They made $17 billion this quarter.
They made $17 billion this quarter.
From the end of the court decision:
> The Court ends by noting that under the Stipulated Order it retains jurisdiction over this matter, including to enforce its terms. See Stipulated Order at 5. In the event that the parties return to this Court because the United States alleges—once again—that Facebook has reneged on its promises and continued to violate the law or the terms of the amended administrative order, the Court may not apply quite the same deference to the terms of a proposed resolution. As the D.C. Circuit has explained, a district court must be especially deferential “when the proposed decree comes to a district judge in the first instance as a settlement between the parties.” Microsoft, 56 F.3d at 1461. But, on the other hand, when “a district judge has administered a consent decree for some period of time,” and is therefore likely more familiar with the relevant context, “the lack of an initial trial is, at least marginally, less of an inhibition” when weighing the appropriateness of a proposed remedy.[1]
[1] https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/6876914/4-23-20-F... (linked in the first sentence of the article)
Honestly, if I had another life, I would become the tech-savvy judge. Give Facebook a 300% revenue fine.
Edit: quarter, not half
[1]https://www.theverge.com/2020/2/19/21144291/facebook-irs-law...
People are buying and selling click traffic (likes, follows, youtube views), suppose you just buy advertising and it gets placed on domains all over the web -- if I want to transfer money to you, you just need to spin up a domain, get taboola recommending some gut health articles, and I can buy ad placements and point my botnet at your domain, clicking on the ads I paid for so you get all the kickbacks -- something like that I'm not in the ad brokering business myself! Or the money laundering business for that matter :)
> The settlement also obligates Facebook to pay $5 billion in civil penalties; that penalty is significantly larger than the next-closest penalty the FTC has ever won–which topped out at $22.5 million.
With $5 billion, I believe we're within a factor of ten of the right fine, which isn't something I always believe about these settlements. Compared to e.g. Janet Jackson at the Superbowl, resulting in a fine of $27 thousand - $5 billion is at least a line on the spreadsheet.
Not there yet, but closer.
The frustrating part is that they kept doing it even after they said they wouldn't. And FB amassed a sizeable revenue breaking a law while snuffing out competition, growing bigger, and reaping the benefits whilst still paying a fine that was essentially "worth it".
I heard in a podcast the idea how the next "Facebook" can't do what FB did to grow -- because all that stuff is now regulated, closely watched, and fined.