan lines, doing so could come with heavy political costs for the agency, since it would expose them to attacks that the Republican majority is soft on misbehaving technology companies. One thing that has changed recently in politics is that a significant portion of Republican base now considers Silicon Valley tech companies as foes. I would guess that there would actually be a lot of grassroots support for a massive fine on Facebook. In the past, tech companies could assume that the Republican affinity for big business would shield them. Now that has gone.

Applejinx 8y ago
>a significant portion of Republican base now considers Silicon Valley tech companies as foes Which is hilarious, as Facebook at least is happy to take Russian money to aid Republicans. Silicon Valley is party-less, stateless. They serve only money, nothing else.
- commandlinefan 8y ago
  > party-less I think that’s a stretch. Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, Jack Dorsey (Twitter), Mark Benioff (Salesforce), Tim Cook and Reed Hastings (Netflix) have all come out as rabidly pro-Democrat and have in many cases admitted to adjusting their platforms to shift public sentiment in favor of liberal politicians and liberal political causes.
  - Implicated 8y ago
    > and have in many cases admitted to adjusting their platforms to shift public sentiment in favor of liberal politicians and liberal political causes. Can you cite some sources on this? I'm curious as to how these admissions came about.
    - commandlinefan 8y ago
      Well, I'm referring to the Facebook/Twitter/YouTube conservative purge - they're pretty open about it.
      - Avshalom 8y ago
        If they're doing it they aren't 'open' about it unless you think there's no difference whatever Alex Jones or Richard Spencer are and conservatives.
  - BrainlingPdx 8y ago
    Silicon Valley is a haven of meritocratic fake libertarianism. Most of the people on your list that are supposedly "rabidly pro-Democrat" have given as much, more more, to Republican pro business candidates as Democrats. I guess to you anyone who isn't sucking at the teet of Fox and Breitbart is "rabidly pro-Democrat"? You need some pretty serious citations before I'm going to believe anything out of that last line. It sounds like an easily re-packaged and regurgitated Fox sound bite more than reality.

fyoving 8y ago

These two are former state AGs and IMHO their kind should be barred from being part of any important deliberative body, they are prosecutors with strictly punitive mindset in a legislative body that is also supposed to encourage entrepreneurship and look after national interests, and at any rate everyone should be wary of grandstanding and populist pronouncements by elected officials. P.S State AG should not be an elected position.

gist 8y ago
> their kind should be barred from being part of any important deliberative body It is hard for me to not agree with that (at least emotionally) but I would then argue further to also limit the number of attorneys that are legislatures since as a very general rule they are trained to think a certain way. Of course this idea (your idea and my idea) is not practical and will never happen. But the truth is like with any profession if you are in it long enough you tend to think in a certain way. I remember Obama (a trained Harvard Lawyer) thinking he could just sit down the two parties in the middle east conflict and just have them talk things out. Like it was going to be some kind of binding arbitration where both sides were reasonable and not impacted by past biases (or other influences). A totally ridiculous idea. (Not saying by the way that had anything to do with the fact that he was trained as an attorney but more that to your point a person's past can determine greatly how they think things should be handled). Prosecutors are reinforced by winning even in the face of evidence of innocence to the contrary just like sports teams win that is the name of the game not being nice to your opponents.
tzakrajs 8y ago
Nice ad hominem fallacy you got there

Sutanreyu 8y ago

I've always wondered in cases like these what they actually DO with the money after they fine huge companies like this... As in, how would they remedy the damage? Would they use it to go after companies that made money off of people's personal data or make them develop better privacy features or what else?

CharlesColeman 8y ago
> I've always wondered in cases like these what they actually DO with the money after they fine huge companies like this... As in, how would they remedy the damage? Would they use it to go after companies that made money off of people's personal data or make them develop better privacy features or what else? The answer is but a Google away: except for the CFPB, the money goes to the same place your tax checks go: into "the U.S. Treasury for general use." https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/Where-Do-Those-Huge-Federal-Fines-Go-412751133.html https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/Where-Do-Those-Huge-Fe...:
laythea 8y ago
Given that the money is a fiat system, without the backing of actual gold, this money effectively goes back into "the ether".
- chki 8y ago
  I don't think that's true. The money is not destroyed, it is instead transferred to the government and can be used for various purposes. Of course you could argue that the government could theoretically decide to arbitraly print money so any money that goes to the government is actually not worth anything but since the fed operates independently this is just not true.
  - yeahitslikethat 8y ago
    The US treasury loans the cash at zero interest to the Fed (which is actually a coalition of corporate banks, not a federal government entity). The Fed then loans that money out with interest and backed by the good faith in the us government. This means the banks which as major holders of stock in Facebook, most of whom want Zuckerberg out as ceo, are also incentivized to pursue a bigger fine.

salimmadjd 8y ago

my cynical side says there is more to this. I think FB is a major threat to the distribution of news that is mostly owned and controlled by the mainstream media owners. I think this is all part of forcing FB to come to the negotiation table, and negotiate banning more independent information sources to make these fines go away.

pteredactyl 8y ago
Good take. It's a shakedown of epic proportions. Government wants to pierce their 'corporate veil'. I'm not a Facebook fan, but I hope they don't.
Angostura 8y ago
I don't think Fox News really cares about Facebook
- hulahoof 8y ago
  Why would you think that ?
- int_19h 8y ago
  I think that of all the news companies, Fox is probably the one that would care most, since they have the largest proportion of the audience that's only there for the daily outrage.
deckar01 8y ago
I would leave the thinking to journalists who dedicate their careers to uncovering the truth. Stating you believe in a conspiracy without having any evidence undermines your entire point.
muckrakerz 8y ago
FB has largely colluded with major media outlets in determining who would be "real" news. It has given the stamp of approval to most large media corporations. Which is nonsense, I don't want it screening things. I want my family pictures and my friends thoughts and I don't care where they come from.

cfitz 8y ago

Original letter from the senators to the FTC chairman here [PDF]: https://www.blumenthal.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/5.6.19_Letter%20to%20FTC%20re%20Facebook.pdf https://www.blumenthal.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/5.6.19_Lette...

kevin_thibedeau 8y ago

Meanwhile Boeing actively subverted government regulation leading to mass casualties. What should their punishment be?

mtgx 8y ago
Banning the 737 Max from flying in the U.S. forever would be a good start, I'm thinking. It could be a decent lesson for airplane makers (and self-driving car makers) at least.
- tptacek 8y ago
  Why not just ban all of Boeing's planes from flying? That would teach Boeing an even greater lesson.
  - etaioinshrdlu 8y ago
    The knee-jerk is strong with this one. Sometimes glad we don't have direct democracy or mob rule.
    - rcar 8y ago
      I believe that you missed the /s implied at the end.
      - etaioinshrdlu 8y ago
        Yeah, I actually thought it was meant literally...
  - mindslight 8y ago
    Presumably only the 737 MAX is the result of a bad-faith design process.
  - yeahitslikethat 8y ago
    Do that until all the 737max's are fixed and I bet they are fixed in a hurry. But I'm sure your sarcasm means you think the economic impact will be worse than the lives lost in the pursuit of financial preservation. Money is worth more than lives right?

tasubotadas 8y ago

The government is building a case against itself for the time when they are going to fk up with all the data they have been collecting about the citizens. $5B for FB for the leaked emails and likes? How about $50B for the leaked tax records. [1] https://www.atr.org/irs-data-breach-allows-hackers-steal-30-million-taxpayers https://www.atr.org/irs-data-breach-allows-hackers-steal-30-...

tptacek 8y ago

This is kind of alarming to me. A fine should scale with the the greater of the harm done and the amount needed to deter the behavior. But that's not what's happening here; instead, people are proposing that the fine scale with Facebook's total revenue. Even Facebook's most ardent critics probably don't believe they derive a majority (or really even a significant amount) of revenue from the lax API controls companies like Cambridge Analytica relied on. The fine should be sufficient to ensure that nobody at Facebook thinks that being lazy about access to user profiles in their APIs is a good business decision. It should not, in effect, be a litigation of whether Facebook is on the whole a good idea. I don't think Facebook (as constituted) is a good idea! But that doesn't mean I think the FTC should be able to fine it existentially, unless an existential fine is really what it takes to defer the specific thing they did that was unlawful. There's no evidence that $5B --- a record high fine equivalent to the entire cost of several well-known startups Facebook could have otherwise acquired rather than lighting that money on fire --- is insufficient to the task.

jdoliner 8y ago
Agreed, it's hard to believe that if $5B isn't enough some larger amount will be, unless it's enough to completely wipe out Facebook. This has become a litigation of whether or not Facebook is a good idea, and these Senators are out for blood. Because I think they perceive that their constituency just wants to see Facebook get it, and I think their perception is correct. While I certainly don't think this is fair, or the way these regulations should be enforced, I do think that Facebook has brought this upon themselves, they've peddled their wares as the solution to so many of societies ills and people eventually woke up and realized not only were they not solving these problems, they were making them worse. Furthermore Facebook seems to have gotten stuck in a rhetorical loop wherein their response to every scandal is more of the same rhetoric about how they're building this hopefully new world, people are just sick of it, and want to see Facebook punished. I don't think these Senators are going to get what they want in this case, what they will get though is that Facebook is going to pay $5B and people are going to look back on it and think, astonishingly, that Facebook "got off easy."
TAForObvReasons 8y ago
> the amount needed to deter the behavior What's happening here is that $5B is believed to be insufficient, and the market cap reaction to the announcement is proof of that. I'd be willing to believe that the fine deters future behavior if the market cap reacted negatively to the settlement, but celebration probably means it isn't enough

OrgNet 8y ago

$5B is enough if you also fine them $5B for all other infractions... it should add up to at least $100B.

oliwarner 8y ago

When we first heard that Facebook was putting $5bn aside for this, wasn't it clearly a deliberate tactic to steer the inevitable fine, to suggest a range? $5bn isn't pocket money, but it's hardly a serious expense for Facebook. They've [clearly] already accounted for it. It's not punitive. Add a couple of zeros. Facebook is repeatedly at the bleeding edge of privacy invasion, acting too late to obvious evils, letting advertisers [essentially] identify people by offering such exact filters, illegally siphoning off data... Any action needs to hit Facebook hard enough that their engineers feel it and start to consider things in what they should be doing, not what they're technically able to do to churn out more cash.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

KorematsuFred 8y ago

Not sure why the fine must go to government. It creates perverse incentives here.

3xblah 8y ago

Here is the letter. https://www.blumenthal.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/5.6.19_Letter%20to%20FTC%20re%20Facebook.pdf https://www.blumenthal.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/5.6.19_Lette... The proposal from these two senators seems reasonable: "The FTC should propose long-term limits on Facebook's collection and use of personal information. It should consider setting rules of the road on what Facebook can do with consumers' private information, such as requiring the deletion of tracking data, restricting the collection of certain types of information, curbing advertising practices, and imposing a firewall on sharing private data between different products, including Facebook's ad platform." Placing hard limits on data collection and usage seems clearer and more workable than requiring "user consent" as we saw in the last consent decree. Sen. Blumenthal's office seems to be one of the few that is willing to call BS on the type of shenanigans often discussed here on HN. https://www.blumenthal.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/01.31.2018%20Letter%20to%20FTC%20re%20Devumi%20and%20Fake%20Followers.pdf https://www.blumenthal.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/01.31.2018%2...

jmpman 8y ago

Why not require all their profit for the next 10 years be put into an escrow account, such that any violations in those 10 years would result in a forfeiture of those funds? Seems to be a reasonable deterrent and it drives the action in the public’s best interest.

tehlike 8y ago
You will see them distributing dividends, or spending money on new initiatives. It is relatively easier for a corporation to show no profit. And i dislike the idea personally, punishing a company to inexistence is very unamerican.

trey-jones 8y ago

Talk about throwing stones in a glass house...