8 ms·

The fact that we (the UK) only fined Facebook £500k [1] is an utter scandal. You can probably say $529bn is too much, but the appropriate amount might be somew

• roblabla 7y ago
  Facebook's revenue in 2019 was $70bn. $529bn is 7 times this. I don't think Facebook even generated close to $529bn during the entirety of its lifetime. This is not "probably say": $529bn would just not work. EDIT: If the goal of the fine is to just kill Facebook's presence in Australia, then yeah, I guess it works. But in this case, Facebook won't pay that fine. They'll just stop operating in Australia - in other words, they'll stop taking advertiser money from there. At worst, Australia's govt will block access to FB.
  • munk-a 7y ago
    Still, it sounds like a reasonable amount for, as a company, designing a system that helped compromise an election. If FB needs to declare bankruptcy and shutter their doors then nothing of value will be lost.
  • ClumsyPilot 7y ago
    It is sometimes necessary to fine a company out of existance, for example when violations are so blatant they lead to death.
  • SolarNet 7y ago
    > $529bn would just not work. If the fine structure's purpose is to prevent companies from doing extremely illegal things. Then it seems to work just fine. Facebook would be unable to repeat this mistake. It's not like there are such things as corporate death sentences in much of the world. So there does need to be a mechanism to ensure that a company that repeatedly flagrantly violates the law is stopped from doing so eventually. Excessive fines are a way to do that, to make it so economically non-viable that it is avoided. Now again, one can argue whether this violation is worthy of that. But on the face of it there is no reason why feasibility of payment is necessary for deciding the amount of a fine. Capitalism has problems with pricing external costs to society. The more common example being things like pollution and climate change (something ironically that Australia is particularity bad at). The price for privacy violations here might be a bit high, but it is an externality worth pricing. The amount of money the government will need to spend fighting identity theft in response to this is just the first order effect. Economic damage from both the identity theft and loss of trust. Mental health damage done from the identity theft and leaked data being used. According to the article the government of Australia prices that at 1,700,000 per person. Which actually sounds like a reasonable amount once one considers paying police to track down thieves, prosecution, jail time, the potential for social services to have to help that person while their life is put back together, and so on. It's the multiplication that screwed them here. That's the part that might not track quite correctly.
  • poooogles 7y ago
    > This is not "probably say" I'm not sure British English translates over the internet that well, but this was hyperbole.
  • riquito 7y ago
    Fines are not maxed out at the amount of money the culprit can give, which in and itself can be quite difficult to determine (I don't want to enter the merit of the amount requested being right/wrong).
  • nixass 7y ago
    Facebook with its core business should cease to exist anyway and this is good step forward in doing so, there's is nothing wrong with this fine.
• ipnon 7y ago
  It's sufficient if Australia believes that Facebook's existence itself is in violation of Australian law. In this case, an fine that is too much to be paid would force Facebook to exit Australia entirely.
  • JoeAltmaier 7y ago
    I'm not even sure what it means to 'exit Australia'. We're talking a website here.
    • munk-a 7y ago
      Cease operation in that territory and refuse connections from Australian IP Addresses? And possibly pull the related Apps from the Australian AppStore & GooglePlay. Additionally, Australia would probably come down hard on any attempts for Facebook to market or solicit customers within their nation.
      • stOneskull 7y ago
        intelligence agencies love facebook. it won't happen.
        • seoulsubway 7y ago
          Everyone in Australia loves Facebook, Instagram, Whatsapp. It won't even need to make it to the intelligence agencies, the people will be the ones who cry first if anyone does any crying.
    • vruiz 7y ago
      It would at least need to stop taking advertising money from Australian companies and individuals. Probably let go employees and close offices.
    • grecy 7y ago
      The same way the US government bans certain sites from existing in the USA - (attempted, at least) the pirate bay, child sex trafficking sites etc. If a government of a country defines a website illegal, then that website simply will not be accessible from that country, end of story.
• jariel 7y ago
  The level of uninformed populism is reaching Trumpian levels. How anyone thinks that FB should be fined in any of this is ridiculous. "We hate Facebook, they make too much money, therefore fine them!" FB had APIs, that everyone in the entire world knew about. There maybe a little 'too open' for some, but nobody was screaming fraud. It seemed reasonable to most. Then, a sneaky company inevitably came along and used the APIs to break the rules somewhat (arguably even then CA may not have). As a result, FB did the prudent thing and nudged the APIs a little bit tighter. By the way - FB did the appropriate thing long before there was any scandal, any noise, any blowback. FB investigated CA to make sure they deleted the data, in turn out CA lied and hid copies of the data. There wasn't any material harm to anyone - even if CA was able to use the data to help target people (they weren't really), there are innumerable opportunities for companies to do that anyhow. From the article: "Unless those individuals undertook a complex process of modifying their settings on Facebook, their personal information was disclosed by Facebook to the “This is Your Digital Life” App by default." This is misrepresentative to the point of being a lie. Facebook enables users to upload data and will only share such data with apps which the user has given authorization. In this case, users absolutely had to provide CA with the authority to access certain data, in the same way, they would have for any other app. When Mark Zuckerberg visited Congress for his smackdown, it became clear very quickly that almost none of the Senators had a clue how FB even worked. Of all the things I don't like Facebook for, there's nothing wrong with what they did here. They had a set of APIs unlike anyone had ever made before, the realized that they were probably a little to lose, so they tightened them up by their own volition.
  • thdrdt 7y ago
    Well I agree with you a lot of reasoning is very uninformed. But I don't agree Facebook isn't to blame. Power comes with responsibility. At least that is what most countries believe. So if you make money with a very powerful tool that could potentially bring down a government (this is what a judge has to decide) then you are to blame when your APIs where to lose. It's like building a nuclear facility with mud.
    • jariel 7y ago
      A) Facebook did not abuse their power in any way (at least in the case). B) The notion that the resulting action 'brought down governments' is just beyond false. Anyone involved in digital marketing knows how absurd these claims are, moreover, there are numerous other, legal, and very common practices being used all the time that are considerably more impactful. To boot: C) The suing government's actions are vindictive and biased. A commenter above posted a link to refer to the UK government's damage claims. As part of the countersuit, FB demanded that UK office (ICO) demonstrate it's objectivity in the situation (the judge agreed). So guess what happened? The government made a quick perusal of their own communications and realized they would be destroyed in scandal and moved for a quick resolution with a very small settlement. FB has good and bad attributes we have to be smart about it, this kind of 'anti information angry mob' stuff should be beneath people.
• easytiger 7y ago
  What, in your own words, did they do that was illegal?
  • manicdee 7y ago
    Violating privacy by publishing personally identifying information. There’s a hefty fine per occurrence, and the plaintiff is alleging that there were over three hundred thousand occurrences.
    • manfredo 7y ago
      This information was not published by Facebook - Facebook's data sharing agreement was that this information would be used only for academic purposes and not shared with any third parties. After discovering that Kogan had violated these restrictions Facebook terminated his access to Facebook's API and ultimately terminated this program of giving academic institutions access to Facebook data.
      • manicdee 7y ago
        Facebook was responsible for that information, they shared it with someone they shouldn’t have and then tried to cover their butts when the inevitable data breach occurred. This is Australian privacy law we’re dealing with, not a Facebook EULA.
        • manfredo 7y ago
          No, they shared it with university researchers for academic purposes which is what users agreed to. Said researchers turned around and used it for commercial and political purposes. Sharing the data with Cambridge Analytica (for the purported use) wasn't the problem. Cambridge Analytica lying about what the data was uses for is the problem.
    • easytiger 7y ago
      Not true
• EGreg 7y ago
  Somewhere in the middle? Can they just name any amount and the company HAS to pay? What if it doesn’t? Will they somehow try to claw the money into Australia 🇦🇺 from US 🇺🇸 banks? Maybe Australia can’t do it but Let’s say the US government said some company owes them that much. What happens? Never mind that this exceeds the company’s entire revenue by far.
• manfredo 7y ago
  The reality is that putting the blame on Facebook instead of Cambridge Analytica is more of a stretch than people think. Remember Cambridge Analytica's main founder, Aleksandr Kogan, was working at the psychology department of Cambridge University. Facebook had program to allow academic use of user data which it granted to Kogan. Kogan subsequently violated stipulations that this data not be used for commercial and political access, and upon learning of this Facebook terminated his access to this data and demanded that he delete the data that he already collected. I'm not sure how one comes away from this thinking that Facebook is the culprit here. Sure, you can say that they were naive to believe in the integrity academics. But at no point did they willingly violate their user privacy policies, and when they discovered that a third party was abusing data they terminated access.