Comment by xp84
1 day ago
Outlandish on its face. In short, shouldn't the amount of money you expect for a fine be at least vaguely proportional to the harms caused?
Look at precedent[1]. Glyphosate and J&J talc are among the biggest awards (to be fair: they were settlements), and those allege that the defendants' products actually caused cancer -- actually killed people.
The tobacco settlement for 46 states was $206 billion. Again, for causing millions of deaths. New Mexico is 0.62% of the U.S. population, so less than $2 billion would be New Mexico's share of that.
Compare that to this 25 billion for the crime of illicitly letting political advertisers access too much of the interest data that Facebook users provided to Facebook?
The only way this penalty makes any sense is if you believe that the Cambridge Analytica scandal was the most heinous crime ever perpetrated by any company in U.S. history.
> In short, shouldn't the amount of money you expect for a fine be at least vaguely proportional to the harms caused?
No. Fines are punitive and intended for deterrence. You're thinking of reimbursements (cost recovery and damages). The latter is intended to be proportional to real world harm/costs, the former need not be.
A traffic law violation could cause no harm, but you'll still get fined for it.
Some jurisdictions even impose fines based on how deep the defendants' wallet is, calculating the amount that might serve as appropriate deterrent/punishment based on their financial situation. Fining a billionare $50,000 for literring will still not serve as a deterrent, but doing the same to a minimum wage worker would unfairly financially ruin them.
OK fine, it's about deterrence. Explain why are trying 100x more vigorously to deter the category 'advertising-based infractions' (which the majority of the 'victims' still don't even know happened, let alone experience any pain and suffering from) than 'negligently giving people cancer and killing them'?
This is about emotion and resentment about social media. I get it. I hate social media too. But it's absurd to levy such a fine for petty data misuse - especially considering this is just going to pad state coffers. The state wasn't harmed here! If you take the position that New Mexicans will never be the same again, then that $11,737 per New Mexico resident should go to the residents. All of it. Write them checks.
I'm trying to puzzle together the belief system that makes your comment coherent.
You seem to assume that money being transferred from Meta's into New Mexico state coffers is worse than burning it. Also did the people of New Mexico not elect their government?
Additionally, what instance of "giving people cancer" is not being pursued because resources were allocated to this instead?
Finally, fines must be high enough to have the intended effect of deterrence. If only absurdly high fines work, which appears to be the case in Meta's instance, then absurdly high they must be. If they continue that pattern of behavior while ignoring every fine, then the only alternatives would be either shutting Meta down for being a criminal enterprise and putting people behind bars, or throwing the idea of "rule of law" out the window. A high fine is doing them a favor.
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Yeah, that makes sense. On the other hand, the severity of the crime isn't what makes the penalty high in this case. The fine for the crime in this case is $5,000. Given that the penalty was reduced by nearly 90%, the penalty for the crime is something like $570. That doesn't seem outlandish to me.
It's $11,737 per current resident of New Mexico by my math. So, 20+ offenses per resident of the state? Of course, many people weren't even Facebook users, so it must be even more offenses per user.
And they reduced it, so we're already admitting that the penalty is based on vibes and not simply an unbiased calculation. So it's just the whims of this particular judge that says the right number is $25,000,000,000.00 and not $250,000,000,000.00. Sounds like that number is no more justified than $25,000,000.00 or $25.
"we're already admitting that the penalty is based on vibes and not simply an unbiased calculation"
We are? I haven't read the judgement and I'm pretty sure you haven't either. You're making a pretty big assumption here.
"Sounds like that number is no more justified than $25,000,000.00 or $25."
The penalty was written into law. That's what justified it.
The irony is that you're saying the award is based on "vibes" or feelings but, honestly, that's all I've been seeing from critics of the penalty. No one can explain what's wrong with it from a legal perspective. It's just been a lot of "it's a really high number!" and "they're making numbers up!" from people who can't point to anything from the decision itself.
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I don't see how math applies here with regards to "per resident". Why would it matter how many residents are? What matters is how much wealth a company has in proportion.
If you fine a billionaire with a two dollars fine, this will have ... what impact exactly?
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Or that other companies were not adequately fined
Yeah because government steals two breads from you if you get caught stealing a bread
"The only way this penalty makes any sense is if you believe that the Cambridge Analytica scandal was the most heinous crime ever perpetrated by any company in U.S. history."
No, that's wrong. Fines are also in proportion to how much wealth the company has. You totally did not mention this in your post - I wonder why.
That cannot be the sole principle for computing all fines, though. If it were the only factor, then if a Facebook company shuttle bus is parked in a loading zone for too long, that should also be 25 billion dollars. If a manager at Facebook doesn't properly address one instance of workplace bullying? 25 billion dollars. After all, if it's a small fine, then they'll never learn!
And it should go for every company of a similar size. Apple falsely advertised all the capabilities of Siri that they hadn't even successfully built, and never did. That should have been 25 billion dollars too.
Would those be stupid? Because if those are stupid, I think it has to be because whatever data privacy violation they did was worse than allowing someone to get their feelings hurt, or messing up traffic for 15 minutes.
And my point is that it is worse than those things; but it's not worse than giving millions of Americans cancer.
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