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Comment by OldHand2018 | Hacker News Reader

OldHand2018

This case is about whether they can be held accountable; it has already been established that they knowingly violated the law. The law says that the aggrieved party can sue for $1000 to $5000 per violation, and Facebook violated the law millions of times.

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The law says that the aggrieved party can sue for $1000 to $5000 per violation, and Facebook violated the law millions of times.

Move over, mesothelioma TV commercials. We have a new target for the bottom-feeding lawyers.

Good. Maybe they can extract a fee from FB that will actually hurt them.

Legal industry reporting calls the underlying matter a "$30 billion class action lawsuit," so it'll be interesting to see how that matter proceeds now that Facebook has lost its first dispute against standing.

As opposed to bottom feeding tech companies? If not through class action, how else would you suggest aggrieved users seek redress (the right to do so having been enumerated by statute)?

Bingo. Private rights of legal action make markets work properly.

Theoretically they could do that. It depends if the tort laws actually inflict enough damage to force change.

It seems to be the case that a lot of companies instead focus their resources on tort reform bills to neuter the laws.

American Capitalists: We don't need a new law, if a company commits a tort you can sue them for damages ... but don't use bottom-feeding lawyers who are constantly targeting reputable businesses.

And definitely don't all of you do it at once, and please we insist you sue us for our acts in a forum of our choosing.

Oh, well, another pitiful few billion dollars in fines.

When are we going to start standing up to companies who violate our privacy like this?

Lots of people are already, hence where this sort of decision comes from. If you don't think enough folk are standing up, then why not do your own advocacy work? It's surprisingly fun and especially rewarding.

This isn't just a fine, it's compensation.

That’s slightly better, but still not enough. 1 million violations at $5000 a pop would be a pitiful $5 billion. IMO, millions of privacy violations are worth more than that.

"pitiful $5 billion" is such a dumb take on these kinds of rulings.

The ruling is specifically about the facial recognition part of FB. They could end up paying $5 billion just because of facial recognition stuff .

Imagine if you put the Konami Code on the Google homepage, and got sued and lost for it. Then got fined $1 billion for it. You'd feel like you made a pretty bad decision there.

Obviously facial recognition is closer to the core of what FB is doing in general but it's still a lot of money for an incidental part of their system! They can pay it, but that's $5 billion they can no longer use to buy like... 10 startups or whatever.

If only that argument worked for individuals.

I robbed this house, but it was only the house-robbing part of me, go easy.

But no, the unfair jerks put all of me in jail.

Millions of privacy violations should earn them the corporate death penalty, not a 5 billion dollar “cost of doing business.”

Apples to oranges. Google losing $1 billion over putting the Konami Code on their homepage hurts because they won't make $1 billion off of doing that.

Facebook is likely making a lot of money off of, as you claim, something that is close to the core of what Facebook is doing. It makes $5 billion closer to a small cost of doing business.

I doubt that the amount of new information and thus potential monetary vlue they gather from face recognition technology is worth a real lot. It is relatively expensive (in compute power/infrastructure) and will not uncover previously hidden/unknown links in the social graph as the people in such photograph probably already were friends (within a few degrees).

As a means to increase user engagement (who then will volunteer more information by posting, liking and clicking around, especially on ads), I'd guess the same, that this also doesn't add much.

What's more, it's not just a one time fine. It's an order to stop certain actions. If they do not comply, then they will get fined again and again.

Wouldn't someone need to prove some kind of tangible damages to be able to sue?

Unfortunately, I'm not sure that this serves as an effective deterrent.

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