Comment by xp84
1 day ago
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.
> money being transferred from Meta's into New Mexico state coffers is worse than burning it.
I do believe that. I'd say that about any state or federal government though. Think of all the good that money could do in the hands of people. At least if you burned it, it would offset inflation for a few days.
> shutting Meta down for being a criminal enterprise
Again, interesting to suggest that this is the other fair outcome here for advertising shenanigans, but not for the many corporations who outright kill people every day like health insurers.
> I do believe that.
If we're starting out from different axioms, there's really no point for us to argue about about policy and outcomes. We'll have to align our assumptions first.
> At least if you burned it, it would offset inflation for a few days.
Yes. And keeping it in Meta's coffers might ultimately redirect economic output towards maintenance of Zuck's yachts.
> Again, interesting to suggest that this is the other fair outcome here for advertising shenanigans, but not for the many corporations who outright kill people every day like health insurers.
You're conflating moral and legal arguments and read things into people's comments that were never said - only as a setup for some whataboutism. For your second post in a row.
There's an interesting discussion here, but this is not how to have it.
I see where he is coming from. I believe his point is not that tobacco companies never paid anything (they paid over $206 billion in the 1998 Master Settlement Agreement to cover health costs, according to my quick searches). What he is calling out is the disparity in how the state punishes these harms today. The reason Meta's penalty hit $25 billion is not because ad-data misuse is worse than giving people cancer anyways, it's just a quirk of software-era consumer protection laws (which I should be responding to him, but hopefully he reads this comment). In New Mexico every single automated digital interaction was counted as a separate statutory violation which multiplies a basic fine into an astronomical sum. His point is that state governments are aggressively leveraging anti-tech outrage and these statutory math tricks to extract billions for state coffers whereas deadly industries like tobacco were allowed to negotiate structured settlements over decades while continuing to sell. I think... Well, this is how I interpreted his comments.
TL;DR: I think he already put it this way, but if Meta gets hit with $25B for ad-data tricks then why are we fining social media far more aggressively per user than companies that literally gave (and continue to give) people cancer? The answer is partly in my first paragraph but I still do not find it particularly reassuring.
It's amazing how the anti-Facebook hate is so strong that it's not possible to even post a measured take like yours without getting downvoted to death.
And I acknowledge that a fine of a very manageable sum turns a violation of a law into a cost of doing business, like the proverbial rich man's parking ticket just looks to him like a really not-bad deal for a plum parking spot. So, yes, it's tricky to use fines to rein in businesses. But it's still very odd/suspect that Meta is fined 25 billion dollars for this, while Equifax, which lost the SSNs and financial data of every household in America, and they paid a settlement of 575 million dollars. Why? Because Meta's unpopular. That's the only reason.
A fine that amounts to 1/5 of the entire GDP of New Mexico, or 75% of its government's annual budget, seems farcical to me. Unless of course New Mexico will give a one-time tax rebate equalling to 75% of tax revenue to its people, in which case it's still farcical, but at least it's helping people.