7 ms·

This whole thing feels like Monopoly money. First, it’s $200m to a company valued at more than $800B. Imagine you had 100k in the bank. That would be like a $2

This whole thing feels like Monopoly money. First, it’s $200m to a company valued at more than $800B. Imagine you had 100k in the bank. That would be like a $25 late payment fee. But on top of that, it’s $200m into the black hole that is our dysfunctional and bloated federal government. How do The Impacted children whose privacy was violated actually benefit. It’s all ridiculous.

vonmoltke 7y ago
> This whole thing feels like Monopoly money. First, it’s $200m to a company valued at more than $800B. > Imagine you had 100k in the bank. That would be like a $25 late payment fee. No, it isn't. A company's valuation is not money in the bank. The proper comparison is to profit.
- notyourday 7y ago
  Proper comparison is the reaction of a CEO - if the CEO responds by firing the upper management->product management responsible for the part that caused the fine then the fine got a point across.
  - true_religion 7y ago
    It’s okay for a fine to be insignificant. Parking tickets are insignificant fines too, but in aggregate act to control parking behavior. What’s needed is better enforcement, not more stringent fines.
    - notyourday 7y ago
      Not at all. Those who have cars and can afford the fine consider parking fines to be a cost of doing business. Get a ticket, pay it on the web. Now if the car is towed that becomes a problem because just pulling out a credit card does not fix it.
      - leetcrew 7y ago
        > Those who have cars and can afford the fine consider parking fines to be a cost of doing business. I don't. if the fine is $50 and it costs $5 to park, I will pay unless I suspect enforcement is so lax that I have a >90% chance of getting away with it.
        jlarocco 7y ago
        > I don't. if the fine is $50 and it costs $5 to park, I will pay unless I suspect enforcement is so lax that I have a >90% chance of getting away with it. That amounts to the same thing. You obey the regulations (pay for parking) except when you think it's cheaper not to. Companies do the same thing. Most of the time it works out, but sometimes there's a fine.
        leetcrew 7y ago
        the above poster is saying that parking fines don't work so you gotta escalate and tow the person's car. I'm saying you don't have to do that, just hire a few more meter enforcement people and stick with fines that are proportional to the offense. personally, I think $40-50 is a reasonable fine for attempting to subvert parking regulations. if you park in a way that blocks a whole lane of traffic, you have caused a big bigger and time sensitive problem that justifies a tow truck.
        notyourday 7y ago
        You can see it every day in the cities. UPS/Fedex delivery trucks getting tickets every day. What happens? Companies simply pay the fines because it is a daily fine. So at say $100 per ticket it is just $3k/mo per truck to do deliveries. Since the company makes more than that per truck for that period of time it is the cost of doing business. Want to stop it? Make this cost high enough to make it non-profitable. If a ticket for illegal double parking is $5k and not $100 then a daily ticket means $150k in fines per truck per month, which is definitely higher than the amount of money a delivery company makes per truck, so the company is going to avoid getting fines.
  - krj 7y ago
    That doesn’t really work for a company like google with a largely blameless culture. The only way of really judging is through repeat offences which is difficult in a case like this where the judgement was that Google didn’t do enough. That line of “enough” is going to be redefined a lot as the web develops (as it should be).
    - notyourday 7y ago
      > That doesn’t really work for a company like google with a largely blameless culture. That's only the case because the cost of mistakes are insignificant. Should the mistakes start costing them 5% of revenue you can bet a farm that the person would be fired.
- leetcrew 7y ago
  some might argue the proper comparison is to the severity and scale of the offense itself.
- Traster 7y ago
  Alphabet has $125Bn cash on hand.
belltaco 7y ago
>Imagine you had 100k in the bank. That would be like a $25 late payment fee. If you had 100k in the bank, you could write a check to someone for 100k. Can Google write a check to someone for $800B ?
- benologist 7y ago
  They have over $100 billion in cash so they're not there yet, but they're not suffering either.
b_tterc_p 7y ago
Compared to just YouTube’s annual income it’s not trivial
root_axis 7y ago
FTA: > The settlement would be the largest civil penalty ever obtained by the F.T.C. in a children’s privacy case. It dwarfs the previous record fine of $5.7 million for children’s privacy violations the agency levied this year against the owners of TikTok, a social video-sharing app. This was a warning to YouTube, but from their perspective, there's clearly a subtext of "we're not afraid to raise the fines, next time could be a lot worse".
HALtheWise 7y ago
I would normally say that the most reasonable comparison is to the profit obtained from related features or products. For example, the FTC should be able to fine Alphabet up to however much profit YouTube makes serving kids in the US. Unfortunately, it is widely rumored that YouTube makes no profit, and that means they almost certainly don't make much money off of kids. Still, at some point, you have to watch out that the fines don't get so big that it just makes sense for YouTube to ban all content targeting kids, at least in the US, because that would be a disaster for everyone given the amount of educational content there. Google pulled out of the China market because the moral and economic costs of complying with government regulations wasn't worth the value of the market, we don't want them doing the same thing here for specific products.
- utopian3 7y ago
  > Google pulled out of the China market because the moral and economic costs of complying with government regulations wasn't worth the value of the market.. That’s not why they left

vonmoltke 7y ago

> This whole thing feels like Monopoly money. First, it’s $200m to a company valued at more than $800B. > Imagine you had 100k in the bank. That would be like a $25 late payment fee. No, it isn't. A company's valuation is not money in the bank. The proper comparison is to profit.

notyourday 7y ago
Proper comparison is the reaction of a CEO - if the CEO responds by firing the upper management->product management responsible for the part that caused the fine then the fine got a point across.
- true_religion 7y ago
  It’s okay for a fine to be insignificant. Parking tickets are insignificant fines too, but in aggregate act to control parking behavior. What’s needed is better enforcement, not more stringent fines.
  - notyourday 7y ago
    Not at all. Those who have cars and can afford the fine consider parking fines to be a cost of doing business. Get a ticket, pay it on the web. Now if the car is towed that becomes a problem because just pulling out a credit card does not fix it.
    - leetcrew 7y ago
      > Those who have cars and can afford the fine consider parking fines to be a cost of doing business. I don't. if the fine is $50 and it costs $5 to park, I will pay unless I suspect enforcement is so lax that I have a >90% chance of getting away with it.
      - jlarocco 7y ago
        > I don't. if the fine is $50 and it costs $5 to park, I will pay unless I suspect enforcement is so lax that I have a >90% chance of getting away with it. That amounts to the same thing. You obey the regulations (pay for parking) except when you think it's cheaper not to. Companies do the same thing. Most of the time it works out, but sometimes there's a fine.
        leetcrew 7y ago
        the above poster is saying that parking fines don't work so you gotta escalate and tow the person's car. I'm saying you don't have to do that, just hire a few more meter enforcement people and stick with fines that are proportional to the offense. personally, I think $40-50 is a reasonable fine for attempting to subvert parking regulations. if you park in a way that blocks a whole lane of traffic, you have caused a big bigger and time sensitive problem that justifies a tow truck.
        notyourday 7y ago
        You can see it every day in the cities. UPS/Fedex delivery trucks getting tickets every day. What happens? Companies simply pay the fines because it is a daily fine. So at say $100 per ticket it is just $3k/mo per truck to do deliveries. Since the company makes more than that per truck for that period of time it is the cost of doing business. Want to stop it? Make this cost high enough to make it non-profitable. If a ticket for illegal double parking is $5k and not $100 then a daily ticket means $150k in fines per truck per month, which is definitely higher than the amount of money a delivery company makes per truck, so the company is going to avoid getting fines.
- krj 7y ago
  That doesn’t really work for a company like google with a largely blameless culture. The only way of really judging is through repeat offences which is difficult in a case like this where the judgement was that Google didn’t do enough. That line of “enough” is going to be redefined a lot as the web develops (as it should be).
  - notyourday 7y ago
    > That doesn’t really work for a company like google with a largely blameless culture. That's only the case because the cost of mistakes are insignificant. Should the mistakes start costing them 5% of revenue you can bet a farm that the person would be fired.
leetcrew 7y ago
some might argue the proper comparison is to the severity and scale of the offense itself.
Traster 7y ago
Alphabet has $125Bn cash on hand.

belltaco 7y ago

>Imagine you had 100k in the bank. That would be like a $25 late payment fee. If you had 100k in the bank, you could write a check to someone for 100k. Can Google write a check to someone for $800B ?

benologist 7y ago
They have over $100 billion in cash so they're not there yet, but they're not suffering either.

b_tterc_p 7y ago

Compared to just YouTube’s annual income it’s not trivial

root_axis 7y ago

FTA: > The settlement would be the largest civil penalty ever obtained by the F.T.C. in a children’s privacy case. It dwarfs the previous record fine of $5.7 million for children’s privacy violations the agency levied this year against the owners of TikTok, a social video-sharing app. This was a warning to YouTube, but from their perspective, there's clearly a subtext of "we're not afraid to raise the fines, next time could be a lot worse".

HALtheWise 7y ago

I would normally say that the most reasonable comparison is to the profit obtained from related features or products. For example, the FTC should be able to fine Alphabet up to however much profit YouTube makes serving kids in the US. Unfortunately, it is widely rumored that YouTube makes no profit, and that means they almost certainly don't make much money off of kids. Still, at some point, you have to watch out that the fines don't get so big that it just makes sense for YouTube to ban all content targeting kids, at least in the US, because that would be a disaster for everyone given the amount of educational content there. Google pulled out of the China market because the moral and economic costs of complying with government regulations wasn't worth the value of the market, we don't want them doing the same thing here for specific products.

utopian3 7y ago
> Google pulled out of the China market because the moral and economic costs of complying with government regulations wasn't worth the value of the market.. That’s not why they left