3 ms·

> Abusing your position as a desirable market to impose post-hoc tariffs via an endless stream of fines is questionable IMO. There's a simple scenario in which

by sgift 3y ago

> Abusing your position as a desirable market to impose post-hoc tariffs via an endless stream of fines is questionable IMO. There's a simple scenario in which Meta wouldn't have had to pay these fines: Don't break the law. And don't continue breaking the law after being told to stop it. It's not abusive to remind companies that actions have consequences in the language they understand and respect.

kmlx 3y ago
who says Meta will pay this fine? they will litigate until the end of times.
pembrook 3y ago
Do you honestly believe that Meta's hundreds (possibly thousands) of both full-time and contracted out lawyers would collectively advise them to break the law? Knowing full well the outcome would be $Billions in fines? EU to US data transfers used to be okay for years, then there was a single ruling that brought that into question. Because government moves slow, there hasn't been a new framework implemented. Ruling for Billions in fines during the interim, while the US government and EU are still negotiating the details of the new framework is not an environment conducive to full compliance. US companies would essentially need to stop operating in the EU altogether if they wanted to be fully compliant. Combine this with giant companies which also are slow moving (albeit faster than government) and you have a recipe for never-ending fines no matter how much you try to comply in good faith.
- malermeister 3y ago
  > US companies would essentially need to stop operating in the EU altogether if they wanted to be fully compliant. That's exactly what they should've done to not break the law while there was no legal basis for what they were doing. They didn't. Now they suffer the consequences for breaking the law.
  - pfannkuchen 3y ago
    I believe they can still at any point stop operating in the EU and not pay the fine? How would the EU implement the fine if Meta pulled out? I thought their leverage was just the threat of blocking the service in the EU.
    - malermeister 3y ago
      I guess if no Facebook exec ever wants to touch European soil again, that is an option.
      - pfannkuchen 3y ago
        Wouldn’t this have to be a criminal case for execs to be personally liable? I assume it isn’t a criminal case?
        tfourb 3y ago
        It's not, but not paying a fine can quickly become a criminal offense.
        pfannkuchen 3y ago
        Does this apply to foreign companies? I’ve never heard of such a thing. If it was a domestic company, of course, assets could just be seized to pay the fine plus whatever non payment penalty. Is there a criminal charge after asset seizure? Or does this just never happen because there is no incentive to do it domestically?
        tfourb 3y ago
        Not a lawyer, but shutting down a subsidiary to avoid overwhelming fines is de facto messing with the insolvency laws, isn't it? At least in Germany that is a criminal offense for which the executives of the (parent) company are ultimately liable. Plus, Meta actually is a domestic company in the E.U. They handle all their E.U. business through an Irish subsidiary (which is why the Irish data protection agency is responsible for all of this) and they also have subsidiaries to manage political and customer relations in many other E.U. countries, as well as presumably data centers, etc. Removing all of this would be a big project and would give government agencies plenty of time to seize assets. These assets could also include non-tangibles, i.e. the .de/.fr domains for their websites.
- tfourb 3y ago
  Corporate lawyering is basically about finding ways to break the spirit or letter of the law without being punished for it. Or to limit the punishment so that it is exceeded by the likely profit of breaking the law. So yes, Meta's thousands of lawyers probably recommend breaking (or "interpreting" certain laws in certain ways all the time because the cost/benefit analysis makes it worth it. And sometimes they miscalculate and the fines are larger than the profit or result in some unexpected political blowback. See also Apple's approach to its App Store and payment policies. EU to US data transfers were questionable for years, until a whole string of rulings through several levels of national and E.U. courts made clear that they weren't under some circumstances. Other companies have found ways to deal with that, Meta obviously could have, but chose not to (because profits). One obvious way would be for Meta to save E.U. customer data on E.U. servers exclusively, splitting the social graph (and advertising shadow profiles, which likely is what they really care about). Good faith does not enter into the equation, would be my guess.
- janalsncm 3y ago
  There was also a grace period during which time Meta made no substantive efforts to come into compliance. If Meta had even a half-baked EU solution they would not be so thoroughly and repeatedly punished. Yeah, standing up a data center is not trivial, but Meta also hires the best in the world. Move fast and break things. In this case they didn’t even move at a medium speed, so they get no sympathy from me.
- mbesto 3y ago
  > Do you honestly believe that Meta's hundreds (possibly thousands) of both full-time and contracted out lawyers would collectively advise them to break the law? Knowing full well the outcome would be $Billions in fines? Yes, absolutely. Laws are never clear and require human beings to interpret. Lawyers jobs are about assessing risk. While they might not have explicitly said "you will get fined $B", they will definitely say "here is the likelihood that the EU fines you" and then meta management would make a strategic (e.g. do we want to risk this based on how much money we can profit) decision based on that.
- nvarsj 3y ago
  The law is almost a moving target, based on the whims of the current political zeitgeist and public opinion. And law isn't binary, yes/no. Much US law is very murky and ambiguous. It takes litigation and court action to actually figure out what the poorly worded laws mean. Congress is really bad at creating law for some reason.
mackman 3y ago
The cost of setting up additional data centers in Europe and re-architecting your application with a different replication strategy is probably 10x-50x the fine. It would also take years and a sizable fraction of the engineering team to make it happen and there will be significant performance and reliability issues throughout the process. Easier to pay the fine and lobby for rules changes for a decade.
- avianlyric 3y ago
  $1.3bil is a huge sum of money. To put that into perspective you could pay 260 engineers $500k a year for 10 years with that money. Or 260 engineers $1mil a year for 5 years with that money. You honestly think it would take it would 2600-13000 engineers 10 years to do the work needed for compliance?

by sgift 3y ago

kmlx 3y ago

who says Meta will pay this fine? they will litigate until the end of times.

pembrook 3y ago

Do you honestly believe that Meta's hundreds (possibly thousands) of both full-time and contracted out lawyers would collectively advise them to break the law? Knowing full well the outcome would be $Billions in fines? EU to US data transfers used to be okay for years, then there was a single ruling that brought that into question. Because government moves slow, there hasn't been a new framework implemented. Ruling for Billions in fines during the interim, while the US government and EU are still negotiating the details of the new framework is not an environment conducive to full compliance. US companies would essentially need to stop operating in the EU altogether if they wanted to be fully compliant. Combine this with giant companies which also are slow moving (albeit faster than government) and you have a recipe for never-ending fines no matter how much you try to comply in good faith.

malermeister 3y ago
> US companies would essentially need to stop operating in the EU altogether if they wanted to be fully compliant. That's exactly what they should've done to not break the law while there was no legal basis for what they were doing. They didn't. Now they suffer the consequences for breaking the law.
- pfannkuchen 3y ago
  I believe they can still at any point stop operating in the EU and not pay the fine? How would the EU implement the fine if Meta pulled out? I thought their leverage was just the threat of blocking the service in the EU.
  - malermeister 3y ago
    I guess if no Facebook exec ever wants to touch European soil again, that is an option.
    - pfannkuchen 3y ago
      Wouldn’t this have to be a criminal case for execs to be personally liable? I assume it isn’t a criminal case?
      - tfourb 3y ago
        It's not, but not paying a fine can quickly become a criminal offense.
        pfannkuchen 3y ago
        Does this apply to foreign companies? I’ve never heard of such a thing. If it was a domestic company, of course, assets could just be seized to pay the fine plus whatever non payment penalty. Is there a criminal charge after asset seizure? Or does this just never happen because there is no incentive to do it domestically?
        tfourb 3y ago
        Not a lawyer, but shutting down a subsidiary to avoid overwhelming fines is de facto messing with the insolvency laws, isn't it? At least in Germany that is a criminal offense for which the executives of the (parent) company are ultimately liable. Plus, Meta actually is a domestic company in the E.U. They handle all their E.U. business through an Irish subsidiary (which is why the Irish data protection agency is responsible for all of this) and they also have subsidiaries to manage political and customer relations in many other E.U. countries, as well as presumably data centers, etc. Removing all of this would be a big project and would give government agencies plenty of time to seize assets. These assets could also include non-tangibles, i.e. the .de/.fr domains for their websites.
tfourb 3y ago
Corporate lawyering is basically about finding ways to break the spirit or letter of the law without being punished for it. Or to limit the punishment so that it is exceeded by the likely profit of breaking the law. So yes, Meta's thousands of lawyers probably recommend breaking (or "interpreting" certain laws in certain ways all the time because the cost/benefit analysis makes it worth it. And sometimes they miscalculate and the fines are larger than the profit or result in some unexpected political blowback. See also Apple's approach to its App Store and payment policies. EU to US data transfers were questionable for years, until a whole string of rulings through several levels of national and E.U. courts made clear that they weren't under some circumstances. Other companies have found ways to deal with that, Meta obviously could have, but chose not to (because profits). One obvious way would be for Meta to save E.U. customer data on E.U. servers exclusively, splitting the social graph (and advertising shadow profiles, which likely is what they really care about). Good faith does not enter into the equation, would be my guess.
janalsncm 3y ago
There was also a grace period during which time Meta made no substantive efforts to come into compliance. If Meta had even a half-baked EU solution they would not be so thoroughly and repeatedly punished. Yeah, standing up a data center is not trivial, but Meta also hires the best in the world. Move fast and break things. In this case they didn’t even move at a medium speed, so they get no sympathy from me.
mbesto 3y ago
> Do you honestly believe that Meta's hundreds (possibly thousands) of both full-time and contracted out lawyers would collectively advise them to break the law? Knowing full well the outcome would be $Billions in fines? Yes, absolutely. Laws are never clear and require human beings to interpret. Lawyers jobs are about assessing risk. While they might not have explicitly said "you will get fined $B", they will definitely say "here is the likelihood that the EU fines you" and then meta management would make a strategic (e.g. do we want to risk this based on how much money we can profit) decision based on that.
nvarsj 3y ago
The law is almost a moving target, based on the whims of the current political zeitgeist and public opinion. And law isn't binary, yes/no. Much US law is very murky and ambiguous. It takes litigation and court action to actually figure out what the poorly worded laws mean. Congress is really bad at creating law for some reason.

mackman 3y ago

The cost of setting up additional data centers in Europe and re-architecting your application with a different replication strategy is probably 10x-50x the fine. It would also take years and a sizable fraction of the engineering team to make it happen and there will be significant performance and reliability issues throughout the process. Easier to pay the fine and lobby for rules changes for a decade.

avianlyric 3y ago
$1.3bil is a huge sum of money. To put that into perspective you could pay 260 engineers $500k a year for 10 years with that money. Or 260 engineers $1mil a year for 5 years with that money. You honestly think it would take it would 2600-13000 engineers 10 years to do the work needed for compliance?