4 ms·

B or M?

• stephen82 6y ago
  > "Under the Illinois law, Facebook could be forced to pay $1,000 to $5,000 per violation, meaning the full damages could reach $500 billion if Facebook is found responsible."
  • akersten 6y ago
    $500B is pretty nuts. Does anyone else here feel that this whole thing is nuts? Facebook's market cap is $700B. Making them pay $500B in damages would put them out of business. So, to be clear with what we're talking about here, we're considering the corporate death penalty. The alleged crime? Processing photo data to find objects that look like people that look similar to other objects that look like people. Yes, by the letter of the law, that's against BIPA (which is a problematic law motivated by a historically anti-tech cash-grabby legislature (see: Netflix Tax)), but what are the actual damages to the injured party? It is a tall order to convince me that having your name pop up as a recommended tag in your friend's photo caused you any material harm, let alone $1000+ per incident. I get that there's a privacy angle, I get that PII is toxic, I get that we care about data protection and all now. But this? This is a dumb law, and a dumb lawsuit.
    • perl4ever 6y ago
      Hmm, I question whether it really would put them out of business. FB made about $18B net income last year. Shouldn't that be more than enough to pay the interest on issuing $500B of long term bonds? It almost seems like a sweet spot of a massive fine that wouldn't kill them. Also, it would just be satisfying to demonstrate they aren't above the law. Ordinary people don't get to say "but that law is obviously unreasonable" when, you know, it's very debatable, and get exempted.