Comment by Retric

2 days ago

They didn’t make $60B in Q4 2025 in Texas. 1.4B was 100% profit from Texas for years, that a big fine.

I see this as roughly equivalent to amortized big O complexity. If I push to a vector repeatedly, sometimes I will incur a significant cost O(n) of reallocation, but most of the time it's still O(1).

Similarly, if Meta violates the law, and is infrequently fined a small fraction of their revenue by a small number of governments, in general it will not be a big deal for them.

You also have to ask "how much is the specific thing in the lawsuit worth to Meta?"

I don't know how much automatically opting everyone in to automatic photo tagging made Meta, but I assume its "less than 100% of their revenue".

Barring the point of contention being integral to the business's revenue model or management of the company being infected with oppositional defiant disorder a lawsuit is just an opportunity for some middle manager + team to get praised for making a revenue-negative change that reduces the risk of future fines.

Work like that is a gold mind; several people will probably get promoted for it.

Big for Texas, not for Meta.

  • It’s under 5 hours of GDP for Texas. It’s a big fine, but not a huge deal for either party.

    • So what's the point? If neither party is really affected by a penalty (no diacernible benefit or loss to either), then is it all just performative?

      Maybe I just answered my own question.

      3 replies →